Philadelphia is the type where a group of less than one hundred was successfully handled by medical examination. In this group the lives were exceedingly young and the rate for the insurance runs only about one per cent. (1%) of the amount exposed. The amount of insurance was one year's salary and therefore the cost of supplying an insurance of one year's salary to each employee is approximately equivalent to an increase of one per cent. (1%) in the pay-roll of this institution. It is apparent by the mere statement that an increase of so small a sum of one per cent. (1%) in the salary would not serve to arouse appreciation in the employee but possibly quite the reverse, whereas an increase of one per cent. (1%) of the pay-roll applied to supplying each employee with an insurance equivalent to one year's salary met in this case, and meets uniformly, deep appreciation from the employee. It serves to bring home to many employees insurance which they would otherwise not have, and in any event prevents distress occurring among families of deceased employees which can be avoided only by life insurance.

It is interesting to note that the gross premium on the Mercantile Trust Company and Mercantile National Bank groups ran about two per cent. (2%) of the pay-roll, for which the presence of one life at age eighty-six was largely responsible. The inclusion of this one life tended to greatly increase the cost of the whole group.

Mr. Byron L. Smith, president of the Northern Trust Company of Chicago, pertinently states of Group Life Insur

ance:

"Before taking such a policy for The Northern Trust Company I gave the matter very considerable thought, and the more I thought of it the stronger I became impressed with its value, and since the policy has been issued I feel that taking it was one of the wisest things that The Northern Trust Company has ever done. We are, of course, very much interested in the welfare of our employees and feel that this insurance not only binds them more closely to us but that it gives them a feeling of relief to know that their immediate families will not suffer from the want of ready money should they be taken away.

"I cannot endorse the idea too strongly and do not hesitate to recommend it to

any corporations, firms or individuals who are employers. Once they see its advantages they cannot afford to be without it."

Apropos of this group it is interesting to note that the premium ran about one and three-tenths per cent. (1.3%), the plan being to provide each employee with an insurance equivalent to one year's salary, with a minimum amount of insurance of $500 to any one employee and a maximum amount of $4,000. All employees receiving $4,000 or more in salary are included for $4,000 insurance in this group. The Mercantile Trust Company and the Mercantile National Bank are the only banking groups where the unit of insurance was multiplied to two years' salary with corresponding increases in the minimum and maximum limits on any one life.

Banks have long been pioneers in pension plans. The pension is an exceedigly valuable adjunct but has not served effectually the purposes of the banks in attracting and retaining young and new employees until these men were developed values that made them essential to the bank and the bank essential to them. The pension plan is an excellent plan and supplements Group Life Insurance in an important detail, namely that of superannuation. Group Life Insurance in an especial way however, may be claimed logically as a basic benefit upon which to build ties that bind the employee to the employer and the loyalty that is inspired by successful efforts at co-operation. This point was well developed in a recent statement by Theodore N. Vail, president of the American Telegraph and Telephone Company, who, in a recent statement published in the New York Sun, said:

"I believe that young men should be encouraged to stay in our employ as well as veterans. Old age pensions appear to me to be something to talk about, rather than an actually realized benefit to the workingman. The hope is held out that some time in the dim future, if he is very faithful and escapes discharge for a long period of years, he may receive as a solace in his declining years an annuity representing a' portion of his yearly wage while employed actively. This promise to care for the individual worker is not always realized, for frequently the usefulness of an employee is found to be passed before the time set for his retirement and he is discharged.

"While we have not as yet decided on any complete system, I believe it will be possible to insure our employees after two years of service. This I think should be the shortest period of service to entitle the worker to insurance benefits, as by that time he will have shown his intentions as to remaining in our employ. After such two years' period I am convinced we will be able to pay a disabled employee at least half his weekly wage during his entire absence from work, such payments to increase with the term of service, and after five years' connection with either company I think it will be possible to allow the full amount of the salary. In addition we expect to establish a death benefit amounting to at least half of the entire year's salary for employees of five years and a full year's salary to employees of ten years."

"I quite agree with Mr. Festus J. Wade who has applied this Group Insurance System to the two great financial institutions of St. Louis, of which he is president, when he said that the way to eliminate strikes, to ameliorate conditions of poverty, uplift social conditions among the masses of the people, is for those who are more fortunate to give a few minutes every day to working out some plan whereby those who are working under you may be benefited mentally, socially and financially."

