Mortality from External Causes Among Industrial Policy-holders of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company - 1911-1920

In November, 1918, we presented before this Society a paper which gave the mortality data relating to accidents, suicides and homicides among industrial policyholders of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company for the six year period, 1911 to 1916. The purpose of the present paper is to extend the tables and interpretations so as to include the years 1917 to 1920. The extension of the period under review to a whole decade makes available the facts for a much larger number of deaths, close to one hundred thousand, for which detailed data are available. It also serves to stabilize the rates for the several types of accident and more especially for the finer divisions of sex, color and age at which the number of cases is never large. Finally, the experience of the latter four years, 1917 to 1920, of the decade are of singular importance because they exhibit the facts for a group of insured wage earners during the period of industrial expansion incident to and following the war. We shall be able to see how closely the industrial population reacts to serious changes in the environment such as the stresses of war and of increased industrial activity always bring about.