The Alamance Gleaner : .... i.lfjj Vol. LXXI GRAHAM, N. C., THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 1946 No. 9 WEEKLY NEWS ANALYSIS Allies Close on Ruhr Valley; Japs Gird for U.S. Invasion; Forecast Cut in Grain Acreage ' Released by Western Newspaper Union. ?????? (EDITOR'S! NOTE: When opinions are expressed In these eolnmns. they are those of Western Newspaper Union's news analysis and net necessarily of this newspaper.) ?. Indicative oi hi(h cost of taking Iwo Jim a Is this marine graveyard on the Island, with row upon row of little white crosses. Approximately 4,000 Americans were killed tat the straggle. EUROPE: Ruhr Target To 00-year-old Field Marshal Al bert Kesselring went the hapless job at assuming su preme command 01 German armiei in the west as U. S. and British forces closed on the vital Ruhr valley after having conquered the coal and iron rich Saar basin to the southwest. In picking Kessel ring to try to hold the sagging German wPQt Hitler chose an ardent Nazi, who gained notice through his development of strong defensive lines in Italy. Trusted by the Nazis tb? stand fast in the face of' the overwhelming Allied onslaught, Kesselring succeeded Field Marshal Von Bundstedt, who was relieved of his command following reports that he had failed to negotiate an armistice with General Eisenhower. As Kesselring took over the Ger ? man command, his hard-pressed forces faced the Canadian 1st, Brit ish 2nd and U. S. 9th armies on the western border of the Ruhr, while the U. S. 1st army built up strength for a drive to the south of the vital industrial valley from its Remagen bridgehead. Following a tremendous concerted aerial bombardment aimed at soft ening up the enemy's rear areas, these four Allied armies stood ready to strike to the east of the Rhine and break into the open German plains on the high road to Berlin. Farther to the south, the U. S. 3rd and 7th armies, having cleaned out the Saar, drew up against the for ested mountain country to the east of the Rhine in this sector. Double Trouble Thus, while Kesselring had his handa- full trying to hold the Allied armies off from the open northern plains, German commanders in the east experienced equal difficulty meeting the Russian onslaught over the other end of the level northern country in the east. From Stettin southward, the Reds menaced the serried defenses of Berlin while the Nazis still talked about a last ditch fight behind concrete pillboxes, bunkers, tank traps and irrigated Bat land. Though massed in the greatest strength tefore Berlin, the Reds also exerted considerable pressure to the south, seeking' to batter their "way through the mountain masses in Up per Silesia to enter Czechoslovakia, and smashing at German defenses in western Hungary in an effort to reach Austria. U. S. SAVINGS: In Billions With a wartime economy restrict ing the supply of civilian goods, and I income at peak levels, Americans continued to pour billions of dollars into savings, the Securities and Ex change commission reported. With Americans putting away nearly 23 per cent of their incomes in cash, bank deposits and govern ment securities within the last two and one-half years, total holdings of thOae assets reached MB bOKoo dollars at the end of 1944. In saving 40 billion dollars last year, 10 times as much ae in 1940, Americans amassed an additional IT billions in cash and bank de posits; 13 billions in government bonds; JV4 billions * insurance, ?hd fat savings and _ PACIFIC: Fear Invasion Making no bones about their tear of an invasion of their homeland, the Japanese government moved fever ishly to prepare the country for the eventuality, while at the same time pushing efforts to organize occupied China against a thrust from U. S. forces. Her predicament underlined by the U. S.'s gradual advance toward the homeland, and the destructive aerial raids on her great urban cen ters, Japan's leaders called tor the establishment of virtual martial law in the country, permitting expropri ation of land and demolition of buildings for defense purposes. Though high military authorities believe that Japan, like Germany, will not be bombed out of the war because of the decentralization of her industry, U. S. attacks have cut into some of the enemy's pro ductive capacity, besides causing serious civilian dislocations. Al ready, almost half of Tokyo's civil ian population has been evacuated, it was said. Besides impairing the heme effort, sneb raids as the recent carrier plane attacks on the Japs' great inner naval base in the Inland sea bounded, by the home islands of Honshu, Kyushu and Shikoku serve not only to cripple the enemy fleet but also damage important repair and anchorage facilities. Although the Japs feel that any direct - assault on the homeland would give them the advantage of short supply lines and land bases from which to develop counter-meas ures, they are looking worriedly to the Chinese coast, where they be lieve the U. S. might drive ashore w set up uivasiuo oases. Thus, high military authorities pre sume, the enemy will continue to play for time in'such outlying bat tle zones as the Philippines aDH. 0 e XJrOMwB/IWf tuHluJH I talk through their cigars as they stand on street corners tossing away precious minutes they can never hope to retrieve. . . . Movie stars rushing around town convoyed by a fleet of press agents. The slantjr penmanship of rain scribbling its unruly signature on window panes. . . . Darkened sky scrapers putting shadows on