Dave Murray, general agent, leaned back in his chair and looked
thoughtfully at the young man before him.
"So you have run up against an unanswerable argument?" he remarked.
"It seems so to me," said the inexperienced Owen Ross.
"My dear boy," asserted Murray, "in the life insurance business the only
unanswerable argument is a physician's report that the applicant is not
a good risk. What is the particular thing that has put you down and
out?"
"Faith," replied the young man; "just plain faith in the Almighty.
Perhaps, some time in your career, you have run across a religious
enthusiast who considers it a reflection on the all-seeing wisdom of the
Almighty to take any measures for his own protection or the protection
of his family."
"I have," admitted Murray, "but generally it has been a woman."
"This is a man," said Ross; "a sincere, devout man. If he were a
hypocrite, it would be different, but it is a matter of religious
conviction--a principle of faith--with him to trust in the Lord. Life
insurance he considers almost sacrilegious--an evidence of man's doubt in
the wisdom of his Maker, and an attempt, in his puny insignificant way,
to interfere with the plans of the Great Master. To all arguments he
replies, 'The Lord will provide for His children.'"
"And you consider that unanswerable?" asked Murray.
"In his case, yes. Even his wife is unable to move him, although she
wants insurance as a provision for the future of the children and was
instrumental in getting me to talk to him. How would you answer such a
contention as that?"
"I wouldn't answer it; I would agree with him."
"And give up?"
"Quite the contrary. While there can be no doubt that he is right as far
as he goes, he does not go far enough. I would turn his own argument
against him." Murray leaned forward in his chair and spoke with earnest
deliberation. "The Lord provides for His children through human
instrumentality. Why should not the man be the human instrument through
which the Lord provides for that man's family? The Lord does not
directly intervene--at least, not in these days. If, in the hour of
extremity, an unexpected legacy should come to relieve the necessities
of that man's family, he would say the Lord had provided. But it would
be through human instrumentality: the legacy, and the method and law by
which it reached them would be essentially human. If, when poverty
knocks at the door, some generous philanthropist were moved to come to
their relief, he would hold again that the Lord had provided; if some
wealthy relative sought them out, it would be through the intervention
of the Lord; if, through his own wise action, they are saved from want,
is he more than the human instrument through which the Lord provides?
May not an insurance company be the chosen instrument? I say this with
all due reverence, and it seems to me to answer his objections fully. Is
it only in unforeseen ways that He cares for His children? Has He
nothing to do with those cases in which reasonable precautions are taken
by the children themselves?"
Ross, the young solicitor, looked at his chief with unconcealed
admiration.
"By George!" he exclaimed, "you've got the theory of this business down
to a science. I'll try the man again."
"It's not a business," retorted Murray somewhat warmly, for this was a
point that touched his pride; "it is a profession--at least, it lies with
the man himself to make it a business or a profession, according to his
own ability and character. There are small men who make a business of
the law, and there are great men who make a profession of it; there are
doctors to whom medicine is a mere commercial pursuit, and there are
doctors to whom it is a study, a science, a profession. You may make of
life insurance a cheap business, or you may make of it a dignified
profession; you may be a mere annoying canvasser, or you may be a man
who commands respect; but, to be really successful, you must have, or
acquire, a technical knowledge of the basis of insurance, a knowledge of
law, and, above all, a knowledge of human nature,--and even that will
avail little if you are not temperamentally suited to the work. You can
no more make a good insurance man of unpromising material than you can
make a good artist."
Ross caught some of the enthusiasm and earnestness of Murray, and
unconsciously straightened up.
"You have made me look at the subject from a new point of view," he
said. "I confess I was rather ashamed of the soliciting part of the work
at first--felt a good deal like a cripple selling pencils to support a
sick wife."
"And very likely you acted like it," remarked Murray, "in which case the
people you approached would so class you. It isn't necessary to have the
'iron nerve,' so long identified with that branch of the work; it isn't
even helpful, for it makes a man unpopular, and the most successful men
are the most popular ones. You've lost ground when you have reached a
point where any man you know is not glad to see you enter his office. At
the same time,"--musingly,--"nerve and persistence become forethought and
wisdom when time proves you were right. I have known of cases where a
man afterward thanked the solicitor who had once made life a burden to
him; but it is always better to change a man's mind without his
knowledge."
"Rather difficult," laughed Ross.
