agree with The Life assurance firm in 1868
The world of 1868, when the Metropolitan Life assurance business was born, was very dissimilar from the world we know today. There were no telephones in those days and no electric lights. The country had not yet been spanned by a transcontinental railroad. Records were kept in handwritten ledgers, and business letters were penned in longhand. The whole people of the United States was only about 37,000,000. The flag then carried 37 stars.
The Life assurance firm in 1868
Canada at that time contained only 3,500,000 people. She had only one year earlier (1867) achieved Dominion status in the British Empire. The two countries, although their frontiers were expanding, were still largely rural. At the census of 1870, the American people living on farms and in country villages numbered about 30,000,000. Persons engaged in agriculture, forestry, and animal husbandry constituted half the total working population.
The War of the States, to be sure, was over, but the struggle had left in its wake a range of national problems-- not only political but also economic and social. The Nation was still feeling most of these with full force. For instance, greenbacks were still in circulation, and specie cost was not to be resumed until 11 years later. With the emancipation of the slaves, the labor qoute reached a new phase. The Government of a now united Nation was anxious to offer its citizens fields for expansion, and straight through the Homestead Acts and subsequent land grants made thousands of farm acres available to pioneers.
To others more enterprising, new territories offered opening to exploit the resources of great plains and mountains. The primary need of the country was adequate communication facilities, which were thought about a key to further economic progress. However, all signs pointed to a great expansion ahead. The actual issues of the war itself had, for the most part, been settled. The country could now go transmit to the fruitful destiny which its rich natural resources and its vigorous people promised.
Industry, commerce, and finance felt the new stimulus to surge forward. The business depression which immediately followed the close of the war proved short and was succeeded by a certain upturn. By 1868 there was in expand a business revival which was to last five years. The Metropolitan was thus launched on a rising economic tide. Immigrants in large numbers were encouraged to come to add the work of their hands to the construction of the country.
They made up a new working population, which took root, for the most part, in the cities. Crossroads were becoming towns roughly overnight. Towns were fast growing into cities. A deeper sense of permanence colored the thoughts of the American people, who began to think in terms of a future, a home, family security. The United States was rapidly arrival of age.
The class of wage earners was growing rapidly, a circumstance which, as we shall see, proved to be a determining factor in the improvement of the Metropolitan. As inventions multiplied and factories grew, women and children were employed in greater numbers. The acceleration of commerce and of urban life accentuated the economic insecurity which many felt in their new environment.
City dwellers became aware of the hazards of long working days, child labor, and commercial accidents. Mines and railroads and machines were being developed with result risk to human life. Condition conditions in our cities were far from good. To furnish a measure of security for this addition urban population, life assurance and incommunicable Condition assurance associates came into being.
The war decade of the 1860s gave opening for the great expansion of the life assurance and individual Condition assurance business. As a result, more than 100 associates were functioning by 1868. The New England Mutual and The Mutual Life assurance business of New York had already been in doing for 25 years.
In fact, when the Metropolitan appeared on the scene, there were already in existence organizations with such well-known names as the New York Life, the Equitable Life of New York, the Mutual advantage of New Jersey, the John Hancock, the Aetna, and the Connecticut Mutual. By present standards none of these associates was large, yet in their day they were important economic enterprises. At the end of 1868 the largest of these, The Mutual Life of New York, had gross assets of more than ,000,000 and assurance in force amounting to nearly 0,000,000.
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