QUERY COLUMN.

A. S. The paragraph to which you refer is from "A Message to Garcia," by Elbert Hubbard, and runs as follows:

"My heart goes out to the man who does his work when the 'boss' is away, as well as when he is at home. And the man who, when given a letter for Garcia, quietly takes the missive without asking any idiotic questions, and with no lurking intention of chucking it into the nearest sewer, or of doing aught else but deliver it, never gets 'laid off,' nor has to go on a strike for higher wages. Civilization is one long anxious search for just such individuals. Anything such a man asks shall be granted; his kind is so rare no employer can afford to let him go. He is wanted in every city, town and village-in every office, shop, store and factory. The world cries out for such; he is needed and needed badly-the man who can carry a message to Garcia."

Genius. Thanks for your suggestion, but "Not for a day, but for all time," and "Strongest in the world" are good enough.

F. P. C. Your suggestion is good, but if possible we desire to keep this publication entirely free from any competitive or comparative literature. Do you remember the paragraph in the President's speech at the Convention, "We shall recognize, as we have recognized in the past, that our neighbors in this business have their title to respect as well as ourselves, and shall endeavor to stamp out the contemptible practice of uplifting ourselves by tearing down rivals. There is glory enough for all."

THE CHURCH PLAN.

From the Chicago Post.

The so-called "church-plan" of assurance, which has begun to attract attention in many sections of the country, is destined to open a new field for life and endowment assurance to the benefit of church, educational and charitable institutions. Incidentally, it offers immense opportunities for energetic work to agents.

During the last two years there have been a number of important cases where the plan has been tried with great success.

At Covington, Ky., the idea has been carried out. Bishop Maes of the Catholic Church, wishing to build a church, borrowed $25,000 from one of the prominent life assurance companies by placing a mortgage on some other church property in Covington. He then took $25,000 in twenty-five twenty-year endowment policies on the lives of young men of the parish, with a view of paying off the mortgage at the end of the twenty years. For this purpose a society was formed, with weekly or monthly dues, which are devoted to paying the interest on the mortgage and the premiums on the assurance. Thus all the people have to do is to meet these payments year by year. The new church can be built immediately from the proceeds of the mortgage, and at the end of twenty. years the mortgage itself will be wiped out by the matured endowments.

Last fall, in Chicago, over $250,000 in ten-year endowment policies was written on the lives of prominent Episcopalians under a plan for endowing a seminary. The plan had the indorsement and support of the church authorities, who furnished the general agent of the company in which the assurance was placed with the names of the men who were most likely to contribute. The necessary contributions were easily raised and the plan is now in full force.

RIDDLE-ME RIDDLE-ME-RE.

What is the difference between the man you assure and the company in which you assure him?

The man grows weaker as he gets older, while the Equitable grows stronger.

E. F. H.

PERSONALS.

Mr. Hyde and Mr. Wilson went to Mexico recently. There was an earthquake immediately. They must have shaken up things.

Julian Schwartz did a very large January business. His popularity extends to his social life, as the Ladies Society of Staten Island, of which he is president, presented him the other day with a very handsome gold-headed cane.

Henry Devitt has a mysterious mien. We wonder if he is on the track of some big game.

S. S. Sonneborn is going around whistling. Things must be coming his way.

Charles Bryan must have shot a big bag, judging from the packages received by him. We have a pretty good appetite ourselves, Bryan, and we simply dote on game.

L. D. Wilkes was at the home office recently. This is the first time he has dared to show himself here since umpiring that ball game last July.

W. H. S. Whitcomb writes poetry as well as applications. And he does both well.

S. M. Helms does a lot of advertising in his territory. And it pays him.

The Society showed Wisdom in placing a Levee in New Orleans.-Diagram furnished on application.

The new Manhattan Department, during three weeks of January, wrote nearly a million dollars of new business. And this notwithstanding the fact that they were without house and home for the greater part of the time. Not so bad.

T. Sweeney is proving himself to be a worthy son of a worthy father.

Amongst those who recently called at the home office we noticed J. S. Kendrick, R. H. Baker, F. Danner, P. Donovan,

F. A. McNamee, L. C. Woods, Major Myers, J. M. Kimball, Joseph Bowes, etc. They all report a splendid beginning and a more than promising outlook for 1900.