"But it has been done," said Murray. "As a matter of fact, you are
working to save men and women from their own selfishness or
heedlessness. If you think of that, you will be more convincing and will
raise your work to the dignity of a profession; if you think only of the
commissions, you will put yourself on the level of the shyster lawyer
whose interest centers wholly in the fees he is able to get rather than
in the cases he is to try. There are pot-boilers in every business and
every profession, but success is not for them: they can't see beyond the
needs of the stomach, and the man who works only for his belly never
amounts to much. He will stoop to small things to gain a temporary
advantage, never seeing the future harm he is doing; he is the kind of
man who hopes to rise by pulling others down. Remember, my boy, that
insinuations as to the instability of a rival company invariably make a
man suspicious of all: when you have convinced him that the rival's
proposition and methods are not based on sound financial and business
principles, you have more than half convinced him that yours aren't,
either, and that very likely there is something radically wrong with the
whole blame system."
"I'm glad you spoke of that," said Ross. "There have been cases where
insinuations have been made against our company, and I have been tempted
to fight back the same way. A man is at a disadvantage when he is put on
the defensive and is called upon to produce evidence of what ought to be
a self-evident proposition."
"Never do it, unless the question is put to you directly," advised
Murray. "You must defend yourself when attacked, but, in every other
case, go on the assumption that your company is all right, and that
everybody knows it is all right. The late John J. Ingalls once said,
'When you have to offer evidence that an egg is good, that egg is
doubtful, and a doubtful egg is always bad.' It's worth remembering.
Many a man is made doubtful of a good proposition by ill-advised efforts
to prove it is good."
"If that is invariably true,"--with a troubled scowl,--"I fear I have made
some mistakes."
"The man who thinks he makes no mistakes seldom makes anything else."
Ross brightened perceptibly at this.
"You've made them yourself?" he asked.
"Lots of them," replied Murray, and then he added whimsically: "Once I
placed a risk that meant a two-hundred-dollar commission for me, and my
wife and I went right out and ordered two hundred dollars' worth of
furniture and clothes. The risk was refused, and I never got the
commission."
Ross laughed.
"I'm beginning to develop enthusiasm and pride in the business--I mean
profession."
"Oh, call it a business," returned Murray, "but think of it as a
profession. It's the way you regard it yourself that counts, and you
can't go far astray in that if you stop to think what is required of a
good insurance man. Sterling integrity, for one thing, and tact and
judgment. A man who brings in a good ten-thousand-dollar risk is more
valuable than the man who brings in one hundred thousand dollars that is
turned down by the physicians or at the home office. And the first
requisite for advancement is absolute trustworthiness. There are
temptations, even for a solicitor--commission rebates to the insured that
are contrary to the ethics of the business--and there are greater
temptations higher up. You will learn, as in no other line, that a man
wants what he can't get, even if he didn't want it when he could get it,
and he will pay a high price for what he wants. Collusion in a local
office might give it to him, in spite of all precautions taken; such
collusion might be worth ten thousand dollars to a man who had no record
of refusal by other companies against him, and ten thousand dollars
could be split up very nicely between the local agent and the company's
physician. So integrity, unswerving integrity, is rated exceptionally
high, and the least suspicion of trickery or underhand dealing may keep
a capable man on the lowest rung of the ladder for all time, even if it
doesn't put him out of the business entirely. You are paid to protect
your company, so far as lies in your power, and to get business by all
honorable means; if you resort to dishonorable means, even in your
company's interests, there is always the suspicion that you will use the
same methods against its interests whenever that may be to your personal
advantage."
Owen Ross pondered this deeply on his way home. It gave a new dignity to
his occupation. He had taken up insurance because it happened to be the
only available opening at a time when he was out of employment. He had
been a clerk for a big corporation that had recently combined two branch
offices, thus materially reducing its office force, and Ross had been
one of those to suffer. His father, a prosperous merchant, had expressed
himself, when consulted, in this way:
"I will give you a place here whenever that is necessary to enable you
to live, but I prefer that you should complete your preliminary business
training under some one else. No boy can consider himself a success
until he has proved his independence, and no boy can be sure he has
proved that until he has made a secure place for himself outside the
family circle."
So Ross, being wise enough to see the reason and justice of this,
endeavored to show his independence by securing a position with Murray.
