Mark Twain’s happy band of brothers – gun makers and life insurance companies



Mark Twain’s happy band of brothers – gun makers and life insurance companies.

http://www.marktwainhouse.org/admin/assets/images/photo_gallery/1289926514-Mark%20Twain.jpgEnjoy the peerless Mark Twain’s views on life insurance in  this speech delivered in Hartford, Connecticut at a dinner to one Cornelius Walford, of London.
The following is edited …

“GENTLEMEN: I am glad, indeed, to assist in welcoming the distinguished guest of this occasion to a city whose fame as an insurance center has extended to all lands, and given us the name of being a quadruple band of brothers working sweetly hand in hand--the Colt's Arms Company making the destruction of our race easy and convenient, our life insurance citizens paying for the victims when they pass away, Mr. Batterson perpetuating their memory with his stately monuments, and our fire-insurance comrades taking care of their hereafter.

Certainly there is no nobler field for human effort than the insurance line of business--especially accident insurance. Ever since I have been a director in an accident-insurance company I have felt that I am a better man. Life has seemed more precious. Accidents have assumed a kindlier aspect. Distressing special providences have lost half their horror. I look upon a cripple now with affectionate interest--as an advertisement. I do not seem to care for poetry any more. I do not care for politics--even agriculture does not excite me. But to me now there is a charm about a railway collision that is unspeakable.

There is nothing more beneficent than accident insurance. I have seen an entire family lifted out of poverty and into affluence by the simple boon of a broken leg. I have had people come to me on crutches, with tears in their eyes, to bless this beneficent institution. In all my experience of life, I have seen nothing so seraphic as the look that comes into a freshly mutilated man's face when he feels in his vest pocket with his remaining hand and finds his accident ticket all right. And I have seen nothing so sad as the look that came into another splintered customer's face when he found he couldn't collect on a wooden leg.

Read the whole thing here: http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/1526/

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