The Best Policy Part 3

"I haven't been getting much joy out of this particular case myself,"

grumbled Murray, but he went along.

The moment he reached home, Beckford rushed to his wife's room.

"It's all a mistake!" he exclaimed joyfully. "You-you mustn't cry any more, dearest, for it's all right now. Mr. Murray didn't understand at first-thought you were one of these capricious, careless, thoughtless women that do all sorts of absurd and foolish things on impulse-but he knows better now. There aren't any more restrictions for you than for me, and he's waiting in the parlor to take your application for all the insurance you want."

"Really?" she asked, as the sobs began to subside.

"Really."

"And there isn't anything the matter with me?"

"Of course not, sweetheart."

"Well," she said, after a pause, "I can't see him now, because my eyes are all red, but I wish he'd write that out for me. I'd feel so much more comfortable."

"Indeed he will," a.s.serted Beckford, "and we can fill out the application in here, and I'll take it back to him."

Hopefully and happily the young husband returned to Murray and told him what was wanted. Murray sighed dismally. He had missed his dinner for a woman's whim, and the woman was merely humiliating him. Still, he felt in a measure responsible for the trouble; he ought never to have resorted to duplicity, even for so laudable a purpose. So he wrote the following: "Investigation has convinced me that the restrictions mentioned this afternoon are unnecessary in your case, and I shall be glad to have your application for insurance on the same terms as your husband's."

Mrs. Beckford read this over carefully. Then she read the application blank with equal care. After that she wrote at the bottom of the note: "Insurance has almost given me nervous prostration now, and I don't want to have anything more to do with it. If Harry can stand the strain, let him have it all."

"Give him that, Harry," she said, "and get rid of him as soon as possible, for I want you to come back and comfort me. I'm completely upset."

Murray lit a cigar when he reached the street, and puffed at it meditatively as he walked in the direction of the nearest street-car line.

"What's the matter with nervous prostration for me?" he muttered. "One more effort to defeat a woman who is fighting against her own interests will make me an impossible risk in any company; two more will land me in a sanatorium."

AN INCIDENTAL QUESTION

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," a.s.serted 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 canva.s.ser, 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 cla.s.s 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 a.s.sumption 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: