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of ideas in editorial contents, in illustrating, in plans for selling, and in drawing into his net the elusive advertiser who will not be coaxed until all the others have been secured.

The sale of educational text and college books is a thing quite apart, and here the young graduate often finds his opportunity, his college training and experience doing him an immediate and assured service. As a book once introduced has the chance for a long and steady sale, the risks are less constant and the effort less spasmodic.

One would say that all these branches should be in a healthy state of vigor in this perfect publishing house we are talking of. In profits probably the magazines would yield best, then the subscription department, then the text books, and finally the miscellaneous book publishing, which is so apt to be "Prince or Pauper," with the accent on the latter.

If one looks over the field, one sees opportunities in abundance. The men, young or old, who can really do things are few and far between, but the men who can explain with great force and detail and with ability why they have not done things are abundant. One comes upon a great many men who have ideas, and good ones, and can tell you how to work them out, but the men who have the ideas and can and do work them out are many days' journey apart. It is only by developing the men one at a time, letting the inexperienced newcomer try again the old schemes which we have tried in vain, and now and then he will make a success of some point which has been quite fruitless heretofore.

In the next decade the sale of books will certainly be vastly increased, and these are the men who will do it. One hears it said that nowadays it costs more than it did to launch a book. If by launching we mean selling a

large quantity at the start, this is unquestionably true, but the cost of typesetting, paper, printing, and binding has not increased. The real meaning is that more is expected in launching a book than was expected a few years ago, and this does cost money. The capital involved is perhaps greater, but capital for people who can make success is probably more easily secured than it ever was. All this being summed up, means that the opportunities are great for men who deserve them and for those who can not see and avail themselves of them the path is long and hard.

INSURANCE1

BY CHARLES F. THWING, LL.D.

N insurance is found a noble illustration of the sociologizing process which is deeply touching American life and affairs. For insurance is a method by which certain perils which belong primarily to a single person are divided among many persons.

Fire insurance does not prevent the house burning sometimes it serves to aid the conflagration — but it does prevent the owner from being the only one to suffer: the stockholders of one or several companies share in the loss.

Life insurance does not prolong life; but the absolute ceasing of the income drawn from the service of the one who dies is somewhat relieved by the payments made by the companies which have carried the insurance on his life; and these payments represent drafts made directly or indirectly on all the stockholders.

These widely distributed contributions made to repair a single loss illustrate the increasing movement of human society to regard the condition of one member of society as an object of interest to every other member. The individual loss is shared by all, and its damage is lessened; the individual gain is also shared by all, and its advantages become augmented. Such a movement as insurance, therefore, represents a form of human endeavor which may well win the strong and wise man as a worker.

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This vast movement of insurance takes on many forms.

By permission of the Author and the Cosmopolitan Magazine. Copyright, 1903, by the International Magazine Company.

Of course, fire and life insurance are the more common, but what may one not insure? One insures his steam boiler against blowing up, his plate-glass windows against breaking, his house and shop against robbers, his person against accident, his honesty and that of his clerks and associates against peculation and embezzlement.

The vastness of this work of insurance is manifested, too, in the variety of services which each of these different forms of insurance command. Every form has, of course, its financial and legal side. The financial side is quite as complex as is found in the business of banking. The legal side represents questions of manifold extent and relations. The medical element applies to life and accident insurance. The actuarial side teaches the fundamental laws of humanity in ways that demand both the accuracy and the comprehensiveness of mathematics and the teachings of psychology and of physiology. The statistical side belongs to all forms. Of course, the general administrative and executive sides cover all the work from the soliciting for a policy to the hour of its exposition or cancellation..

This work of insurance, of most serious importance for the happiness and the betterment of the race, therefore demands several noble elements of him who thinks of selecting it as his profession.

First. One should not say that insurance demands great intellectual power, without at once specifying the kind of intellectual power which it demands. The work of insurance demands an intellectual power which unites comprehensiveness and definiteness. The questions which are presented have many relations. The insurance man should be able to think out these questions into their several ramifications. These questions, too, are very practical questions. Many of them are narrow and small,

and each of them usually comes down to a very definite form. The mind, therefore, which is broad without vagueness, and precise without narrowness, represents the type which finds a noble field of usefulness in insurance. "A broad mind sharpened to a point" is the form to be desired.

The mind, moreover, which can be best described by the word inventive is desired in this service. The mind determined to make discoveries, to find new adjustments, to hit upon more economical processes for securing results, has a great opportunity in insurance. It is the intellect of the inventor, a type needed quite as much in the world of administration as in the world of steam and steel.

Second. In a number of forms of this profession, good manners are of primary worth; and in other forms, of much value. Good manners have commercial and professional significance. The one who is not a gentleman fails to secure entrance to opportunities in which his native and naked abilities would have a noble field of employment. The conventional gentleman may be, by reason of his knowledge of the rules and usages, most useful to others and himself. If he is only a conventional gentleman if beneath good manners are hidden a corrupt heart and a hardened conscience - no opportunity can be worthily opened to him; but the conventional gentleman is just as likely to be the real gentleman, of noble moral nature and of high purposes, as is one who is ignorant of the practises obtaining among gentlemen.

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Let the man who contemplates the choice of insurance as his profession, and, in particular, that part of it which relates to the soliciting of business, be assured that he is in heart and manner a gentleman. A writer in the "Fortnightly Review," ten years ago, intimated that the Englishman goes to Cambridge to learn mathematics and

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