Insurance Week

What lbs. are to mining men, kw. hrs. to utility men, ft. to lumbermen, $ are to life insurance men. Few bodies of men can swallow such huge figures without blinking as the assembled Association of Life Insurance Presidents, a body representing 68 companies doing over 90% of the U. S. business. Figures they barkened to at their Manhattan convention last week included: $3,000,000,000--the increase in assets of companies holding 86% of the assets of all U. S. firms since 1929. $19,000,000,000--the present total of assets. $103,700,000,000--insurance now in force. 65,000,000--the present number of policy holders. $14,700,000,000--new insurance written this year (23.7% below 1929). $1,924,666,000--paid on death claims since 1929. $2,048,000,000--the amount of policy loans since 1929 (now 18.4% of assets). Good news was the fact that the average expectancy of life of a newborn U. S. babe is now 60 years, up five whole years from 1922. While the insurance presidents were hearing these figures a plan was being shaped which may elevate a newcomer to power in the industry. He is Julius Howland Barnes, close friend and onetime business partner of Herbert Clark Hoover. Everybody knew who Mr. Barnes was in 1917 to 1919 when he sold the grain crops as head of the U. S. Food Administration Grain Corp., when he was Chairman of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce (1929-31) and when he headed the President's Business Survey Committee in 1930. But no publicity has ever attended his private business affairs. Although Julius Barnes was chosen Duluth's "First Citizen" in 1930, he has had little time to spend there. Last spring Mr. Barnes & associates quietly acquired control of Insuranceshares Corp. and Insuranceshares Certificates Inc., two investment trusts once sponsored by United Founders and listed on the New York Stock Exchange. These two companies owned securities worth $9,000,000 (cost: $28,000,000), including many big single blocks of insurance stocks. Mr. Barnes became chairman of both companies and while no statement of his policy has been made it was thought that he would concentrate the $9,000,000 in a few companies. One deal was made last week. The Barnes group acquired control of Kentucky Home Life, a company which has $130,000,000 worth of policies in force and which was organized to reinsure the business of Inter-Southern Insurance Co., a concern which was felled by the crash of Rogers Clark Caldwell. The rumored price was $1,350,000. The most acute angle to the deal was that Kentucky Home owns 29% interest in Missouri State Life of St. Louis, a company with $1,100,000,000 worth of policies outstanding and ranked as the biggest life insurance concern west of the Mississippi. Banker Caldwell bought largely into Missouri State Life and then transferred his holdings to Inter-Southern. During the past two years all has not been harmonious in Missouri State Life. To straighten it out, Mr. Barnes placed Kentucky Home's 29% interest in a five-year voting trust which has sufficient other shares to represent control of Missouri State. The voting trust consists of Mr. Barnes, now chairman of the company, William Thompson Nardin, president of the company and of $13,000,000-in-assets Pet Milk Co., and Tom K. Smith, president of St. Louis' Boatmen's National Bank.

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