the United States, nothing has been produced which possesses the excellent qualities of the English life boat. The boats used at the lifesaving stations of the United States are ordinary surf boats of cedar, upon the plan most in favor with the surfmen on the coasts of Long Island and New Jersey. These boats are light, weighing about 700 lbs., and are easily transported on their simple carriages along our sandy beaches. It is proposed to provide many of the life-saving stations with boats after the plan of the English life boats, but slightly modified to suit the various localities.-Life-Saving Apparatus. During heavy gales the surf sometimes breaks against our shores with such fury that it is frequently impossible to reach a wreck with the life boat. On such occasions communication is established between the shore and the wreck by means of a line carried over the wreck by projectiles thrown from a small piece of ordnance or by rockets designed for the purpose. Under favorable circumstances at least 400 yards of the line can be carried out by either method. An eprouvette mortar of 5-inch calibre is used in the United States life-saving stations, throwing an iron ball of 20 lbs. weight, to which the line (one inch in circumference) is attached by a spiral wire to take up the jerk. To facilitate the clear run of the line it is peculiarly coiled in a box, or laid down in long fakes on the ground. When the shot or rocket line has been successfully thrown over the wreck (fig. 8), a larger line (two-inch manila) is then attached to the shore end, and hauled off by the people on the wreck; and with that line a still larger one (four-inch hawser) is hauled on board and made fast to the wreck, as directed by those on shore by FIG. 10.-The Car on the Rope. metallic boat, known as the life car, which is sufficiently large to contain four grown persons or eight small children. It is made of light galvanized iron, and when the hatchway is closed is nearly watertight. The time usually occupied in arranging the lines and sending off the car, after firing the mortar, is about 30 minutes; and with the apparatus in proper order the car can make the passage from the wreck to the shore, traversing in each trip a distance of 350 yards through a raging surf, within ten minutes. The life car was introduced into the United States service in 1849, and in the following year was instrumental in saving 201 lives from the British emigrant ship Ayrshire, cast away on Squam Beach, N. J., during a fearful snow storm. This mode for conveyance of passengers from wrecked vessels was the invention FIG. 8.-Shooting the Rope to a Wrecked Vessel. means of tallies attached to the line. The hawser being thus made fast, it is set up taut by the people on shore, with tackles, sand an of Capt. Ottinger, of the United States revenue marine. Its advantage over every other plan consists in landing women and children in perfect safety, and often without even getting wet.-Life-Saving Service. There are regular organizations, or societies, for the preservation of life from shipwrecked vessels in Great Britain, France, Germany, and Russia, supported by voluntary contributions, but under the patronage of their respective governments, and receiving aid in the way of public ordnance stores, while naval and military officers are detailed to act in various capacities in the proper management of the stations and apparatus. Humane societies having similar objects in view have long been in operation in the maritime countries of Europe; and a few years since a humane society was instituted, and is now admirably conducted, in China. The first step in the United States toward an organized effort for assisting the shipwrecked, was the establishment, early in the present century, of the humane society of Massachusetts; and its huts of refuge and volunteer life-boatmen rendered incalculable service to the unfortunate mariners whose vessels were stranded upon that bleak and rugged coast during the stormy winter months. This society was at first supported by voluntary contributions, but at last received the aid of congress, which on March 3, 1847, initiated the establishment of the present life-saving service of the United States, by appropriating $5,000 for providing the lighthouses "on the Atlantic coast with means of rendering assistance to shipwrecked mariners." On May 11, 1848, the sum of $10,000 was appropriated for providing rockets, carronades, and surf boats. On Dec. 14 of the same year the authority of congress was given for the regular organization of the life-saving service, and 54 stations were established on the coasts of Long Island and New Jersey, from Montauk Point to Cape May. Annual appropriations were thereafter made for the maintenance of the stations, and in 1871 a liberal appropriation of $200,000 was granted for increasing the number of stations and improving the apparatus on the above coasts. With this sum, and further annual appropriations, the service was reorganized, and extended to the coast of Massachusetts in 1872; and there are now 104 stations on the Atlantic coast, as follows: Maine, 5; New Hampshire, 1; Massachusetts, 14; Rhode Island, 3; Long Island, 31; New Jersey, 40; Virginia, 3; North Carolina, 7. Congress passed an act, June 