294 NATURE OF CAPITAL AND INCOME [Cmar. XVI 
which he would receive nothing; whereas, if he insures, he 
receives this $500 income less his premium up to the date 
of the fire, and afterward the income from the indemnity 
paid him by the company. 
§ 20 
The same principles apply to other forms of insurance, 
as marine insurance, which, by consolidating in an in- 
surance company the risk on a large number of vessels, 
reduces for the individual even the perils of the sea to 
relative certainty and regularity; or as steam boiler in- 
surance, which in a similar manner treats the risks of 
explosion; or as plate-glass insurance, burglar insurance, 
live stock insurance, hail and cyclone insurance, fidelity 
insurance, accident insurance, employer’s liability insur- 
ance, and, above all, life insurance." This form of insur- 
ance, like the other forms, tends to steady the income of 
the beneficiary. If a wife holds insurance on her hus- 
band’s life, the consequence is that, although what he 
gives her during his life is somewhat diminished, her in- 
come will not suddenly cease at his death. The ten- 
dency of insurance here as elsewhere is to make regularity 
out of irregularity, relative certainty out of relative un- 
certainty; and where, under the form of insurance con- 
tracts, the opposite result follows, the case is not one of 
true insurance, but tends to become one of gambling. 
Thus, if a person insures the life of some one in whom he 
has no financial interest, he is merely gambling on that per- 
son’s life. Some years ago in Michigan there was an abuse 
of this type called “graveyard insurance.” Speculators 
went through the form of insuring the lives of certain 
old persons, in other words of betting on their deaths, 
a procedure not only vicious as gambling, but calculated 
also to lead to crime. The same considerations apply to 
fire insurance, where a person insures a building in which 
1 See Appendix to Chap. XVI, § 4.