Company may do business if it chooses on the principle of paying no commissions on premiums to Agents or any other person; could such a Company interpose a valid claim that the loading or commissions on its future premiums should be included as a legal and legitimate asset in possession? Plainly not. Then how is the condition contracting to pay Agents' of a Company improved by commissions, and afterwards buying out the Agent? These commuted commissions are sometimes called annuities, and it is said that Companies can, under their charters purchase as well as grant annuities. Is the Agent's contract for commissions an Annuity bond issued by the Company to the Agent? If it is, all such contracts outstanding should be valued and charged to a Company under Liabilities the same as all other annuities and policy obligations. When a Company purchases its own policy such policy becomes merged or extinguished and is not considered as an Asset of the Company. But Agents' contracts are not in any proper sense Annuity bonds; these instruments are simple agreements with or without seal to pay certain percentages or other compensation for the obtaining of different classes of policies, the collection of premiums thereon and otherwise advancing a Company's interests. Such contracts are simply executory agreements or covenants for the performance of work, labor and services which, when performed, entitle the Agents to a certain salary, commission or other compensation. When purchased by a Company, such obligations would seem to be extinguished. In a round-about way, keeping such contracts alive as Assets, appears to be an attempt to anticipate the loading so often indulged in by many English Life Insurance Companies, with this differ ence, that our Companies only claim the loading as an asset pro tanto by extinguishing the claims for future commissions, which constitute the main part of the loading expenses. One Company, the Mutual Life, has in its own annual Report to policyholders (made January 31st, 1868) included this item as an Asset' to be written off and cancelled in the space of three years; in the annual Statement to this Department no such item appears in its Assets. Neither does the item appear in any manner as an Asset in the last annual Statement of the Manhattan. This is a much less objectionable course as the fiction disappears from the Books in three years; it may be questionable, however, whether as a mere matter of internal administration it might not be as well to consider such payments as Expenditures only, coincident with the year of their actual payment. Still when a Company does not claim any such item in its annual Statement to the Department, and shows that its re-insurance fund is largely in excess of the legal standard, and that its affairs are in a sound and prosperous condition under the statutes regulating the same, Officers may claim with much plausibility and force that the subject is one mainly for the consideration of stockholders and policyholders. In the expression of the above views the Superintendent does not intend to disapprove either of the plan of paying brokerages or the practice of gradually freeing premiums from the lien of Agent's commissions; no surer guarantee of future success can be devised by Companies so situated as to be able to sink the funds essential for this purpose. In deciding upon the best Company to insure in, new entrants should make this point an impor tant one in influencing their judgment as forming the source of large future profits. Indeed the time may come when policyholders will so well understand the subject of Life Insurance as to apply voluntarily at offices and agencies for the purpose of obtaining policies and paying their original and renewal premiums. Whenever this disposition is evinced to such an extent as to render success certain, Companies will be found ready either to allow brokerages to policyholders themselves on their own policies, or to pay no commissions at all, and thus accumu-late nearly all of the loading as a source for extraordinary future dividends to the insured. Another objectionable item is creeping into the annual Statements of several Life Insurance Companies, viz: loans on personal security. It would seem that no argument or comment could be necessary to prevent loans and investments of this character; life premiums are generally calculated on an assumed rate of interest as low as four per cent, upon the supposition that only first-class stocks and securities will be purchased, upon which the rate of interest is of course lower than on questionable and speculative investments. Loans on personal security should never be made by any Life Insurance Company, although allowed to the extent of one-quarter of the accumulations, by the charters of several of the Hartford Companies. Such loans belong to, and constitute a part of the legitimate business of Banks and Bankers and not of Insurance Companies. LIFE INSURANCE COMPANIES OF OTHER STATES. The following is a list of the fifteen Life Insurance Companies of other States, and of the two foreign companies, now authorized to transact business in the State of New York: 1848....... MASSACHUSETTS. New Eng. Mut. Life Ins. Co.. Boston 1864, Mar. 11.. Union Mutual Life Ins. Co.... Augusta... 25 MAINE. 33 1845.. 1863. 1849, April 30.. NEW JERSEY. Newark ... 1865...... 8 1860....... VERMONT. 1848. 8 1866, July 9.. Hahnemann Life Ins. Co..... Cleveland.. RHODE ISLAND. 1850, Sept. 17.. National Life Insurance Co... Montpelier. No new American or foreign Life Insurance Company has been admitted into this State during the year 1867; indeed, no foreign Company can successfully compete with American Companies, except by investing its accumulations at our high rates of interest and adopting our own or similar methods for popularizing and increasing its business. The Officers of the Charter Oak Life Insurance Company, in returning the net present value or re-insurance fund of their outstanding policies, unintentionally committed an error by which their Liabilities were improperly reduced to the extent of $357,300 (see p. 605); the correct figures are however given in the Statistical Tables. The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, he leading Company of the North-West, has filed a Statement of its affairs and made an application for admission into this State. Notwithstanding our large and rapidly increasing number of New York State Companies we shall always gladly welcome within our borders all sound and reliable Companies from any other State or section of the Republic, granting them equal privileges, subject to equal burdens with our own domestic institutions; and requiring also from sister States the same just and honorable reciprocity. These relations, thoroughly sound and Constitutional under the existing Supreme Law of the land, are really stronger than the Constitution itself, being founded on the nature of things and that instinct of Justice and Comity which, permeating the judgment and hearts of the People, has both the Power and the Right to alter and amend-to make and to unmake States and Constitutions. An abortive attempt in the pretended interests of policyholders has been recently made at Washington by a small minority of the Life Insurance Companies of the Union, to wrest from the several States their legitimate and constitutional functions of supervision and control over the subject of Life Insurance, and under the mantle of the Federal Government and the machinery of an Association of Companies, to aggregate to themselves all supervisory powers and jurisdiction, with the right to issue Certificates of Authority for every State in the |