Papers Relating to Tontine Insurance Issued by Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Co., 1885-1886

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1887 Excerpt: ... TONTINE Life Insurance. Its Character Exactly Defined. An Analysis of the Several Forms in which it is Sought to be Attached to Life Insurance. Press Of Thb Casb, Lockwood & Brainard Company, Hartford, Conn. TONTINE LIFE INSURANCE. Editor of the Tribune: On the i0th of February last, there appeared in The Tribune extracts from my official report upon the affairs of the Connecticut Mutual, in which, among other things, I tried to set forth distinctly the difference between simple life insurance conducted according to its own inherent principles and solely for its own natural and proper results, and the features of Tontine, Semi-Tontine, etc., which have been extensively grafted upon it in late years. My main points against Tontine, either in its grand or its petty forms, were these: -that it makes the men who take it, gamblers; that it makes them gamblers, not simply with their own money, but with the protection that their policies ought to give to their families and which is lost in whole or in part (according as it is Tontine or Semi-Tontine, ) in case of lapse; that it makes each man needlessly expose his family to the total or partial loss of their protection, in the hope that he may win the proceeds of the loss of such protection by other families whose policies have to lapse while he pulls through--a thing utterly repugnant to the interest and nature of life insurance, turning that which was designed only for the protection of families from loss. into a means of personal speculation in their losses; and further. that the Tontine profits being held for many years, as a part of the general assets and surplus, without any special lien thereon by those whose payments have created it, and without liability of account to them, made an enormous fund which could.