Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 74.djvu/265

Rh companies in a bet that our buildings would burn. During the year we have paid those companies in fire-insurance premiums $316,000,000. They have paid us back in adjusted losses $135,000,000, so that the difference between those two sums, $181,000,000, is the amount we have paid those companies for the privilege of getting back a little over half of the value of the property we have permitted to be destroyed by fire. Applying the paid losses of $135,000,000 on the burned value of $218,000,000, the net loss in property value was $83,000,000, the cost of fire "protection" of all kinds was $300,000,000 and the amount we have the insurance companies to guarantee us some

reimbursement for our losses was $181,000,000, so that the total of destroyed values and incidental costs of fire for the year was $564,000,000. Compare this figure that we might call destruction with the new buildings added, $510,000,000, or what we might call production, and the result is not one of which we have any reason to be proud.

Eliminating the consideration of the cost of fire-fighting, we have destroyed in property values $1,258,000,000 worth in the past five years! Again eliminating all incidental expenses fire alone has cost us in 1908, $2.72 per capita. Compare that to the fire losses in European countries and you will realize how far behind them we are in fire prevention. In France, Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Austria and