The Artificial Intelligence tools (like ChatGPT, Claude, CoPilot, Gemini, Grok, Meta, Grok, and Perplexity) can provide much useful and nearly instant information about subjects in a concise format, especially when they have been pre-trained on a large volume of information about the subjects.
1) My father, Frederick Walton Seaver (1911-1983) was a Prudential Life Insurance agent from 1946 to 1971 in San Diego. I wondered what his job entailed, and told Anthropic Claude what I thought I knew about the job based on my memories.
2) My Prompt was: "Please explain what a life insurance agent for Prudential like my father did in his work from 1946 to 1971. I know that he had an office in Point Loma in San Diego where he worked several days a week, reporting to a supervisor along with other agents. I know that he had a "route" (a "debit"?) in Pacific Beach in San Diego that he was assigned. I know that he had to find new clients (policyholders), get contracts signed, receive monthly cash payments by visiting the clients, transfer the money to the company, and reconcile the money received and paid in his "debit" book to submit to the company. My sense is he worked several days each week finding new clients (door-to-door?) and meeting existing clients. Some days he worked from home, and worked in the evening, to work on the debit books. How much was he paid in, say, 1955? Did he receive a finder's fee or a reward for getting new clients?"
The Anthropic Claude Sonnet 4 response was:
Your father worked as a "debit agent" for Prudential, which was a very common and important role in life insurance from the 1940s through the 1970s. This system was how most working-class and middle-class Americans purchased life insurance during that era.
The Debit System
A "debit" was a specific geographic territory assigned to an agent, containing existing policyholders who paid small weekly or monthly premiums. Your father's Pacific Beach route would have included hundreds of households where he collected payments door-to-door. The term "debit" came from the accounting practice - each unpaid premium was a debit on the company's books until collected.
Daily Work Routine
Your understanding is quite accurate. A typical week involved:
Collection Days (3-4 days/week): Walking or driving his Pacific Beach route, visiting each policyholder's home to collect premiums (usually 25¢ to $2 per week). He'd update their receipt book and his debit book with each payment.
Prospecting Days (1-2 days/week): Door-to-door canvassing for new customers, often following up on leads or referrals. This required significant skill in building rapport and explaining insurance benefits to families who often had limited education about financial products.
Office/Administrative Time: Reconciling collections, depositing money, meeting with supervisors, and completing paperwork. Much of this administrative work happened at home in the evenings.
Compensation (circa 1955)
Based on industry standards of that era, your father likely earned:
- Base salary: $50-75 per week (roughly $600-900 in today's dollars)
- Commission on new business: 25-50% of the first year's premium
- Renewal commissions: 5-15% on existing policies
- Collection fees: Small percentage of premiums collected
Total annual income for a successful debit agent in 1955 would have been approximately $4,000-6,000 (equivalent to $45,000-70,000 today). Top performers could earn more.
Rewards and Incentives
Yes, Prudential had extensive incentive programs:
- Production bonuses for writing new policies
- Persistency bonuses for keeping policies active
- Annual conventions and trips for top performers
- Recognition programs with pins, plaques, and company publications featuring successful agents
The Social Role
Debit agents like your father served as financial advisors to working-class families who had little access to banks or investment advice. They built long-term relationships, often helping families through difficult times by arranging payment plans or explaining policy benefits. Many agents worked the same territory for decades, becoming trusted community figures.
This system began declining in the 1960s-70s as bank branches expanded, direct mail marketing grew, and Americans became more comfortable with financial transactions by mail rather than face-to-face collection.
3( My second prompt was: "Was it a weekly collection or a monthly collection? What was the average life insurance policy value at death in 1955 for a family earning $5000?"
The Anthropicx Claude Sonnet 4 response was:
Based on my knowledge of the debit insurance system and the limited search results, I can provide you with the specific details you're asking about:
Collection Schedule: Weekly, Not Monthly
The collections were weekly, not monthly. This was fundamental to the "industrial" or "debit" insurance model. Prudential's early policyholders paid premiums as low as "three cents a week" (Prudential Financial - Wikipedia) according to historical records. Your father would have visited each household on his Pacific Beach route every week on the same day - for example, all his Monday customers on Mondays, Tuesday customers on Tuesdays, etc.
The weekly system served several purposes:
- Made insurance affordable for working-class families earning weekly wages
- Ensured regular contact to prevent policy lapses
- Provided steady cash flow for the insurance company
- Built personal relationships between agent and policyholder
Policy Values in 1955
For a family earning $5,000 annually in 1955 (which was actually above the median household income of about $4,400), typical industrial life insurance policies were quite modest:
Common policy amounts:
- $500-$1,000 for the primary breadwinner
- $250-$500 for the spouse
- $100-$300 for each child
These amounts seem small by today's standards, but they served specific purposes:
- Cover funeral expenses ($300-$500 was typical)
- Provide 3-6 months of family living expenses
- Pay off small debts or medical bills
Premium costs: A $1,000 policy might cost $0.50-$1.00 per week, making it affordable for working families.
The emphasis was on guaranteed acceptance and burial coverage rather than income replacement. Many families carried multiple small policies rather than one large policy. Your father likely sold dozens of $500-$1,000 policies rather than a few large ones.
This system prioritized accessibility and consistent coverage over maximum protection, reflecting the financial realities and limited options available to working-class families in the 1950s.
4) Anthropic Claude searched its' pre-trained information and online resources, provided the answers I needed, and validated my memories of my father's work life. I am very tempted to ask Claude to "Please create a dialogue of my father knocking on a potential life insurance customer's door and trying to sell an insurance policy."
5) Now I understand the job better and why my father had to work every day, either in the office, on his debit, and at home, and why the adding machine on his home desk was the most important tool he had. I did not know any of the job description or financial details that I asked about. I didn't know that they were weekly collections, I've always thought that they were monthly. I've always thought that he was a pretty good salesman. I know his income in 1961 and it is reasonably close to the 1955 estimate above with inflation factored in.
We lived in the Burlingame neighborhood of San Diego, just east of Balboa Park. My father's debit was in north Pacific Beach and south La Jolla. That was about 14 miles each way to and from his debit (I'm guessing that, before the freeway system of the 1960s, he went up 30th Street to University Avenue, west on University to Washington Street, west on Washington to Pacific Highway, north on Pacific Highway to Grand Avenue, west on Grand to Ingraham Street, north on Ingraham to Turquoise Street and then to his debit along La Jolla Blvd - probably a 40 minute ride or more in the 1950s). He (or the company?) bought a new car every three years or so in the 1950s. Four trips a week to Pacific Beach, and one trip to the office, plus weekend trips for the family adds up to at least 10,000 miles a year.
6) I like how the LLMs work - they answer the question, they organize the answers into sections, and they provide descriptive text that makes sense. They are well-trained on historic events and social history.
7) Do you know the details oif your father's or mother's job in the 1950s and 1960s? Ask AI !
Now I'm wondering about my mother's English teaching experiences in the early 1940s when she was just out of college and before she married my father.
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Links to my blog posts about using Artificial Intelligence are on my Randy's AI and Genealogy page. Links to AI information and articles about Artificial Intelligence in Genealogy by other genealogists are on my AI and Genealogy Compendium page.
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