The Insurance Incendiary.

The Insurance Incendiary.

Commenting on the fact that losses by fire in the United States and Canada for the month of November, 1877, amounte to the enormous sum of $7,216,000, the St. Louis Republican hits the right nail squarely on the head when it says: “The low rates of insurance and the indecent scramble for business by reckless underwriters, have produced their legitimate fruit of incendiarism. It has been easy for dishonest parties to get over-insurance at a comparatively trifling cost, and the companies have actually paid a premium for incendiarism, which has brought disaster and sometimes ruin to companies doing a conservative business. and to parties who are not insured at all. The underwriter who issues 3 policy upon property for more than its value is as much a party to incendiarism as the man who applies the torch, and should be held liable. It is no excuse that he did not know the value of the property or the amount of the insurance. It is his duty to know these facts, and public policy demands that he should faithfully discharge that ‘duty. An insurance officer or agent has no more right to issue a policy in excess of the value of the property, and thus endanger the safety of adjoining property, perhaps a whole square or an entire city, than he has to start a runaway team along a crowded thoroughfare.”

Commenting on the fact that losses by fire in the United States and Canada for the month of November, 1877, amounte to the enormous sum of $7,216,000, the St. Louis Republican hits the right nail squarely on the head when it says: “The low rates of insurance and the indecent scramble for business by reckless underwriters, have produced their legitimate fruit of incendiarism. It has been easy for dishonest parties to get over-insurance at a comparatively trifling cost, and the companies have actually paid a premium for incendiarism, which has brought disaster and sometimes ruin to companies doing a conservative business. and to parties who are not insured at all. The underwriter who issues 3 policy upon property for more than its value is as much a party to incendiarism as the man who applies the torch, and should be held liable. It is no excuse that he did not know the value of the property or the amount of the insurance. It is his duty to know these facts, and public policy demands that he should faithfully discharge that ‘duty. An insurance officer or agent has no more right to issue a policy in excess of the value of the property, and thus endanger the safety of adjoining property, perhaps a whole square or an entire city, than he has to start a runaway team along a crowded thoroughfare.”