But how, it may be asked, could the company's actuary know that the man's
house would last until he had paid in more than its insured value in
premiums--more, that is to say, than the company would have to pay back?
He could not, but from his statistics he could know how many houses in ten
thousand of that kind burned in their first year, how many in their
second, their third, and so on. That was all that he needed to know, the
house-owners knowing nothing about it. He fixed his rates according to the
facts, and the occasional loss of a bet in an individual instance did not
affect the certainty of a general winning. Like other professional
gamblers, the company expected to lose sometimes, yet knew that in the
long run it _must_ win; which meant that in any special case it would
_probably_ win. With a thousand gambling games open to him in which the
chances were equal, the infatuated dupe chose to "sit into" one where they
were against him! Deceived by the cappers' fairy tales, dazed by the
complex and incomprehensible "calculations" put forth for his undoing, and
having ever in the ear of his imagination the crackle and roar of the
impoverishing flames, he grasped at the hope of beating--in an unwelcome
way, it is true--"the man that kept the table." He must have known for a
certainty that if the company could afford to insure him he could not
afford to let it. He must have known that the whole body of the insured
paid to the insurers more than the insurers paid to them; otherwise the
business could not have been conducted. This they cheerfully admitted;
indeed, they proudly affirmed it. In fact, insurance companies were the
only professional gamblers that had the incredible hardihood to parade
their enormous winnings as an inducement to play against their game. These
winnings ("assets," they called them) proved their ability, they said, to
pay when they lost; and that was indubitably true. What they did not
prove, unfortunately, was the _will_ to pay, which from the imperfect
court records of the period that have come down to us, appears frequently
to have been lacking. Gakler relates that in the instance of the city of