In many of the Equitable agencies throughout the United States the members form a club amongst themselves, and meet periodically to exchange ideas and to give each other the benefit of their own experiences. These clubs have done much towards fostering that esprit de corps which one finds amongst Equitable agents, and which does not exist between those of any other company.

Before Messrs. Hyde and Wilson left Mexico, a dinner was given in their honor. Many distinguished men attended, including Secretary of State Limantour, Captain Porfirio Diaz, representing his father, the President of Mexico; Congressman Thos. Moran, and the representatives of the various foreign embassies.

On January the 12th, the club of the St. Louis agency held a most enthusiastic meeting. The vice-president and third vice-president were present, as they were passing through the city at that time. During the proceedings a resolution was passed and the following telegram sent to the president:

"The Missouri Agency, in convention assembled to-day at St. Louis, pledge their fidelity, devotion and their very best interests to you and the Equitable. Not a man lost, and a big business promised for 1900."

At the monthly meeting of the Cleveland Club another enthusiastic gathering took place, and resolutions were passed. The prearranged business of the evening was the reading of the following papers, all of which were excellently thought out and very well received:

(1) "The Equitable's Position To-day from the Standpoint of One of Its Old Agents." Gov. A. W. McIntire.

(2) "The Equitable's Position To-day from the Standpoint of One of Its Old Agents. Prof. A. J. Esch.

(3.) "Life Assurance, a Teacher of Economy." Mr. Herman Moss.

(4.) "Current Topics of Life Assurance." Mr. Harvey Bloch.

(5.) "Questions-For Information."

(6) "Remarks-For Our Interest." The Manager.

BUSINESS PRECEPTS.

From the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune. Tell the truth about your goods. Merit wins generally; truth always.

Never invest where the element of chance or luck governs the returns.

Meet your bills promptly and make your collections with equal promptness.

Do not suppose that any one is more interested in your welfare than you yourself must be.

As a business proposition, it pays to be polite.

Reply promptly to all letters.

Call on a business man at business times only, and solely on business; transact the same and go about your own, in order to give him time to attend to his.

Always keep your temper, but have sense enough to know when you are insulted and spirit enough to resent it. As a choice between evils, choose neither.

Keep your life assured.

AN EXPENSIVE HAT.

On the 22d day of December a policy was issued through our agency on the life of Mr. J. J. N——, a photographer of this city. However, when he was ready to pay for and take the policy his wife prevented him from doing so, stating that she preferred to use the money to buy a new hat for Christmas.

A very short time afterwards Mrs. Ncame to our office and asked for the policy as her husband had died very suddenly. It was then too late, for the policy had been canceled only two days previous. In its stead she possessed a new hat.

This appeals to me as a very strong object lesson for wives who may have similar ideas as to the value and necessity of life Ray Wilner.

assurance.

HER SECOND HUSBAND, TOO. The other day a woman came into my office and said:

"I want to get my husband assured right away. My first husband was assured, and I want this one to be also."

I shall try to carry out the lady's wishes. E. L. Hunt. [Any extra premium offered for extra hazard?-Ed.]

AN AGENTS'

JOURNAL

No. 3

1900

I am in receipt of your letter and statement of results of my $100,000 fifteen-year endowment savings fund Policy No. 289,421.

These results realized by the Equitable are larger and more satisfactory than any result ever realized by me on any of my policies which have matured to date. I may say that they are quite satisfactory and that no company has ever done so well for me. The result stands as evidence of the careful and prudent management of one of the largest and most progressive of the American life offices.

I have always been a strong advocate of endowment assurance, and about the time I took your policy for $100,000 I placed $400,000 of endow. ment policies on my life in eight different companies. Of this amount $310,000 has already matured. I have lived to see the result and to know what it means. George Gooderham.

The Equitable Society:

$5000.

'ebruary 6, 1900. I have received the statement of results covering my $5,000 fifteen-year endowment, Policy No. 292,692.

I have to express my great satisfaction with the results. I have seen the results recently attained on Mr. George Gooderham's $100,000 policy, which I understand was also a fifteen-year endowment, on which his cash return was $150,847. I am glad to note that while my policy was for a very much smaller amount the results given me compare most favorably. I believe Mr. Gooderham's policy was the largest endowment ever paid, and it is a pleasure to me to realize that the Equitable treats its small policyholders on precisely the same basis of liberality as its large policyholders.

