Author: Sharon Ann Murphy
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM
ISBN: 0801899478
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 411
Book Description
A study of the early years of the life insurance industry in 19th century America. Investing in Life considers the creation and expansion of the American life insurance industry from its early origins in the 1810s through the 1860s and examines how its growth paralleled and influenced the emergence of the middle class. Using the economic instability of the period as her backdrop, Sharon Ann Murphy also analyzes changing roles for women; the attempts to adapt slavery to an urban, industrialized setting; the rise of statistical thinking; and efforts to regulate the business environment. Her research directly challenges the conclusions of previous scholars who have dismissed the importance of the earliest industry innovators while exaggerating clerical opposition to life insurance. Murphy examines insurance as both a business and a social phenomenon. She looks at how insurance companies positioned themselves within the marketplace, calculated risks associated with disease, intemperance, occupational hazard, and war, and battled fraud, murder, and suicide. She also discusses the role of consumers?their reasons for purchasing life insurance, their perceptions of the industry, and how their desires and demands shaped the ultimate product. Winner, Hagley Prize in Business History, Hagley Museum and Library and the Business History Conference Praise for Investing in Life “A well-written, well-argued book that makes a number of important contributions to the history of business and capitalism in antebellum America.” —Sean H. Vanatta, Common Place “An intriguing, instructive history of the establishment and development of the life insurance industry that reveals a good deal about changing social and commercial conditions in antebellum America . . . Highly recommended.” —Choice
Investing in Life
Author: Sharon Ann Murphy
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM
ISBN: 0801899478
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 411
Book Description
A study of the early years of the life insurance industry in 19th century America. Investing in Life considers the creation and expansion of the American life insurance industry from its early origins in the 1810s through the 1860s and examines how its growth paralleled and influenced the emergence of the middle class. Using the economic instability of the period as her backdrop, Sharon Ann Murphy also analyzes changing roles for women; the attempts to adapt slavery to an urban, industrialized setting; the rise of statistical thinking; and efforts to regulate the business environment. Her research directly challenges the conclusions of previous scholars who have dismissed the importance of the earliest industry innovators while exaggerating clerical opposition to life insurance. Murphy examines insurance as both a business and a social phenomenon. She looks at how insurance companies positioned themselves within the marketplace, calculated risks associated with disease, intemperance, occupational hazard, and war, and battled fraud, murder, and suicide. She also discusses the role of consumers?their reasons for purchasing life insurance, their perceptions of the industry, and how their desires and demands shaped the ultimate product. Winner, Hagley Prize in Business History, Hagley Museum and Library and the Business History Conference Praise for Investing in Life “A well-written, well-argued book that makes a number of important contributions to the history of business and capitalism in antebellum America.” —Sean H. Vanatta, Common Place “An intriguing, instructive history of the establishment and development of the life insurance industry that reveals a good deal about changing social and commercial conditions in antebellum America . . . Highly recommended.” —Choice
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM
ISBN: 0801899478
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 411
Book Description
A study of the early years of the life insurance industry in 19th century America. Investing in Life considers the creation and expansion of the American life insurance industry from its early origins in the 1810s through the 1860s and examines how its growth paralleled and influenced the emergence of the middle class. Using the economic instability of the period as her backdrop, Sharon Ann Murphy also analyzes changing roles for women; the attempts to adapt slavery to an urban, industrialized setting; the rise of statistical thinking; and efforts to regulate the business environment. Her research directly challenges the conclusions of previous scholars who have dismissed the importance of the earliest industry innovators while exaggerating clerical opposition to life insurance. Murphy examines insurance as both a business and a social phenomenon. She looks at how insurance companies positioned themselves within the marketplace, calculated risks associated with disease, intemperance, occupational hazard, and war, and battled fraud, murder, and suicide. She also discusses the role of consumers?their reasons for purchasing life insurance, their perceptions of the industry, and how their desires and demands shaped the ultimate product. Winner, Hagley Prize in Business History, Hagley Museum and Library and the Business History Conference Praise for Investing in Life “A well-written, well-argued book that makes a number of important contributions to the history of business and capitalism in antebellum America.” —Sean H. Vanatta, Common Place “An intriguing, instructive history of the establishment and development of the life insurance industry that reveals a good deal about changing social and commercial conditions in antebellum America . . . Highly recommended.” —Choice
Mutually Beneficial
Author: Robert E. Wright
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814793975
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 527
Book Description
A history of The Guardian Life Insurance company.
