BLET 160th Anniversary: Insurance Association answers a genuine need in 1867

A most important milestone in BLE history occurred on December 3, 1867, when the Locomotive Engineers Mutual Life Insurance Association was established at Port Jervis, New York. It was patterned after the Insurance Association of the Metropolitan Police of New York City. Beyond the requirement that all policyholders be members of the BLE, the Association remained entirely independent of the Brotherhood. It had its own constitution and bylaws, its own staff, and its own separate meetings. Of the roughly 8,000 members of the Brotherhood in 1867, about 3,000 carried insurance policies. The need for such insurance for the protection of the engineers’ families was obvious when it is recalled that a locomotive engineer in those days was engaged in one of the most hazardous occupations in the land.

Grand Chief Engineer Wilson noted in his annual address in 1873: “The frequent deaths that are occurring among our members, many of them sudden and without warning, should remind us all of the uncertainty of life . . . Engineers above all other classes of workmen are liable to sudden death.” An engineer writing in the June 1868 Journal, recalls that in 1867 he made application for insurance to an old and reliable insurance company. He stated: “I did not receive a policy, simply because I was a Locomotive Engineer, which they classified as ‘extra hazardous.’”