And, although fairly successful from the start, he was only just
beginning to take a real interest in his work. Murray liked him and
encouraged him: there was, he thought, the making of a good and
successful man in him, and he frequently went to considerable trouble to
explain the theory and practice of insurance. Then, too, he knew that
Ross had married just before he lost his other position, and that he was
living in a modest little flat on his own earnings, in spite of the fact
that he had a father who would be much more ready to assist him
financially than he was to take him into his own office at that
particular time. In fact, the elder Ross was quite willing that his son
and his son's wife should live with him, holding only that the family
influence should not extend to his first business connections, but Owen
deemed the flat a necessary evidence of his independence.
"I'll get that sanctimonious optimist to-morrow," he mused as he walked
along. "He can't answer those arguments that Murray gave me. He is
content because the Lord will provide, but why may not I be the human
instrument through which the Lord makes provision? That sounds
presumptuous, but why not? Hasn't He provided for others in just this
way? Hasn't many a man, convinced against his will, protected the future
of those he loved barely in time?" He laughed quietly at a thought that
occurred to him. "If this man should be insured to-morrow and die the
next day," he went on, "he would think the Lord had provided, but if he
has to pay the premiums for twenty years, he'll think it all very human.
I'm beginning to understand him."
He was still smiling at this quaint conceit when he entered his flat and
was informed by his wife that Mrs. Becker had been there to see him.
Mrs. Becker was a woman who did washing and occasional cleaning for
them.
"To see me!" he exclaimed. "Why, her dealings are all with you."
"It has something to do with insurance," his wife explained. "She knows
you're in that business, of course, and she is in deep distress. She was
crying when she was here this afternoon, but I couldn't understand what
the trouble was. She said she'd come back this evening."
Ross puzzled over this a good deal during dinner, and even tried to get
some additional information by questioning his wife closely. Exactly
what did the woman say? Her words might be "all Greek" to his wife and
still be intelligible to him, if only she could repeat them.
"But I can't," she insisted. "I was so sorry for her and so helpless
that I really didn't hear it all, anyway. I only know that it had
something to do with an application or a premium or a policy, and her
husband is very sick and she needs money."
Ross began to speculate. The ignorant have strange ideas of insurance,
and very likely this woman thought she could insure a dying husband. His
backbone began to stiffen at once. Of course such a thing was actually,
as well as ethically, impossible, but it was going to be a very
difficult matter to explain it to her, and he anticipated a distressing
scene. His wife was interested in the woman, spoke frequently of her
hardships and her courage, and had helped her to such trifling extent as
they could afford. No doubt the woman had some wild notion that he,
being an insurance man, could do this for her and would do it as a
matter of charity. Ethical questions do not trouble such people.
When she came, he was prepared for a request that was impossible in
honor and in fact, and he was ready to refuse it with such gentleness as
he deemed due to a weary and desperate woman who did not realize what
she was asking--the gentleness of sympathy coupled with the firmness of
principle. Ross was a young man, inclined to exaggerate the importance
and difficulties of problems that confronted him, and he was
disconcerted when he found he had made an error in the basis from which
he had reached his conclusion; the woman did not wish to insure a dying
husband, but to protect insurance he already carried.
"Oh, good Mr. Ross," she wailed, "you must fix it for me some way. If we
don't pay to-morrow, we'll lose everything. And we haven't the money,
Mr. Ross, not enough to pay the doctor even, and it's worrying Peter
more than the sickness. But you can fix it for us--of course you can fix
it for us,"--with appealing hopefulness.
"Sit down, Mrs. Becker, and tell me about it," he urged. "I don't
understand."
She sank into a chair, and looked at him with anxious, tearful doubt and
hope. Worn out with work and watching, she was a prey to conflicting
emotions. Never doubting that he could help her, she feared he might
refuse. Her anxiety was pitiable, and it was some time before he could
get the details of the story from her. Finally, however, he learned that
in more prosperous days her husband had insured his life for five
thousand dollars, and, even in adversity, had succeeded in keeping up
the payments, until stricken by this last illness. The sum he had saved
up for the next premium--the one due the following day--had been used for
medicines and other necessaries, and now he was near death. The doctor
held out no hope; he might live a few days, but hardly more than that,
for he was slowly but surely sinking. Until the previous night, when
there came a turn for the worse, his recovery had been confidently
expected, and his wife had worried little about the premium; the
insurance company would be glad to take it when he was well.
"But _he_ worried," she said with unconscious pathos; "he worried and
asked about it until--he couldn't any more. He's too sick to know now.
But,"--hopefully,--"he'll understand when I tell him it's all right."
