If the American people have enjoyed a greater measure of security through life insurance than have the people of other countries, it is largely because of the agency system of operation, which had its origin and development in this country. The agent is the key figure in the American life insurance business. It is through his efforts that the companies come in contact with their policyholders and serve them.

Through his activities one half of our population has acquired the security of insurance and an even greater proportion are its beneficiaries. A century of experience has repeatedly demonstrated that the services of the agent are indispensable; that wherever the business has attempted to operate without this personal intermediary between public and company, the result has been either a very small amount of protection sold, or outright failure.

The American life insurance agent has carried the gospel of thrift to every corner of our land. He has been the greatest single educational force in the term life insurance business regarding the question "what is term life insurance?" and what an affordable life insurance policy is really made up of.

In canvassing and in advising, he instructs huge numbers of people regarding the variety of insurance plans and programs available and their many uses. The $140,000,000,000 of life insurance now in force in the United States and Canada are a monument to the American life insurance agent, and a fine tribute to his effective ministration. This is particularly true of the Metropolitan agent.

Throughout the history of the company he has devoted the bulk of his efforts to the great mass of the American population - the wage earners whose life insurance needs were long neglected. Pioneering has become a tradition with him. Several generations ago he blazed a trail to bring the benefits of industrial insurance to large sections of our people.

He became one of the first to open the door of ordinary insurance to wage earners, and later pioneered in making this form of protection available to those who could afford as little as $500 of life insurance, to those whose health was impaired, and to those who worked at hazardous occupations, in other words, to the people who needed it most. It can truly be said that the Metropolitan agent was as popular in the town as the family doctor.

He called regularly at the homes of his families to receive premiums, and among his many services, credited annual dividends on industrial policies, completed claim forms, delivered checks, and would offer advice on life insurance rates, low cost life insurance, and the best kind of policy for each family.

These frequent visits and his knowledge of family affairs brought him into a warm, personal relationship with his policyholders and made it easy for him to sense their needs and to advise changes in the insurance program as circumstances required, as well as to stimulate interest in additional life insurance.

However, the Metropolitan agent certainly did not conceive of his job as limited to selling and servicing life insurance. He has assumed some of the duties of the social worker in the broadest sense of the term. Since the inauguration of the company's welfare program, he actively participated in furthering the health and well being of his policyholders and of the community in general. The conception of life insurance not merely as a business but as a social institution became firmly rooted in the entire field force.

It is clear from the old records that President Knapp and Vice-President Hegeman had constructive and progressive ideas with regard to sales promotion and the responsibilities and services of agents. The executives were aware that much of the success and the character of the business depended upon their sending out intelligent, earnest representatives. The fact is, however, that because of the keen competition and the prevailing high rates of commission, the desire to build an adequate and competent field force remained a pious hope rather than a reality.

Such agents as were connected with the company during this period were mostly part time men who sold life insurance as a side line. They had no way of knowing that in the future insurance agents would be replaced by online life insurance quotes! The bulk of the insurance business written in the first 11 years of the company's existence was on the lives of the members of a German speaking society.

When the economic depression of the 1870s caused this group to disintegrate, the business of the Metropolitan rapidly diminished, and by 1879 the company was on the brink of disaster. It was then that the decision was finally made to break with tradition and to enter the field of industrial insurance. On November 17, 1879, the first industrial policy was issued on the life of President Knapp, and the second on the life of his associate, Mr. Hegeman.