Compensations and Insurance The compensation and claims division was in the nature of an employer's liability company. This division, as the name indkates, paid com pensation and indemnities in cases of disability or death due to injuries suffered or diseases contracted while in actual service. These two branches, however, were alnaost insignificant compared with the insurance division. The insurance provisions of the Act of 6 Oct. 1917 enabled any person, male or female, in active military or naval service to take out insurance in mutiples of $500 for any sum from $1,000 to $10,000. Premium rates on an annual term basis were moderate and a list of beneficiaries was specified. There were made certain modifications of the act in 1918, when Congress extended the time for applying for the insurance, changed the rates of allowance to dependents, allowed changes beneficiaries when attested in writ ingt limited the fees of attorneys to.$3 in pre paring and executing papers for claimants and provided fine and imprisonmestt for soliciting or receiving any other fees. Other amendments were requested by the Treasury Department in 1919 especially in the schedule of compensation payable to disabled ex-service men. Under the law as it stood a man totally disabled was paid $30 a znonth if single. The Treasury Depart ment requested that this be increased $80; it asked also that the allowance of $45 for a man with a wife but no child be increased to $90; and $55 paid a inan with wife and one child be increased to $95. The man with a wife and two or more children received $65; it was recommended that this be increased to $100. The amendment incorporating these changes was lcnown while pending before Con gress as the Sweet Bill and became a law on 24 Dec. 1919.
The stupendous scope of the Bureau of War Risk Insurance is shown by the following facts and figures, which demonstrate that within its organization are four of the largest businesses of their kind in the world.
The War and Navy departments notify the Bureau of War Rislc Insurance of all deaths and disabilities occurring while men are in the service. These notifications are treated as po tential claims, and every effort is made by the bureau to ascertain whether an award should be made in each case. Sonaetimes relatives cannot be found and in other cases communi cations are frequently received by the bureau to the effect that no claims will be naade.
Up to 1 Dec. 1919 the bureau had received for consideration 323,340 claims for compen sation, and 12f3,952 claims for insurance.
Of the compensation claims approacimately 138,000 have been approved. Approximately 22,000 disability claims have been disallowed be cause, after thorough investigation, it was found the claimants were not entitled to compensa tion benefits. In more than 72,000 death cases considered as compensation cases it has been definitely established that there are no depend ent relatives entitled at the preserit time to re ceive compensation benefits. On 30 Nov. 1919 90,6.15 compensation claims were pending. Of the insurance claims the bureau ap proved 121,000 claims and disallowed 1,4W claims, and on 30 Nov. 1919 there were pending
6,526 insurance claims.
Under the compensation feature of the War Risk Insurance Act the bureau is maicing 113, 131 payments each month to men who were dis abled while in active service, in the fine of duty, and to the dependent relatives of those who die. Payments have been discontinued on 23,249 cases, due to the death of the payee or the recovery from disability. During the war more than four and one-half million of our soldiers, sail ors and marines were insnred by a government contract, known as yearly renewable term in surance, and the total amount of insurance un derwrftten was nearly $40,000,000,000. The fig ures are astounding. On 1 Jan. 1919 the 19 largest American life insurance companies had about $30,000,000,000 insuranee outstanding; furthermore, the business of the American life insurance companies, which it had taken many of them over 50 years to establish, was obtained by agency forces operating in all the cities and large towns of the United States, while, on the other hand, the Insurance of the War Risk Bureau had no qualified agents and had to rely in many instances upon the services of those without insurance experiences.
Dttring tht ar the bureau depended upon the army, the navy and the marine corps for all contact with service men, contact manifestly upon a wholesale basis. Men entering a service bad their insurance written up for them and the applications for family allowance were made out by the officers in charge of the work, and all papers were forwarded to the bureau by the officers. The bureau had no direct contact with men in the service, its province being merely to carry out the instructions contained in the service men's papers sent in by camp officers. The bureau, however, had direct contact with the families of service men, to which insurance or allotment and allowance were paid; the bu reau in this work becoming in effect a gigantic banldng concern through which were cleared service men's checks against the United States Treasury and payable to their dependents. With demobilization and the return to civil life organized processes ceased and there existed no means by which the bureau could appeal di rectly to service men and urge upon them the very great value of their War Risk Insurance and the importance of retaining it and ulti mately converting it into permanent United States Government Insurance. A large per centage of the men when released from the service failed to make premium p.ayments and their insurance thus lapsed. It was found that many elements entered. into the failure to keep up this insurance. Many men, just out of mili tary service, and not yet placed industrially, were unable to pay their War Risk Insurance premiums, small as those premiums were. This constituted a large class, but not so large, it was believed, as the class made up of those who were apathetic on the subject of life insurance and those not fully alive to the value of life in surance and the tremendous asset which they have in a government insurance contract.