Ross was as much distressed as the woman, but he could give her little
comfort. He could protect the insurance only by paying the premium
himself, and he was not able to do that. Still, almost all policies
provided for the payment of something proportionate to the amount paid
in, even when the premiums were not kept up, so--He paused uncomfortably
at this point, for the woman's attitude and expression had changed from
tearful anxiety to dull, sullen suspicion. She did not believe him; like
all insurance men, he was ready to seize any opportunity to defraud her;
she was helpless, and a rich company would take advantage of her
helplessness.
"You can get the money, Owen," his wife urged, almost in tears herself.
[Illustration: "Perhaps I can arrange it," he said at last. "In what
company is he insured?"]
"I'll pay it back to you--when he dies!" cried the woman, and Ross gave
her a quick glance. It seemed heartless, but he saw it was not. The
woman was tried beyond her endurance; she, with her two children, faced
a future that was absolutely devoid of hope; she was sick, wretched,
despairing, and the husband she had striven so hard to keep with her was
already beyond recall. She spoke of his approaching death merely as
something certain, that could not be prevented, and that force of
circumstances compelled her to consider. She had to think for herself
and children, plan for herself and children, even at this fearful time,
for there was no one to do it for her, no one to relieve her of any part
of the burden. The problem of the larder and the problem of burial would
confront her simultaneously; she had to face these cold, hard, brutal
facts, in spite of the grief and sorrow of the moment.
All this Ross saw and appreciated, and he gave his attention to various
possible ways of raising the necessary money.
"Perhaps I can arrange it," he said at last. "In what company is he
insured?"
It proved to be his own company. Instantly, his talk with Murray flashed
through his mind. "You are paid to protect your company, so far as lies
in your power," Murray had said. Absolute loyalty to its interests was
imperative. Would it be honorable for him to enter into any arrangement
with this woman that would cost his company money? Had he any right to
do more than the company would do itself? What would be thought of an
employee in any other line of business who advanced money that was to be
used to the financial disadvantage of his employer, however proper it
might be in the case of some one else?
"I can do nothing," he announced shortly.
"Oh, Owen!" cried his wife reproachfully.
"It is impossible!" he insisted. "If it were a proper thing to do,
Murray would do it for her himself."
"Mr. Murray doesn't understand the situation," urged his wife.
"Murray would understand my situation and his," he returned. "We are
taking money from this company, we are its trusted agents, and we can
not do anything that would be to its disadvantage. It is a matter of
business integrity."
The woman did not weep now, but the look she gave him haunted him all
that night. And his wife's entreaties and reproaches added to his
unhappiness.
"Why, Jennie," he explained, "I stand alone between the company and a
loss of over four thousand dollars. I know that this man is dying; I
know that, if I pay this premium, the company will have to pay out the
full amount of the insurance within a few days; I know that the premiums
paid to date amount to only about five hundred or six hundred dollars,
which, under the terms of the policy, the woman will not wholly lose.
For me, an employee, to conspire to get the rest of the money for her
would be like taking it from the cash drawer. I won't do it; I can't do
it after Murray's talk to me to-day about business integrity!"
"The company can afford it," persisted Mrs. Ross, "and the woman needs
it so badly."
"There are lots of companies and individuals who could afford to let the
woman have five thousand dollars," replied Ross.
Still, Mrs. Ross could not understand. If he had been willing to pay the
premium to another company, why not to his own?
"Resign and pay it!" she exclaimed suddenly, feeling that she had solved
the problem; but that was a greater sacrifice than he was prepared to
make. He was sincerely sorry for the woman; the case was on his mind all
the following morning; but Murray's talk had made a deep impression.
This was one of the severe temptations of the business--the more severe
because there was no question of corruption, but only of sympathy, in
it. Such, he had read, were the temptations that led men of the best
intentions astray in many of the affairs of life.
He was thinking of this when he called to see the "sanctimonious
optimist"; he was thinking of it when he advanced the arguments Murray
had given him; he was still thinking of it when the man said he was
almost convinced and would telephone him after talking with his wife.
Consequently, this success failed to elate him.
"The law of humanity," he told himself, "is higher and more sacred than
the law of business."
He had walked unconsciously in the direction of his father's office,
and, still arguing with himself, he went in.
"Father," he said, "I want to borrow a hundred dollars." The premium was
a little more than that, but he could supply the remainder.
"For what?" asked the senior Ross.
"There is something I may wish to do," was the enigmatical reply. "I
will repay it as rapidly as possible."
"Commissions few and small?" laughed the senior Ross. "Well, a young man
never finds out exactly what he's worth, while working for a relative or
a friend, so this experience ought to be valuable."