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814793975
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 527
Book Description
A history of The Guardian Life Insurance company.
Anglo-American Life Insurance, 1800-1914 Volume 1
Author: Timothy Alborn
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351576542
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 281
Book Description
By the eve of the Great Depression, there existed in America the equivalent of a policy for every man, woman and child, and in Britain it grew from its narrow aristocratic base to cover all social classes. This primary resource collection is the first comparative history of British and American life insurance industries.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351576542
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 281
Book Description
By the eve of the Great Depression, there existed in America the equivalent of a policy for every man, woman and child, and in Britain it grew from its narrow aristocratic base to cover all social classes. This primary resource collection is the first comparative history of British and American life insurance industries.
Atlanta Life Insurance Company
Author: Alexa Benson Henderson
Publisher: University Alabama Press
ISBN: 9780817350451
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Depicts the inspiring efforts of black Americans to build and sustain economic organizations and enterprises The story of Atlanta Life Insurance Company, with its humble beginning as a small mutual aid association, depicts the inspiring efforts of black Americans to build and sustain economic organizations and enterprises. Its study also fits in to the mosaic of activities, extending back to the pre-Civil War era, that were aimed at developing an economic base within the black community. These efforts gained new meaning in the post-Reconstruction period as blacks strove to survive in an America that was increasingly characterized by rampant racism and a host of economic and social restrictions based on race. In this environment, a significant number of black leaders urged business development and the amassing of wealth among black Americans as the primary means by which the race could end its disadvantage in American society and achieve respect and citizenship. In Atlanta, shortly after the turn of the century, Alonzo Franklin Herndon, a former slave, joined a long line of promoters of black enterprise by creating Atlanta Life Insurance Company. More than three-quarters of a century later, it is an important enterprise that is the nation's largest black-controlled shareholder insurance company. With more than $108.7 million in assets, the firm is today a significant example of the efforts of black Americans to achieve economic dignity in America. Henderson focuses on the historic roots of Atlanta Life, its economic growth and development as a black-owned institution, and its social and economic involvement with the problems and progress of black America. Depicting circumstances that varied from race riots and hostility to investigations by stave regulatory boards to depression to efforts at acquiring special Congressional legislation protecting stock ownership, Henderson relates important details of the Atlanta Life story and its identity with the society it served.
Publisher: University Alabama Press
ISBN: 9780817350451
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Depicts the inspiring efforts of black Americans to build and sustain economic organizations and enterprises The story of Atlanta Life Insurance Company, with its humble beginning as a small mutual aid association, depicts the inspiring efforts of black Americans to build and sustain economic organizations and enterprises. Its study also fits in to the mosaic of activities, extending back to the pre-Civil War era, that were aimed at developing an economic base within the black community. These efforts gained new meaning in the post-Reconstruction period as blacks strove to survive in an America that was increasingly characterized by rampant racism and a host of economic and social restrictions based on race. In this environment, a significant number of black leaders urged business development and the amassing of wealth among black Americans as the primary means by which the race could end its disadvantage in American society and achieve respect and citizenship. In Atlanta, shortly after the turn of the century, Alonzo Franklin Herndon, a former slave, joined a long line of promoters of black enterprise by creating Atlanta Life Insurance Company. More than three-quarters of a century later, it is an important enterprise that is the nation's largest black-controlled shareholder insurance company. With more than $108.7 million in assets, the firm is today a significant example of the efforts of black Americans to achieve economic dignity in America. Henderson focuses on the historic roots of Atlanta Life, its economic growth and development as a black-owned institution, and its social and economic involvement with the problems and progress of black America. Depicting circumstances that varied from race riots and hostility to investigations by stave regulatory boards to depression to efforts at acquiring special Congressional legislation protecting stock ownership, Henderson relates important details of the Atlanta Life story and its identity with the society it served.