T. S. Stayner.

SURPLUS.

"Were the bank to make a dividend now I would sell my stock." This was said recently by a stockholder in a New York bank which earned more than 20 per cent on its capital, and whose stock sold above 400 in 1899. It made no dividend during the year, and will make none in the near future, simply because it has directors who are shrewd enough to see that the possession of a large surplus is of far greater importance to stockholders than its distribution. To accumulate a large surplus is to acquire the capacity for endurance and development. It provides financial institutions with the ability to grasp opportunity.

Such accumulation is of greater moment in a life assurance company than in any other organization, inasmuch as its contracts cover long periods of time, and are unchangeable in their terms, but the accumulation in a mutual company is for the assured alone. The vital thing is the time of distribution. Many years ago the Equitable found a way for the accumulation of a great surplus and for an equal and prudent distribution thereof. It has made the Society the strongest in the world.

W. H. B..

One part of the science of living is to learn just what our responsibility is, and to let other people's alone. H. B. STOWE.

This sounds very well, but if life assurance agents "let other people's responsibilities alone" there would be hundreds of thousands more widows and friendless orphans existing in want and poverty.

A FALSE SCENT.

"I received a tip the other day," said the life insurance agent, "that there was a man staying at one of our prominent hotels who was a promising candidate for some of my unexcelled life assurance. The tip was very vague, and I did not know his name, but I went to the hotel where I was told he was staying with the hope that I might run across him by accident.

"While there I made the acquaintance of a pleasant spoken gentleman, and I immediately jumped to the conclusion that he was the man I was after. I sounded him a little on life assurance, and he nibbled enough at the bait to excite me to further endeavors. He said he was a stranger, and was spending a few days in the city on a vacation. I kindly volunteered, seeing that he was a stranger, to show him about town, and he accepted with many expressions of thanks.

"For the next week I hardly allowed that man to get out of my sight, for fear that some other agent might get his claws on him. Every time I led the question around to life assurance $25,000 seemed to be the figure that he was the most interested in, and that fact kept me screwed up to the highest pitch of enthusiasm. I kept that fellow at my expense for a week. Everything that the city boasted in the line of eatables and drinks was his. I nearly drove my horse to death driving about the city while he lolled back and smoked expensive cigars at my expense.

"One day he got away from me and disappeared, and I have just discovered that I have been grossly imposed upon. That fellow was a rival agent from another town, in pursuit of the same man that I was after. He kept me busy on a false scent, using the few minutes when I was away to stalk his game. He got him, too. Twentyfive thousand dollars was the amount." Detroit Free Press.

PROCRASTINATION.

The man whose purpose it is to take, "some other day," the assurance that he should take now, is "near kin to the moralist who always tried to tread 'the narrow path which lay between right and wrong.'

A. H. GRAHAM.

Mr. A. H. Graham, of Philadelphia, whose portrait appears above, is a most successful writer of business that sticks. During the past few years, about 95 per cent. of his business has renewed. Probably one reason for this is that Mr. Graham carries a sentiment into the business, a sentiment that is well exemplified by the following extract from his speech at the Fortieth Anniversary Convention last July:

"I tell you that when I hear men say that the position f a life assurance agent is a position of which a man ought to be proud, I say, 'That is right.' When I hear men say that the position of a life assurance agent is next to the ministry, I agree with them. I don't know a nobler calling. I don't know anything in which you, as a body of men, can do more good than by simply going out and assuring lives. I tell you that in the sixteen or seventeen years that I have been connected with life assurance work I have seen the good that I have done, and I know that long after Graham is dead there will be policies maturing in the Equitable of those whom he had assured in his lifetime, and while they may not remember me, they will realize the practical results of life assurance. Gentlemen, I know many cases where it is 'Thank God for Graham,' and I tell you the commission is not everything. It is not only the fact that you are going to make money out of the cases, but I tell you that you should start out to-morrow morning on your work with the firm conviction that you owe a duty to the community, that you owe a duty to your fellow man, and by the faithful performance of that duty on your part you will not alone do good to yourself-good that will live after you when you are gone-but you will do good to numerous others."