Elizur Wright

Elizur Wright (1804-1885) in 1883, from New England Magazine, 1890. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Elizur Wright (12 February 1804 - 22 November 1885) was an American mathematician and abolitionist. He is sometimes described as the "father of life insurance" for his pioneering work on actuarial tables. He is also sometimes called the "father of insurance regulation", as he campaigned that life insurance companies must keep reserves, and served as Massachusetts Insurance Commissioner.

Life

Youth

Wright was part of a devout Christian family who held anti-slavery beliefs and instilled in him a strict moral character. In 1826, Wright graduated from Yale University and began to teach; first in Groton, Massachusetts; then at Hudson, Ohio, as a mathematics and philosophy professor at Western Reserve College. It was during this time that Wright first encountered the writings of William Lloyd Garrison. Garrison's pamphlet, "Thoughts on African Colonization," persuaded Wright to believe that slavery should immediately be abolished, and that the American Colonization Society's effort to deport free blacks to an African colony was immoral and ineffective.

Mathematics career

In 1829 he became Professor of Mathematics at Western Reserve College. According to Frank Preston Stearns, he became interested in life insurance as a mathematical study and read "the best works on life insurance ... with the same ardor with which young ladies devour an exciting novel."

In the spring of 1852 an insurance broker "placed an advertising booklet in his hand... Elizur Wright looked it over and perceived quickly enough that no company could undertake to do what this one pretended to and remain solvent. The booklet served him for an editorial," and he embarked on a successful crusade to reform the insurance industry.

He developed actuarial tables and the mathematics for calculating life insurance premiums. He campaigned for valuation laws requiring life insurance companies to hold sufficient reserves to guarantee that benefits would be paid, and nonforfeiture laws requiring the companies to provide cash surrender values. He also served as state commissioner of insurance for Massachusetts from 1858 to 1866.^[1]

He invented a form of cylindrical slide rule.

Abolitionist

Along with Lewis Tappan, Arthur Tappan, Theodore Weld, James Birney, and other like-minded individuals, Wright founded the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. Wright became the national secretary of the organization. At this time, the American Anti-Slavery Society espoused the immediate abolition of slavery, called for an end to all racial prejudice and equality for all. To effect this change, members practiced a policy of "moral suasion," an appeal to people's ethics in an attempt to get them to embrace abolitionism and renounce slavery as sinful.

Wright edited a large number of publications, including The Emancipator and the Quarterly Anti-Slavery Magazine. He was also involved in "The Great Postal Campaign"Template:Spaced ndasha project whose job was to distribute abolitionist material across the country. The Anti-Slavery Society was successful in recruiting agents throughout the country to spread their message, but when Garrison and others began to broaden the scope of the Society to include women's rights and took on an anti-religion, anti-government tone, Wright and others objected and began to split from the Society in 1840.

Wright became involved with the newly created Liberty Party and began to separate from the evangelists and the religious anti-slavery movements, believing that government intervention was the way to abolition. Wright was arrested and charged for aiding in the escape of the first black man to be seized in New England under the Fugitive Slave Act. He was not convicted.

He edited the Massachusetts Abolitionist and the Chronotype before eventually becoming estranged from the abolitionist movement altogether. Moreover, due partially to disappointment in the Church's lack of support for the Abolitionist cause, and to a slowly growing desire to find secular solutions to social problems, the formerly pious and devout Congregationalist became an atheist.

Public parks

He initiated and promoted plans for making Middlesex Fells, an area north of Boston bordering Malden and Melrose, into a public park; although he did not succeed during his lifetime, the plan was carried out later and Middlesex Fells is Middlesex Fells Reservation to this day.

Other activities

Wright served as an officer of the National Liberal League.

Publications

Non-fiction

• The Sin of Slavery and its Remedy: Containing some reflections on the moral influence of African colonization. New York: privately published, 1833.
• Perforations in the Latter-day Pamphlets, No. I: Universal suffrage, capital punishment, slavery. Boston: Phillips, Sampson, 1850.
• An Eye Opener for the Wide Awakes. Boston: Thayer & Eldridge, 1860.
• The Lesson of St. Domingo: How to make the war short and the peace righteous. Boston: A. Williams, 1861.
• The Programme of Peace. Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1862.
• Traps Baited with Orphans; or, What is the matter with life insurance? Boston: J.R. Osgood, 1877.
• The "Bible of Life Insurance"; being a complete photographic reprint of the original studies and official reports of Elizur Wright, "the father of life insurance" (edited by William Clendenin). Chicago: Press of Recording & Statistical Corp., 1932.

Translated

• Jean de La Fontaine, Fables (illustrated by Gustave Doré). New York: H.M. Caldwell, 1841; London: William Smith, 1842; London: Jupiter Books, 1975.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

• List of U.S. poets

References

• Appletons, Encyclopedia, Elizur Wright, http://virtualology.com/apelizurwright/, retrieved 2008-03-01 
• James, Brewer, Holy Warriors: The Abolitionists and American Slavery, http://www.anb.org/articles/15/15-00861.html, retrieved 2008-03-01 

External links

Poems

• Wright, Elizur at Representative Poetry Online.

Books

• Works by Elizur Wright at Project Gutenberg

About

• Cambridge Sketches by Frank Preston Stearns; has a section on Elizur Wright.
• Actuary Hall of Fame contains a brief account of Wright's life.

Etc.

• Elizur Wright Business Papers at Baker Library Historical Collections, Harvard Business School.
• Elizur Wright Papers, Manuscript Division, The Library of Congress.