Mr. Dwyer sounds a note which has of late been much in evidence. Cardinal Farley on the same topic made public pronouncement that

"A fatherly interest and sympathetic relations between the employer and the employee should solve the entire difficulty. As capital and labor stand now they look to me like two galleries of statues facing each other, having no sympathy, no tie, no bond-each one independent. Very often they seem like two armies in battle array, waiting for the order to attack."

It would afford me great pleasure to touch briefly upon the collateral evidences offered in the deluge of workmen's compensation legislation. Yet it would have been revolutionary even a decade ago to have urged the compensation idea

at a time when the injured, the maimed, the disabled and the killed in employment were supposed to bear themselves and to place upon their families the financial burdens of their own misfortunes. Today the enlightened employer is not only willing to pay to his injured employee as compensation the sums formerly paid in fighting claims in court, but is also willing to pay that additional sum (which in turn becomes a charge on the trade), necessary to represent a reasonable and humane compensation for the wear and tear on the human element in his employment, just as by the inexorable laws of nature he must bear the wear and tear on his machinery and other equipments as a trade cost. We witness here the beginning of repudiation of the idea that a corporation must have no heart, must have no soul!

A monument to the sentiment echoed by Cardinal Farley can be pointed out in the recent Group transaction of Montgomery Ward & Company, whereby the employees of the great establishments of this mail order house in Chicago and Kansas City have been covered under one blanket policy that aggregates six and one-half millions of insurance, breaking all records for volume under one policy contract. The number of lives participating in this insurance are approximately 3,500.

Group Life Insurance has many ramifications not possible to touch upon in limited space. Suffice it to say that the plan is reduced to first principles and is put into effective operation by force of a blanket contract supplemented by individual certificates to the different employees and which, as stated, binds the company to provide a definite amount of insurance to the employee in event of death during employment and while the group or blanket policy is continued in force as respecting such employee. The employer weekly notifies the Society of changes in the employees, which automatically become effective under the policy. Some test of insurability satisfactory to the Society and arranged to be for the common advantage of both the employer and the employee is provided for all newcoming employees under the Group policies in force. With one bank the policy is made immediately applicable, but in another a probationary period of six months is required from the newcoming employee before he is permitted to participate in the insurance benefits.

Safeguards are thrown about the Group Plan in order to preserve proper averages. Scientific inspection of the establishment and conditions of employees as a whole is made in every instance. By taking all employees responding to a high type of service requirements and insuring them during their terms of employment Group Life Insurance is assured the necessary averages without attempting individual selection by individual medical examination. The averages of the Group are assured without medical examination where the Group comes up to the requirements of the Society, and at the same time permits an inclusive plan to be operated that brings the benefits of insurance home to all alike. And in the eyes of the employer all employees are alike. He knows no difference between the ones who might be individually below the average and the employees individually above the average. He wants to protect them all. this will do and the ance Plan offers the way.

Nothing short of Group Life Insurscientific and safe

Physical fitness and the preservation of physical fitness by the right sanitary conditions, good drinking water, the avoidance of contagion, light, airy working quarters and reasonable hours are all recognized by employers of the day as potent factors in business success. Most large establishments of the order to which the Society is applying its Group facilities have forms of medical examination before taking employees into its service. Where there are no requirements of this character employers are found to lend a ready willingness to the suggestion that all employees be examined physically.

Great economies follow the system of insuring many lives under one blanket policy under the Group Plan as is reflected in the low cost of the current insurance protection. The Group Plan has much to commend it. It extends the benefits of life insurance to many who might otherwise not obtain it and supplies insurance at minimum cost. These advantages are achieved and can be only achieved by force of an association such as active employment, that groups together desirable lives and permits their insurance under one blanket policy with the premiums payable from one central

source.

Program Thirty-Eighth Annual Convention American Bankers' Association

A tentative program of the Order of Proceedings of the Thirty-Eighth Annual Convention of the American Bankers' Association to be held at Detroit from September 9 to 14 has been issued. On Monday, September 9, there will be committee meetings and a session of the executive counsel. The opening session of the Convention will be held on Tuesday, September 10. The Convention will be called to order by President William Livingstone who will deliver his annual address after the speeches of welcome have been tendered. Then will follow reports of the officers, executive counsel and standing committees. The afternoon session will be devoted to addresses and miscellaneous business. The second day's session of the Convention will be held Friday, September 14. Reports will be received from various committees. At the afternoon session nominations will be in order, and new officers will be installed. The headquarters for the Convention will be held at the Hotel Pontchertrain.

