As we saw in Chapter II, life insurance is a form of investment that should come first on the list of those undertaken by anyone who has dependents to provide for in the event of his demise; and the shares of the companies which provide life and other kinds of insurance will also be found to be highly attractive to anyone who wants the advantage carried by ordinary shares but seeks to reduce the risk that necessarily goes with them.
This attraction consists, as in the example of banks and discount companies, in the fact that enormous funds are handled in proportion to the capital invested, and that insurance is a great huge world-embracing business and is always going on, with a certain ebb and flow of activity and profit, but free from the wide fluctuations that may affect a particular industry. Whether trade is good or bad, those who carry it on have to insure against fire and shipwreck
