But no matter how ambitious and active these experts may be, they cannot catch every one personally. It would take too much time. So they write gloomy advertisements which are designed to scare people in general.
These advertisements are a characteristic feature of our civilization.
Man goes down-town, whistling, sunny morning. Happens to pick up a magazine. Immediately he gets hit in the eye with a harrowing picture. Sometimes it is one that reminds him he may die any minute, and depicts his widow and children limping around in the streets, hunting crusts. Or it may be a picture of his house burning up, or his motor upsetting. Or an illness, and there he is lying flat and weak on his bed.
Ah!—Her husband didn't insure
After he has seen a good many of such pictures, he grows quiet. Stops whistling. He learns how to worry, and he worries off and on till it hurts. Then, to get some relief, he makes a contract with one of those companies, which provides him with what we call insurance, for an annual tribute.
I hope no one will think I am disparaging insurance, which is a useful arrangement. It enables many of us to pool our risks and be protected from hardship. And the best companies nowadays handle the thing very well. They scare a person as little as possible. They just gently depress him. They inflict just enough mental torture to get him to put in his money. It is only when he is stubborn about it that they give him the cold chills.
Every century has some such institution. The Inquisition was worse.
Like insurance, it had high ideals, but peculiar methods.