ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the existing arrangements for providing pensions, insurance benefits, allowances and compensation to the vast mass of wage-earners and their dependants. It discusses the fundamentals of a social security scheme at once comprehensive, unified, consistent and based on intelligible principles. The book then examines the extraordinary dimensions of the business conducted by the collecting societies and the assurance companies engaged in the class of business which is known as Industrial Assurance. It also describes the manner in which the companies goad their agents to obtain new business, regardless of the needs of the assured or their ability to pay additional premiums and explains the reason why a continuous expansion is the necessary economic basis of the present system. When the insurance schemes were first introduced, they were all based on the fact of employment.