Insurance Era
Author: Caley Horan
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022678441X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
Charts the social and cultural life of private insurance in postwar America, showing how insurance institutions and actuarial practices played crucial roles in bringing social, political, and economic neoliberalism into everyday life. Actuarial thinking is everywhere in contemporary America, an often unnoticed byproduct of the postwar insurance industry’s political and economic influence. Calculations of risk permeate our institutions, influencing how we understand and manage crime, education, medicine, finance, and other social issues. Caley Horan’s remarkable book charts the social and economic power of private insurers since 1945, arguing that these institutions’ actuarial practices played a crucial and unexplored role in insinuating the social, political, and economic frameworks of neoliberalism into everyday life. Analyzing insurance marketing, consumption, investment, and regulation, Horan asserts that postwar America’s obsession with safety and security fueled the exponential expansion of the insurance industry and the growing importance of risk management in other fields. Horan shows that the rise and dissemination of neoliberal values did not happen on its own: they were the result of a project to unsocialize risk, shrinking the state’s commitment to providing support, and heaping burdens upon the people often least capable of bearing them. Insurance Era is a sharply researched and fiercely written account of how and why private insurance and its actuarial market logic came to be so deeply lodged in American visions of social welfare.
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022678441X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 260
Book Description
Charts the social and cultural life of private insurance in postwar America, showing how insurance institutions and actuarial practices played crucial roles in bringing social, political, and economic neoliberalism into everyday life. Actuarial thinking is everywhere in contemporary America, an often unnoticed byproduct of the postwar insurance industry’s political and economic influence. Calculations of risk permeate our institutions, influencing how we understand and manage crime, education, medicine, finance, and other social issues. Caley Horan’s remarkable book charts the social and economic power of private insurers since 1945, arguing that these institutions’ actuarial practices played a crucial and unexplored role in insinuating the social, political, and economic frameworks of neoliberalism into everyday life. Analyzing insurance marketing, consumption, investment, and regulation, Horan asserts that postwar America’s obsession with safety and security fueled the exponential expansion of the insurance industry and the growing importance of risk management in other fields. Horan shows that the rise and dissemination of neoliberal values did not happen on its own: they were the result of a project to unsocialize risk, shrinking the state’s commitment to providing support, and heaping burdens upon the people often least capable of bearing them. Insurance Era is a sharply researched and fiercely written account of how and why private insurance and its actuarial market logic came to be so deeply lodged in American visions of social welfare.
Anglo-American Life Insurance, 1800–1914 Volume 2
Author: Timothy Alborn
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351576518
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 453
Book Description
By the eve of the Great Depression, there existed in America the equivalent of a policy for every man, woman and child, and in Britain it grew from its narrow aristocratic base to cover all social classes. This primary resource collection is the first comparative history of British and American life insurance industries.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351576518
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 453
Book Description
By the eve of the Great Depression, there existed in America the equivalent of a policy for every man, woman and child, and in Britain it grew from its narrow aristocratic base to cover all social classes. This primary resource collection is the first comparative history of British and American life insurance industries.
Anglo-American Life Insurance, 1800-1914 Volume 3
Author: Timothy Alborn
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351576496
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 1472
Book Description
By the eve of the Great Depression, there existed in America the equivalent of a policy for every man, woman and child, and in Britain it grew from its narrow aristocratic base to cover all social classes. This primary resource collection is the first comparative history of British and American life insurance industries.
