Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/785

Rh and concentrated risks by great cities. It shows a long and honorable record without the levy of a single assessment. Yet what owner of city property, with Boston and Chicago in his memory, would care to become liable for fourteen times the net premium of a normal year?

While the direct extension of mutual underwriting has recognized limits, still its methods afford lessons of utmost value not only to owners of buildings, but to architects and builders. Stock-insurance companies usually accept risks as they find them, and base the rate of a premium on the assumed degree of combustibility. Mutual insurance has taken its chief mission to be the prevention of combustibility, by a judicious co-operation between owner, architect, and builder. It has demonstrated that this co operation accrues greatly to the owner's advantage in money saved and safety increased. The cardinal principle of mutual insurance is to minimize risk by a strict examination into the causes of fires. This rule should be carried out in every city and town of the Union, by properly appointed officers, clothed with necessary authority. It matters not how petty a blaze may be—its investigation may yield information of immense value. An unsuspected source of danger may to-day burn ten dollars' worth of property, and next month consume a million. An electric current crossing water rendered conductive by a trifling chemical admixture; fine flour-dust diffused in a mill; sparks struck by a wheel or tool of metal—these are among the hazards for which special safeguards have been devised and applied within recent years. There is nothing strange about these hazards, now that they have been pointedly brought into notice. They were simply common neglected matters, until overwhelming disaster showed the necessity of prevention. In small fires or great, investigation into causes should be thorough, that means of safety, if such exist, be ascertained and enforced. Mr. Atkinson is of opinion that fires not preventable need not cost more than one tenth of one per cent per annum of the value of property insured. All beyond that, he holds to be the price of faulty construction, inadequate appliances, and imperfect discipline in their management.

While mutual underwriters have been exploring the essential principles of sound construction, they have arrived at much as applicable to warehouse or hotel as to cotton or paper mill. They have pointed out the risk of gingerbread cornices, hollow floors, and high-pitched roofs. They justly inveigh against the common practice of setting pine Mansards on lofty structures. They give instance after instance where solid party-walls and self-closing hatchways have saved property, by holding a fire within manageable bounds, and keeping it in a horizontal area, where it can be successfully fought. They have determined the best appliances wherewith to combat flame, and how they can be best placed and used. An important principle in the construction of these appliances has been evolved as a result of their labors—