23, 1874, authorizing the additional establishment of 23 complete life-saving stations, 22 life-boat stations, and 5 houses of refuge upon the Atlantic, Pacific, and lake coasts. Since the first establishment of the service, the records of the treasury department, although the returns are incomplete up to 1872, show that 5,604 lives have been saved in 25 years, an average of 224 per annum. During the same period the service has preserved from wrecks property to the amount of $1,116,000. According to the last annual report of the royal national life-boat institution of Great Britain, 22,153 lives have been saved during the 49 years (1824 to 1873) of its existence, making an average of 452 per annum. When it is considered how greatly the commerce of Great Britain exceeds our own, and that she has more than double the number of life-boat stations, the comparison of the number of lives saved results favorably to the United States life-saving service, which has annually rescued nearly half as many lives as the older and more perfectly organized British institution.-Life-Saving Stations. The houses for the stations on the coast of the United States are neat and substantial frame buildings, of one story and a half, and 40 ft. long by 20 ft. wide. They afford ample room for the boats, wagon, lines, and other apparatus, with comfortable apartments for the surfmen and such persons as it may be necessary to shelter after being rescued from shipwreck. At each station six experienced surfmen are employed, who remain constantly on duty during the winter months, and are in charge of a competent person, regularly appointed by the secretary of the treasury, and known as the keeper. During the winter months (from December 1 to April 1) the beaches are patrolled night and day by the surfmen, and the discovery of a wreck is instantly made known by means of a system of signals (flags by day and colored lights at night). On the coasts of Long Island and New Jersey the stations are at an average distance of four miles from each other, and on the occurrence of a disaster near one station the neighboring stations soon render assistance. The coast is divided into districts, each being in charge of a superintendent appointed by the secretary of the treasury; and the whole coast is under the general supervision of an inspector, designated from the list of captains in the revenue marine service by the secretary of the treasury, who has charge of the whole service and alone authorizes all expenditures. Connected with the life-saving service is the storm signal system of the United States signal service; and on the approach of a storm danger signals are displayed upon the flag staffs of the stations along the coast, warning all vessels in sight to seek a harbor or gain a safe offing.-Life Preservers. There are many devices for the purpose of buoying persons in water; the form most commonly in use is in the shape of a jacket, made of light canvas with cork attached. The most of those commonly furnished to sea-going vessels are untrustworthy on account of the inferiority of the cork used in their manufacture. The best cork jacket is that known as the "life belt," invented by Capt. Ward of the British navy, and adopted by the royal national life-boat institution and the United States life-saving service, also in general use by European life-boat institutions. The body of the belt is composed of light flax canvas, tarred to prevent mildewing, and the best FIG. 12.-Life Belt. of cork is firmly sewn on in slabs without covering. It sustains a dead weight of 28 lbs., a buoyancy of 16 lbs. only being necessary to support a living man in water. The requisite qualities of a life-boatman's life belt are: 1, sufficient extra buoyancy to support a man heavily clothed, with his head and shoulders above the water, or to enable him to support another person besides himself; 2, perfect flexibility, so as to readily conform to the shape of the wearer; 3, a division into two zones, an upper and lower, so that between the two it may be secured tightly round the waist; for in no other manner can it be confined sufficiently close and secure round the body without such pressure over the chest and ribs as to materially affect the free action of the lungs, impede the muscular movement of the chest and arms, and thereby diminish the power of endurance of fatigue, which, in rowing boats, is a matter of vital importance; 4, strength, durability, and non liability to injury. Life preservers have been made of various other forms and materials, the object in view being to furnish a very buoyant article that can be readily and securely attached to the upper part of the person, or seized and held by those in the water. Hollow vessels of wood or tinned iron, made air-tight, and shaped so as to serve on board the vessel as seats, have been much used. In one form the seat is made double, and opening on hinges forms a rectangular float, in the centre of which is an aperture sufficient to admit the body of a man, his arms hanging over the sides. Bags of caoutchouc, so made as to be readily filled with air by blowing into them, and shaped for fitting round the neck or body, have also been largely employed for life preservers; and they have been made into vests, shirts, and