Still undecided, but with the money in his pocket, Ross left his
father's office and went to his own. He wanted to pay that premium, but
it seemed to him a very serious matter, ethically and actually. The
woman faced a future of privation; he faced what seemed to him a crisis
in his business career. He revolted at the thought of being false to his
employer, but to let the woman suffer would be heartless.
"A letter for you, Ross," said one of the clerks, as he entered the
office. "Your wife left it."
He opened it with nervous haste, and a notice of a premium due dropped
out.
"You must find some way to help this woman, Owen," his wife wrote. "I
went to see her to-day, and the situation is pitiable. She has used up
every cent she had and is in debt. Her husband is conscious at
intervals, and he looks at you so wistfully, so anxiously, that it makes
your heart bleed. Oh! if I could only tell him that the insurance is all
right! It would give him peace for the little time that is left to him
on this earth. _Owen! resign, if necessary, but do what I ask!_"
Ross crumpled the note in his hand and walked into Murray's private
office.
"Mr. Murray," he said, "please accept my verbal resignation."
"What's the matter?" asked Murray.
"I have no time to explain now," said Ross. "I want to be released from
my obligations to the company at once."
"You're excited," said Murray. "Sit down! Now, what's the matter?"
Ross hesitated a moment, and then blurted out the whole story.
"You wish to pay this premium?" asked Murray.
"I'm going to pay it!" said Ross defiantly. "It will stick the company
for more than four thousand dollars, but I'm going to pay it!"
"And you wish to resign to do it honorably?"
"Yes."
"Pay it!" said Murray. "But your resignation is not accepted. I wouldn't
lose such a man as you for ten times four thousand dollars."
"It is all right?" asked Ross, bewildered.
"Of course it's all right," asserted Murray. "As a matter of sympathy
and justice, it is not only right but highly commendable; as a matter of
financial profit to you, it would be despicable. Pay that premium, and I
tell you now that the company will never pay a death benefit with less
hesitation than it will pay this one. What is one risk more or less? We
do business on the general average, and any sum is well invested that
uncovers so conscientious an employee. Pay it, and come back to me."
Three minutes later, Ross, with the receipt in his pocket, was at the
telephone.
"It's all right," he told his wife. "The premium is paid."
"Oh, Owen!" exclaimed Mrs. Ross, and her voice broke a little, "you
don't know what comfort you have given a dying man! If you could only
see--"
"Get a cab!" he broke in. "He doesn't know it yet, and you must tell
him. Get a cab and drive like--"
He stopped short, but his wife knew what he almost said, and she forgave
him without even a preliminary reproach.
His eyes were bright and his heart was light when he went back to
Murray. Mrs. Becker's situation was sad enough, but surely he had
lessened the gloom of it by removing one great source of anxiety. He
felt that he had done something worthy of a man, and it was a joy that
he could do this without transcending the rules of business integrity
and loyalty.
"I want you," said Murray, and there was something of admiration in his
tone; "I want you so much that I am going to put you in the way of
making more money. You have a great deal to learn about the insurance
business before you will cease making unnecessary problems for yourself,
but you have one quality that makes you valuable to me." He paused and
smiled a little at the recollection of what had passed. "I would
suggest," he went on, "that you bear this in mind: life insurance is not
for one life only or for one generation only, but for the centuries.
Otherwise, we could not do business on the present plan. We exist by
reducing the laws of chance to a science that makes us secure in the
long run, although, on the basis of a single year, there may be
considerable losses. And a good company will no more stoop to shabby
tricks than you will; nor will it seek to escape obligations through
technicalities or petty subterfuges. That's why I told you to pay that
premium, and I respect you for doing it."
Murray picked up a memorandum on his desk.
"By the way," he added, glancing at it, "you must have made good use of
the arguments I gave you, for your sanctimonious optimist telephoned
that, if you would call this afternoon or to-morrow, he would arrange
with you for a ten-thousand-dollar policy."
Grateful as Murray's praise was to his ears, the greeting from his wife
gave Ross the most joy.
"He was conscious for a moment and understood," she said, as she put her
arms around her husband's neck, "and there was such an expression of
restful peace on his face that it made me happy, in spite of the shadow
of death hovering over. It made him a little better, the doctor said,
but nothing can save him. And I'm so proud of you, Owen!"
"To tell the truth, dearest," he replied tenderly, "I'm almost proud of
myself."