The Savings Bank Section will meet on Wednesday and Thursday mornings, September II and 12. Besides the president's address, to be delivered by Alfred A. Aiken of Worcester, Mass., there will be reports of the various committees and an address by Hon. Frank H. Hitchcock, Postmaster General of the United States on "The Postal Savings Banks and the Banks." At the Thursday session of the Savings Bank Section Edward Chamberlain, vice-president of the San Antonio Loan & Trust Company of San Antonio, Texas, will deliver an address on "European Land Banks."

Burroughs Will Entertain Bankers

The first thing on the American Bankers' Association Detroit Convention program. after registration, Monday, September 9, is a reception and buffet luncheon at the Burroughs Adding Machine Company's plant.

This plant now makes 25.000 adding machines a year, sold to every line of business in every part of the world. The Burroughs factory is a source of constant wonder to visitors, who are amazed at the wonderful automatic machinery used to make the even more wonderful 86 varieties of Burroughs Adding machines, which now range in price from $150 up to nearly $1,000 apiece. A complete machine is turned out every 5% minutes, the output going to all parts of the world.

The criticism is frequently heard in banks and trust company circles that it is difficult to trace tangible results which may be due directly to advertising. There appears to be no way to ascertain if advertising pays or the amount of business attracted justifies the sum of money annually devoted to publicity. This is especially the case where a bank or trust company has no distinct publicity department or advertising manager who devotes all of his attention to that subject. Even where well-organized publicity departments have been provided it is frequently difficult to trace the actual volume of business which has been secured through advertising. In the banking and savings departments many accounts are opened which are not credited to advertising, although the patron has been actuated by advertisements appearing in newspapers or other mediums. The up-to-date bank and trust company officer, however, will not insist upon crediting to advertising only those accounts which are actually traced. He realizes that there are ethical considerations and indirect influences in well directed publicity which justifies the annual expenditure.

But the day has passed when the bank or trust company officer considers advertising merely a necessary factor in keeping the name of his institution before the public in order to meet the exigencies of competition. It is now essential to the successful management of a bank and especially a trust company, that advertising should not only be systematic but that it should have a definite aim and bring actual results. It is no longer necessary to regard advertising as something which is required by modern conditions and something which must be charged off or carried to expense account. In fact, there are few, if any, ably conducted bank or trust company publicity departments which fail to produce returns commensurate with the sum of money appropriated. The publicity department, in truth, is now the greatest force in attracting new accounts and business. It is an auxiliary which pays big dividends. But, as in all lines of human endeavor, the measure of its success

depends first upon the ability and practical knowledge of the publicity manager himself and secondly, upon the degree and character of the co-operation extended by the officers and employees. The efficient publicity man will realize that it is of the utmost importance to work in harmony with the views of the executive officers and enlist the good will of the men behind the desks who come in daily contact with the public. It not infrequently happens that a good publicity man is hampered by conflicting views among directors or officers. But if he is a diplomat these differences can be reconciled without any departure from the general policies or traditions of the institution.

Bank or trust company advertising in order to be upon a paying basis must first of all possess that vital force, called human interest. The publicity manager of a trust company, because of the many and varied facilities offered the public, has a wider latitude for the application of his talents in writing advertisements or devising campaigns which contain human interest. It is not necessary to frighten the reader into becoming a patron by lurid cuts or warnings of the perils of procrastination in writing his will, appointing executor ог trustee, or of keeping valuables in accessible or unsafe hiding places. No trust company publicity manager who is alive to his opportunities and responsibilities will commit the error of sensational advertising. There are many ways, without being lurid or sensational, by which the readers' attention may be directed to an advertisement and its points brought home with sufficient force. Timeliness is also a great point in advertising. The astute publicity manager studies his public, keeps in intimate touch with the great problems of the day and scans the horizon for pointers. He knows that kindergarten methods are sometimes necessary and that it is dangerous to assume that the public is familiar with even the most simple and primary facts as to what the trust company offers and represents.

The advertisements reproduced herewith