Life — June 2, 1904 — page 35: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

PRESIDE [f ROOSEVELT has swung wide the gates of the World's Fair at St. Louis. Thousands of the readers of this pub- lication are planning to visit this wonderful exposition, the greatest since men first meas- ured their skill or their products in competi- tion, It will have as its distinctive note, life and motion. Instead of products, the ex- hibits will be chiefly of processes. Among them will be one that interprets in a most in- teresting way the broad range of life insur- ance, one of the great forces in modern life. Few people ha any conception of the rela- tions of this force te all the other great forces that are upbuilding the nation—to commerce, industry, education, thrift, home protection and all the rest. But these relations are of the most vital and essential nature. This Exhibit is also significant as marking the progress of America in the century that poleon ceded the vast Louisiana purchase to the struggling republic has passed since > that was working westward from the At- lantic. That was an era of intense individ- ualism. The spirit of collective endea yor came later, but when it did come it found wide expression in societies, associations and especially in the great insurance companies. One of these in particular, the Prudential, caught the democratic American spirit and followed it in a development that has been of the broadest character, one of the really notable achievements of modern times. Its Exhibit in the Palace of Education, which shows beautiful models of the Company's Life adv. America’s Gibraltar at the World’s Fair. By Herbert S. Houston. Photographically Mustrated by Arthur Hewitt great buildings, will interest a lot of people because it reveals a record of growth that is sure to give a thrill of surprise to even the most wonder-proof cf Americans. of the Civil War —a period so recent that its history has Ten years after the clos al Senator John F, Dryden, President of the Prudi arcely been written—the Prudential wa established in Newark. As if fore-knowing the great rock to which it would grow, it began its foundation in a basement office. It was like the beginning of the New York Herald by Bennett, the elder, in a basement But it would be an idle play with words to make a basement office the It_ was on Ann Street. real foundation of the Prudential. something much deeper down than that— bed-rock American The Prudential ap- nothing else than the principle of democracy plied the democratic principle to life insur- ance. As Senator Dryden, of New Jersey, the founder of the company, has said, “ Life insurance is of the most value when most widely distributed. The Prudential and the companies like it are cultivating broadly and soundly among the masses the idea of life in- surance protection. To them is being carried the gospel of self-help, protection and a higher life.” And what has been the result of the demo- cratic American principle worked out in life insurance? In 1875 the first policy was writ- ten in the Prudential. At the end of 1903 there were §.447,307 policies in force on the books of the company, representing nearly a billion The 1876 $2,232, while twenty-seven yea they were more than 30,000 times greater, or $72.712.435.44. The time being $62,578,410.81. of growth that is without precedent in insur- dollars assets in were rs later, in 1903, abilities at the same This is a record ance and that is hard to match in the whole range of industry. The rise of the Prudential to greatness reads like a romance in big figures, but, in fact, it is a record of bu siness expansion that has been as natural as the growth of an oak. The corn crop of the comicbooks.com