ABSTRACT
The industrial offices quickly became by far the biggest players, controlling more than two-thirds of the market by 1910, with almost half of that in the hands of Prudential. Even where reformers, philanthropists and legislators were sympathetic to the impulse to provide for a respectful death and many of them were not the funeral insurance industry had a dreadful reputation. Funeral business was of less significance in itself than it was for enlarging both the appetite for the practical things the sum assured might provide and the market, since sellable and inexpensive funeral policies might lead to other business. Warming up prospective buyers with an emotional appeal was an established sales strategy long before the early twentieth-century boom in salesmanship literature. Appeals based on fear, flattery, envy and love can be found in the promotional relics that have survived three centuries or more.