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351576496
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 1472
Book Description
By the eve of the Great Depression, there existed in America the equivalent of a policy for every man, woman and child, and in Britain it grew from its narrow aristocratic base to cover all social classes. This primary resource collection is the first comparative history of British and American life insurance industries.
Black Business in the New South
Author: Walter B. Weare
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822313380
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 356
Book Description
At the turn of the century, the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company became the "world's largest Negro business." Located in Durham, North Carolina, which was known as the "Black Wall Street of America," this business came to symbolize the ideas of racial progress, self-help, and solidarity in America. Walter B. Weare's social and intellectual history, originally published in 1973 (University of Illinois Press) and updated here to include a new introduction, still stands as the definitive history of black business in the New South. Drawing on a wide range of sources—including personal papers of the company's leaders and oral history interviews—Weare traces the company's story from its ideological roots in the eighteenth century to its economic success in the twentieth century.
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 9780822313380
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 356
Book Description
At the turn of the century, the North Carolina Mutual Life Insurance Company became the "world's largest Negro business." Located in Durham, North Carolina, which was known as the "Black Wall Street of America," this business came to symbolize the ideas of racial progress, self-help, and solidarity in America. Walter B. Weare's social and intellectual history, originally published in 1973 (University of Illinois Press) and updated here to include a new introduction, still stands as the definitive history of black business in the New South. Drawing on a wide range of sources—including personal papers of the company's leaders and oral history interviews—Weare traces the company's story from its ideological roots in the eighteenth century to its economic success in the twentieth century.
Structuring the Information Age
Author: JoAnne Yates
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801880865
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 380
Book Description
Structuring the Information Age provides insight into the largely unexplored evolution of information processing in the commercial sector and the underrated influence of corporate users in shaping the history of modern technology. JoAnne Yates examines how life insurance firms—where good record-keeping and repeated use of massive amounts of data were crucial—adopted and shaped information processing technology through most of the twentieth century. The book analyzes this process beginning with tabulating technology, the most immediate predecessor of the computer, and continuing through the 1970s with early computers. Yates elaborates two major themes: the reciprocal influence of information technology and its use, and the influence of past practices on the adoption and use of new technologies. In the 1950s, insurance industry leaders recognized that computers would enable them to integrate processes previously handled separately, but they also understood that they would have to change their ways of working profoundly to achieve this integration. When it came to choosing equipment and applications, most companies ultimately preferred a gradual, incremental migration to an immediate and radical transformation. In tracing this process, Yates shows that IBM's successful transition from tabulators to computers in part reflected that vendor's ability to provide large customers such as insurance companies with the necessary products to allow gradual change. In addition, this detailed industry case study helps explain information technology's so-called productivity paradox, showing that firms took roughly two decades to achieve the initial computerization and process integration that the industry set as objectives in the 1950s.
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801880865
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 380
Book Description
Structuring the Information Age provides insight into the largely unexplored evolution of information processing in the commercial sector and the underrated influence of corporate users in shaping the history of modern technology. JoAnne Yates examines how life insurance firms—where good record-keeping and repeated use of massive amounts of data were crucial—adopted and shaped information processing technology through most of the twentieth century. The book analyzes this process beginning with tabulating technology, the most immediate predecessor of the computer, and continuing through the 1970s with early computers. Yates elaborates two major themes: the reciprocal influence of information technology and its use, and the influence of past practices on the adoption and use of new technologies. In the 1950s, insurance industry leaders recognized that computers would enable them to integrate processes previously handled separately, but they also understood that they would have to change their ways of working profoundly to achieve this integration. When it came to choosing equipment and applications, most companies ultimately preferred a gradual, incremental migration to an immediate and radical transformation. In tracing this process, Yates shows that IBM's successful transition from tabulators to computers in part reflected that vendor's ability to provide large customers such as insurance companies with the necessary products to allow gradual change. In addition, this detailed industry case study helps explain information technology's so-called productivity paradox, showing that firms took roughly two decades to achieve the initial computerization and process integration that the industry set as objectives in the 1950s.