372 THE SOCIAL COMPONENTS

burial societies through which the individual can make fairly certain that,
however much society has failed him during life, he will be given proper
treatment at death.

An enormous amount of trial and error went into the development of
all such organizational forms. The early life insurance organizations, for
example, seldom provided actual security for the wife and children of
the deceased. A multitude of organizational mechanisms were tried and
discarded before the legally regulated commercial insurance agencies of
today, with their carefully accumulated actuarial tables and their cau-
tiously calculated insurance rates, finally evolved.1 In one of the early
attempts, the practice was for a number of men to agree to assume joint
responsibility for the widow and children of any one of them who died.
It usually turned out, however, that when the time came for the survivors
to fulfill such a contract, some would renege, some would be incapable
of paying their part, and the few who were both able and willing would
soon grow weary of the excessive burden. In a later experiment, the
members of the mutual group agreed to pay a stated sum upon the death
of any member. Again, when the time came to pay up, the few who
could and would pay the assessment were too few to assure economic
security for the beneficiaries. In all such voluntary pooling of resources
the tendency was for those members who were both honest and affluent
to bear the entire burden; honest and affluent men learned, therefore, to
stay out of mutual associations; and without such members no association
could possibly provide security for widows and their children.

Ultimately the practice of exacting prepayment for membership in
mutual groups evolved. As the more successful of them grew in size,
risks were spread more widely, and management became a full-time job
rather than a part-time chore for one of the members. Most early life
insurance rates were so low, however, that a few deaths in quick suc-
cession often bankrupted the organization. (The same thing was true
of early fire and other kinds of insurance.) In time data on risks ac-
cumulated, so that the risk of insuring each individual could be calculated
and the rate varied according to the extent of the risk. Even now, how-
ever, after more than two hundred years of development, individual life
insurance is no more than the best available means by which the father
of a family can attempt to assure the economic welfare of his wife and
children. Moreover, only an exceedingly small proportion of the men
who take on the responsibilities of wife and children are financially able
to avail themselves of this means; and of that small proportion a very
considerable number just never get around to doing so.

The development of the modern hospital also illustrates the general

1 See S. B. Clough, A Centttry of American Life Insurance (Columbia University
Press, New Yorlc, 1946).