"It is everywhere in the neighborhood of Hull House," said Miss Jane Addams, "and while I am certain it carries with it no such abuses are as complained of in London, it is an evil nevertheless. No case has come to the knowledge of the settlement where a parent has killed a child in any way for the insurance, but we have seen instances where the temptation must have been felt.
"For instance, a case occurs to me where one of a family of five children died. When I called on the woman she was loudly bewailing the fact that the child who died was the only one of the five who was not insured. Her grief had taken such a turn that there was no doubt she would prefer to have had one of the insured members go than to have lost one whose death did not provide burial funds.
"At the most I think the insurance of babes and children may be a temptation to parents to allow the child, when sick, to be neglected. It would be pretty hard in this country for a wholesale killing of children for any reason to go undetected; it is hardly possible that the small insurance in such cases would prove enough to encourage deliberate murder. However, the system must be regarded as bad in its effects.
"Not only are the babes insured but any and all members of the family are protected by this form of industrial insurance. We had a case here a year ago in which a man and his wife were dependent upon charity. Both were ill, and we looked after them until the man died. Then we were astonished beyond measure to find that his life had been insured in one of these companies, and through all the poverty of the family his wife had kept up the weekly premiums. Not only that, but after his death we discovered that the widow's life also was insured, and when she finally was taken with her last illness she turned the amount of the policy over to me.
"One of the most hopeless things about these policies is the fact that, no matter how much needed is the policy falling due, it is always misspent. The undertaker gets it all, as a rule. In the few cases where we have had knowledge of the burials of these people everything went toward the funeral expenses. With most of these people it is the first time in their lives that they have had money in any amount to spend, and, as it came easy, it goes that way.
"With regard to nationality, the residents in this section of the city seem to take to the industrial insurance, however, many of them in the hope that it will keep them from a pauper's grave."
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