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When the Metropolitan began operations under its present name in 1868, it was solely an ordinary company. We have already pointed out the vigorous efforts of President Knapp to catch the public eye through attractive forms of policies and effective sales campaigns. Here we need only recall that the provisions of the early policies were very liberal for that period.

Premium rates were moderate; no restrictions were placed on travel; 30 days grace was allowed for the payment of premiums; paid up values were granted after two or three years; loans to pay premiums were available after three years. These early life insurance policies were sound and attractive; but they were offered by a new company that faced the severe competi­tion of stronger and older rivals, who were selling deferred dividend contracts on most liberal estimates as to future dividends.

The company’s ordinary policies had, therefore, only a small measure of success. In the competitive struggle of those early years the Metropolitan, with its slight resources and its limited agency organization, could not have survived but for its fortunate association, almost from the beginning, with the Hildise Bund. The company entered into an agree­ment to underwrite the life insurance on the members of this society.

This arrangement continued for about 10 years and had a lasting influence upon the future of the business. It eliminated the expense of building up a large sales organization and secured a larger volume of insurance comparatively free from competition and at smaller expense than would have been otherwise possible.

From 1869 until the liquidation of the society in 1878, life insurance on its members accounted for the greater portion of the ordinary insurance written by the Metropolitan. The company’s business reached a peak in 1873, with an issue of 12,242 policies for $17,753,399. Thereafter, however, because of the serious economic depression then prevailing, new life insurance rates declined rapidly, and later, ceased almost altogether.

An effort was then made to continue writing business through a somewhat similar society, the Prudential League, but the plan did not succeed. Only 510 policies were issued in 1879, and at the close of the year the total ordinary in force had declined to $11,150,349, from a peak of $27,385,145 only five years earlier. The Metropolitan was in a serious position; business continued to drop, and no field organization of any vigor had been established.

To any other group of insurance men, this discouraging decline would, in all probability, have meant the early dissolution of the company. Such had been, in fact, the fate of all the other companies founded about the same time. But to President Knapp and his colleague, John R. Hegeman, this experience brought home a very important lesson.

The relationship of the company to the society of working people already insured was convincing proof that affordable life insurance in America could be written in sizable amounts on the lives of wage earners, if the convenience of the policyholder could be met in the payment of premiums. It was these considera­tions, without doubt, which influenced the company in its decision to enter the industrial field. However, with the problem of small policies and frequent premium payments, it was necessary to build as quickly as possible a staff of competent industrial agents.

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