The immense growth of Industrial Assurance in Great Britain during the last 80 years is a matter of common knowledge. A plain record of the technical developments which have from the first formed an unobtrusive background would make an interesting story. We should read of the great cost of financing expansion, of the prolonged and ultimately successful struggle to raise the reserves to a satisfactory actuarial standard, and finally, of surpluses sufficiently large to cause actuaries and others furiously to think in arriving at satisfactory methods of distributing them.

There is neither space nor time to tell the story here. We must begin by accepting the fact that relatively large surpluses are now commonly revealed on the valuation of Industrial Assurance funds and that various problems have to be solved in deciding upon the best methods to be adopted in dealing with them.