jackets, which can be distended with air, giving great buoyancy to the person wearing them. By the law of the United States, and also of some of the separate states, steamboats are required to carry a certain number of life preservers, proportionate to their passenger capacity. The LIFE INSURANCE, a contract whereby an insurer engages, for a consideration called a premium, to insure a person against a certain amount of pecuniary loss supposed to be consequent upon the decease of a certain life. personal right of property is the chief spur to human industry, and thus lies at the foundation of civilized society. Yet the isolation which grows out of it results in such evils as to suggest communism as a remedy. Legitimate insurance is a borrowing of communism just enough to cure some of the worst evils of family isolation, without impairing the stimulus to personal exertion arising under it. In a general point of view the most important case of insurance is that which covers, for the benefit of a helpless family, the chief source of its sustenance, the life of its productive head. The history of life insurance shows, however, that an institution which has abundantly justified its existence is still in its infancy, struggling amid very unsettled methods. The doctrine of probabilities developed by Pascal and Huygens, in regard to games of chance, was first applied by Jan De Witt of Holland, in 1671, to life contingencies, but only to determine the value of life annuities and reversions, with a view to aid the government in raising loans. Its application to life insurance was not made till nearly 90 years later. Little more than a quarter of a century, however, passed away before the first distinct germs of modern life insurance, as a provision for widows and orphans, made their appearance in the London "Mercers' Widows' Fund" of 1698, the "Society of Assurance of Widows and Orphans" of 1700 in the same city, and the famous "Amicable Society for a Perpetual Assurance Office," also founded there in 1706, which continued in existence till 1867. The first two seem to have passed away without leaving any trace of their plan of operations; | Price, the author of "Observations on Reversionary Payments" (1769). He gave the Equitable its Northampton table of premium rates, as well as some excellent advice about the necessity of not being led "to check or stop the increase of its stock too soon" through the encouragement arising from the possession of a large surplus, meaning by this the necessity of keeping an adequate premium reserve. By a fortunate error in the Northampton table, the premiums were so high that the "stock" or reserve increased rapidly, and so much real surplus over the necessary reserve accumulated, that the society began in 1791 to make additions to the policies, which, though small at first, were enlarged every ten years, till one who had entered in 1790, at the age of 30, for £100, in 1849, at the age of 89, was insured for £626, without any increase of the original annual premium, which was £2 138. 4d. This large addition to the old policies is not so wonderful when we consider that Dr. Price had laid down the maxim that "the plan of a society ought always to be such as that the loss arising from discontinuance of payments should fall on the purchaser, and never on the society." Hence, as any discontinuing member forfeited his share of the society's stock or reserve, the persisting members had the more; and it must be remembered that £1 per annum at 5 per cent. will amount in 59 years to £353, so that the premium paid would amount to £940. A fair reserve on the increased policy for £626 would be about £556. The Equitable, arising amid a large number of bubbles, which were pricked by Dr. Price, and adopting his principles and precautions, proved a great success. But whoever reverts to the writings of Dr. Price in regard to the various schemes for the relief of widowhood and orphanage by insurance, and for provision for old age by annuities and endowments, will be struck with the fact that he looked almost exclusively at the security and permanence of the society, and very little at the contingencies of the individual. It does not seem to have occurred to him that provision both for his heirs and for the old age of the insured himself could be secured in the same policy, or that the cessation of the necessity for either provision could be provided for in the policy by a stipulation of terms of surrender. Dr. Price is justly regarded as the father of modern life insurance. What has since been done and what remains to be done are mere corollaries to his general propositions. By the writings of Dr. Price and the solid es but we know that till a very recent period the "Amicable" placed no reliance upon the science of biological contingencies. It was purely mutual; each member, without regard to age, contributed to the common fund a fixed entrance fee, and also a fixed annual payment per share on from one to three shares. At the end of each year a portion of the fund was divided among the heirs of the deceased members in proportion to the shares held by each. Thus the amount insured depended on the number who died, subject to the vote of the members who survived as to the portion of the