stilts as they stand guard over the streets all through the night. Ceei, elsar nights when you can even see baby stars staying out an night. . . . Agonised cries of fog horns along the waterfront sandpa 1 ? I American Life Insurance Celebrates Its 100th i Anniversary by Adopting a New Actuarial Table \ Which Reflects Longer Life of Modern Citizen i By ELMO SCOTT WATSON Released by Western Newspaper Union. Nineteen forty-five find* American life insurance observing its 100th anniversary and by way of celebration it s beginning to operate under a set of actuarial tables. Until this Sear insurance companies have een "booking" life and death chances on the same basis as they were figured when the first American '"life" policies were written away back in 1849. But this year they are discarding the old "odds table" and putting into effect a new one and that's a matter of prime importance to more than 70,000,000 Americans who own.more than 125 billion dollars worth of life insurance. As a matter at fact, the adoption of the new actuarial tables in American life insurance's centennial rear is accidental and coincidental, rather than purposely planned. Nine years afo state insurance commis sioners and mathematical wizards of the insurance companies recognized the fact that the tremendous im provements in medical science had made the old "odds table" obsolete. In the light of modern methods of prolonging human existence, a new set of Hfa expectancy standards was needed. But figuring out the** standards and fitting them to rate a?o? fit ting rataa to them?wasn't a tlmple matter. For lnatance, they knew that you?if you are 10 yeara old?hay* a tar batter chance of living beyond that age than you did two decades ago. It waa only a few decadea ago that eight out at every thousand people died at that age. Today, thinlrf to mora public enlightenment on medical mattera and improve ments in diet (including more knowledge at vitamin requirements) only-two or three persons per thou sand are dead at the age of 30. Bates Abewt the Same. But even though the improve ment In our life chances seemed to indicate much reduced rates, this was offset over the years by the de terioration of our interest rates and the increased cost of doing business. The problem of adjustment was threefold: (I) rates according to improved life probability; (2) com pany income according to lowered return on investments; and (S) com pany expenses as compared to "the good old days" when breakfast cost a nickel and the company president drew a salary of $? per week. The insurance commissioners had a major mathematical problem be fore them. For the latter two points ?lowered earnings on invested funds and sharply rising costs of doing business ? mors than cov ered the slight break they showed on their books because this doctors were keeping us alive longer. Nevertheless they went ahead. Al fred N. Guertin of New Jersey, was made.-chairman of a commission ers group to recommend the new "life" tables. Five other state com miseiooers sat with him. John S. Thompson, mathematician vice president of the Mutual Benefit Life Ineswaaee company of Newark, N.J. was a committee member represent ing the Actuarial Society of America. Sixteen ?Utcs enacted the ao called "Ouertta law," which means that the Insurance companies doing business hi those states can in 1945 adopt the recommendation ot the Guertin committee into thair future policies. The law became effective January 1 at this year on an optional basis but it becomes mandatory after three years, in December, 1948. Hew it All Began. " Centuries before Messrs. Guertin and associates took on their her culean lob, a Roman named Ulpi anus devised an "odds table" for a few of hie friends. Ulpianus was a lawyer with a flair for figures. As a matter at fact, his life expectancy charts ware so good that they re mained unchallenged from 220 A. D. for almost 15 centuries. Evan as late as 1914, the Tuscan government used his figures. Not content with Lawyer Ulpianus' findings, however, Edmund HaDey, known as tha English astronomer who discovered the famous Halley'a comet, undertook the lob of comput ing "modern" mortality tables hi 1591. His method wea the basis for present-day computations; namely that at using accurate vital statis tics. Halley selected the city of Bree lau (you've"been reading about it In births and deaths for a five-year pe riod. His tables were the precuraor tor many others?euch as the Eng lish tables of 1783. But all such im proved tables over the last two cen turies failed to keep pace with medi cal science. Our first actuarial brainchild was called the American Experience ta ble, which was brought into usage right after the Civil war. With minor changes it has continued to be the accepted base for computing life and death chances up the present time. Meanwhile the M. D.s were busily engaged in making our American Experience figures look sick. Their success in keeping the lower age groups alive longer is directly re sponsible for this major effort to re frame the basin structure of all life insurance in the United States. Just by way of proving the point, in 1900 the U. S. average age was 49.34. A couple of years ago it stood at 84.83. When it all began back in 1848, this was a husky young nation. But many of its huskiest young citizens fell victims to one disease or an other, diptheria and tuberculosis be ing the most active. May Hazards. Even as late as 1900, more than 40 out of every 100,000 people suc