672
THE CONGRESS OE WOMEN.
been plundered by their too grasping brothers; however, today, women are fast learning how to invest and how to care for their own funds.
To this class, not as active workers but as participators in this “ New Field for Women,” I would address a few words.
Like other things life insurance-, of late years, has been progressive, and hand in hand with its sure protection there is now added the investment feature also. Especially is this the case in what is known as the endowment policy; zW.,one insures for a certain sum payable to one’s self at the end of a stated period, say ten, fifteen or twenty years hence, and the certainty of receiving again in life (or as an estate in case of death) this sum, together with good dividends, commends itself beyond any savings bank in the country. No other investment is so sure; consequently our richest and keenest business men we find carrying the largest insurance upon their lives.
No wise, prudent man goes without fire insurance protection, and yet every house does not burn, but every life ceases some day, and very few persons indeed in this world of financial vicissitudes can afford to ignore life insurance. 1 say it deliberately, there is not of insurable age one wealthy woman in this land who ought to be without good life insurance protection in proportion to her financial status. Other investments promising large returns are so often disappointing. Such unforeseen reverses constantly occurring, all combine to make life assurance one of the necessities of our times. An easy and simple thing it is to do; a wise precaution to take, and, except for those in very straitened circumstances, within the reach of all persons.
Now to carry insurance and its blessings to just this one class of wealthy and tax- paying women would indeed afford abundant, I may say inexhaustible work, for very many women as life insurance agents or solicitors. Aside from good remuneration for their labor, there would, in every instance, be the consciousness of having inestimably benefited the assured.
If you please, let us take just one other class—school-teachers. A mighty army they are. There is scarcely any work that makes such great demands upon a woman’s vitality, especially her nervous forces; consequently her working years in this field are comparatively few. Now, if during these wage-earning years she will put for a few years a certain sum called the premium into an endowment policy, it will insure her an old age replete with creature comforts, and full of self-respect and dignity because robbed of financial terrors.
Small earnings put into savings banks are so hopeless It takes years in this way to accomplish savings for old age or calamity, moreover such savings are altogether too accessible, and oftener than otherwise are drawn out for various purposes; but one premium paid into a stanch insurance company means, should one die the next minute, an estate of so many hundred or thousand dollars, which will protect the living or those dependent upon us. This is financial protection, the cheapest and the best that the financial world affords, and as said before, in the case of an endowment policy and the insured living to the end of the endowment period or term there is the certainty of funds for one’s self.
Again, the time was when none of our best companies insured women’s lives. Today several are writing such risks, but some of them charge an extra premium upon female risks. However, two or three of our oldest and best companies are not bound by this absurd rule; instead, they insure women upon any and all plans just the same as they do men, and without extra premium. Certainly such a company commends itself to those seeking insurance.
In this field work is abundant. Whoever enters here can feel that she is doing dignified, womanly, worthy work. Today women are standing by each other, trusting and believing, not only in the honesty, but in the ability of their sisters as never before; consequently, womanly women are in some cases finding it more agreeable to do business with women than with men, though the latter are by no means bears or boors when properly approached in the business world by women.
If our American men are as good and gracious as I personally rate them, they