common fund which should be divided. At first, for the sake of accumulating a fund, only a small dividend was voted; it was gradually enlarged from £30 to £90 a share. As the annual payment was £5 a share, this at best was very dear insurance, except for bad or old lives. There was no medical selection except so far as the members themselves exercised it in voting in new members. After some experience this was done with considerable caution and judgment; the age of admission was limited to 45, and there were restrictions in regard to dangerous occupations, travel, and military service. After a considerable fund had accumulated, the dividends became larger by reason of the smaller proportion of deaths and the greater liberality in voting the amount to be divided. From 1760 to 1780 it averaged about £174 a share, which would have been a fair amount supposing the members had all entered at the age of 40. It was not till this society had existed more than a century that anything like modern equitable and scientific life insurance was engrafted upon it. Prof. De Morgan described it in 1838 as "founded rather on the principle of mutual benevolence than mutual insurance." It lived to a very respectable age by the wisdom of accumulating a considerable fund, and not promising a fixed amount of dividend or insurance, but died at last for want of science to graduate the payments according to the risks, and to exclude bad ones.—In 1760 Thomas Simpson, who 20 years earlier had published a valuable work on life contingencies, in connection with Mr. Dodson, another mathematician, applied for a charter of the "Society for Equitable Assurances," on the plan of graduating the premium to insure a prescribed amount according to the probabilities of living after the age of entry. But the crown refused a charter, on the ground that it would be unjust to existing companies which had paid large sums for their charters, and because it was an untried specu-tablishment of the Equitable a large number lation depending "on the truth of certain calculations taken upon tables of life and death, whereby the chance of mortality is attempted to be reduced to a certain standard." Mr. Simpson died the next year, but in 1762 the famous "Equitable" was founded, without a charter, by a deed of settlement. It does not seem to have achieved much success till it had called in the powerful aid of the Rev. Richard of ill-advised schemes, possessing the same objects and started about the same time, were swept away before they had done much mischief. But the great success of the Equitable some years later brought forth a new and numerous brood of imitators and rivals. A few of these became strong and healthy institutions, but their history for the most part is one of wreck and disaster. The "Insurance Hand 66 shielding the public from its disastrous result. But all investigation and legislation up to the act of 1870 seems to have had an effect exactly the reverse of that intended. That act has obviously checked the formation of new companies by requiring a deposit with the government of £20,000; it has put an end to fraudulent amalgamations by requiring the terms of any union to be submitted to the court of chancery for approval; and it promotes honesty of management by requiring an annual statement of all details to the officers of the board of trade. These statements are such as to expose extravagance and give fair warning of any tendency to insolvency. There are said to be 125 companies now existing in the United Kingdom, all but five of which made returns in 1873. The premium income was £10,824,093, amount of insurance outstanding £338,882,752, and the reserve fund £94,260,592, with an average interest of 4:41 per cent. The Equitable, which was once the largest in point of funds if not of insurance, having an accumulation of more than £10,000,000, and which has still the largest reserve in proportion to its amount, is now the fifteenth in amount of insurance and the fifth in the magnitude of its fund. It may expire, but it will not fail. There were 21 companies having over £5,000,000 each insured, and five having over £10,000,000. The Scottish Widows' had £14,572,154, and the Standard £16,867,577. The greater part of the companies are ably managed institutions. The strength of our own more recent but not smaller institutions is well known, and it may be interesting to compare the aggregate figures of the two. Referring to the latest official reports on both sides, probably not exhaustive on either, but more nearly so in Great Britain than here, the amounts insured, funds in reserve, and death claims paid within a year, are as follows: book," published in 1867 by Mr. Cornelius COMPANIES. American...... Considering that the American companies average a little less than 15 years of age and the British over 32, it will be instructive to compare the fatios of funds to amount of insurance; also the ratios of death claims to insurance and to funds: COMPANIES. British. American... This shows how as the companies grow older the reserve fund must bear a greater ratio to the amount of insurance outstanding, because the death claims will bear a greater ratio. The American ratio of funds to insurance is considerably larger than it otherwise would be on |