Women And Life Insurance

It is not so very many years ago that certain life insurance companies refused to issue pollcies upon the livcs of women. The difficulties in the v.-ay of a sntisfactory examination, the perils of maternity and the numerous nervous disorders to whieh the sex is liable.were considered sufficient reasons to put them on the prohibited list. Experience has, nowever, denionstrated that the views of these companies were not based upon facts. As a matter of fact, whatever advantage there is in ths matter of longevity lies with women, and not. with men. In 1891 a census was taken in London among twentyone centenarians.of whom sixteen were women and five were men. A group of southern countles in England at the same census exhibited sixty-six centenarians, of whom forty-three were women and twenty-three were men. A census of centenarians taken in France in 1895 showed 213 persons who had attained the age of 100, and of those 213, 147 were women and only 6G were men. Tho United States census of 1896 gave 3,981 persons who had reached one hundred years and upward, and of these 2,583 were women and 1,398 men. Women are much leas exposed to death from the rnuititudinous aceidents incident to the pursuits of men. They escape not only the perlls of hunting and rough out-of-door sports that overtake many men, but are comparatively exempt ?rom the devastating effects of the excessive use of alcohol, which is the indirect, if not the direct, cause of the early death of a lare percentage of the other sex. In adüicion to all the various causes of death from which the more sheltered lives of women protect them, they are almost entirely free from business worries and troubles, which bring in their train the innumerable nervous diorders that undermine and destroy the constitutions of so many city men.