cumbed to diptheria. Today it's only one per 100,000. Europe's black plague of the early 17th century wasn't much worse a scourge than the horrors of pulmonary tubercu losis over the last century. Statis tics for 1900 show that this killer took 173 out of every 100,000. Today less than 40 per 100,000 die of the disease each year. For these reasons, coupled with all the other hazards of living a cen tury ago, the old boys scratched their heads twice before insuring their fellow men promiscuously. When Ben Miller bought the first life policy issued by Mutual Befieflt Life Insurance in Newark in 1848, there were many "don'ts" tied to the policy. Ben bought $1,300 worth of insurance on his life at a premium of *31 a yaar with tha provision that: (1.) He didn't die on the seas; (J.) ha didn't leave tha country; (I.) he didn't go south in the sum mertime; (4.) he didn't (without consent) Join the army; (5.) he didn't cut his own throat to im prove his wife's finances; (6.) he didn't expose his Insured and valu able carcass by duelling; (7.) he religiously avoided the gallows or guillotine. . . . and so on for quite some distance in slightly more tech nical verbiage. Ben, it might be remarked, was one of the hardier sort, for ho lived to collect his own insurance at the age of Ml While the early directors of insur ance companies had no worries about clients being killed in an automobile or airplane, the 1845 citi zens of Pres. James Polk's nation of XI states were liable to find them selves without a scalp if they took the "covered-wagon" trail west Life insurance companies also could discount the probability of the "insured" dying from heart failure because of tha then modest IS mil lion dollar public debt. Perhaps it is worth noting that over the years the increase in heart disease (and it has increased considerably) is in ratio to the government's debt to the people ? now at tha quite immodest figure of almost >00 bU Bon, a very large hunk of which is held by the same haurance com II ?* you read this, you've been tors arc keeping ua alive longer, you'd better read on. At first glance it would seem that under the new mortality table, Ufa insurance rates will be cheaper, but that is not true. John S. Thompson, ?ice president and mathema tician (actuary) of the Mutual Bene fit Life Insurance company, speak ing for all lift insurance companies, tells why. He says: "Policies now in force will not be affected, nor is it expected that poli cies sold in the future wiU be. That is because the amount oi interest life insurance companies can earn on their invested funds has dropped sharply in the last few years, and their operating expenses, wages and taxes, have increased. Fewer Investment Chans as. "The cost of life insurance de pends upon three points: (1) the number of claims paid on policy holders who die in a given year; (2) the yield or earnings from in vestments of reserve funds; and (2) the cost of operating the company. The war has sharply decreased the field for profitable investments, he points out War industries are financed by the government; and (be building industry, once a big field for loena, is now dormant Thus in surance companies which formerly earned from 4 hi 0 per cent on their funds, now earn only slightly mora than S per cent. From 40 to SO per cent of insurance company funds are Invested in war boTds at an average yield at about IVi per c^nt And many companies have guaran teed a S per cent return to their policyholden. That is why insurance rates cannot be reduced. It was a dead cinch to earn the good old 6 per cent back in 1040 and a lot mora, too, even though Mutual Benefit's records show that Robert L. Patterson, founder and first president, and his director*, scorned the possibility of paying big divi dends by "grubstaking" a few at the gold-seeking '49ers. Sound, com ae rvative investments wers made to protect ahlosi and orphans. But, conservative as the Investments were then, they paid handsomely as compared with today. Money Earn Leu Than t%. Shortly after the turn of the cen tury, returns on invested money tightened up considerably. AH this is readily reflected in overall returns to policyholders. Between 1914-lUt Mutual Benefit policyholders were getting about 2.1 per cent on their dollars paid in. The 1929-1M3 pic ture was still trending downward to about 1.7 per cent per annum. It was vastly different in 1MB. In those days the company president drew $1,500 per year?Just about the price of a fair cook or housekeeper on today's market. The top insur ance salesman wasn't allowed In earn more than $2,000, all otter earnings going back to the company till. The rent bill was $29 per month. One of the ranking ' 'assist ants" drew the good (in those days) salary of $300 per year. Today the taxes, alone, on a building occupied by one large in surance company exceeds 10 mlllinw dollars per annum. And the char women on the 31st floor would laugh at an offer of $300 a year. Even the elevator boy would sneer at the same salary Robert Patterson was paid in 1MB Now you know why insurance is going to continue to cost Just about the same as it has in th^ past. As a group, we're living a lot longer and there is leas risk in insuii? us. But, as a group we cost ? whale of a lot to handle and. the days of fancy interest returns A Tlew ?i Broad street la front of the Stock Exahaafe ill ftoh Treasary (then toe easterns Boom) la New Task City to IMS when Ufa Insurance had its beftaalai* i 1 - * * * - ? - . ? >s