STATE FIRE INSURANCE.

Hastings Standard, Issue 512, 29 December 1897, Page 3

STATE FIRE INSURANCE.

[To The Editob.] Sir,—ln your issue of the 21st inst. yon advoeate State fire insurance, and complain of the enormous rates charged by the insurance companies doing business here. Perhaps you may not be aware that for the past five or six years Hastings has been a dead loss to those companies, so much so that it was almost decided at one of the insurance conferences held some eighteen months or two years ago to withdraw altogether from Hastings. You say that when the steam fire engine was procured the rates should have been lowered. As a matter of fact the rates were lowered, but as the fires increased the rates had again to be raised to meet the heavy losses of the companies. Were the State to take lip fire insurance, why should we suppose it would run it at a dead loss for the benefit of Hastings at the expense of other parts of the colony ? When Government Life Insurance was started, were the rates so much lower than those of the insurance companies '? So far as I can see, they are pretty much the same, taking everything into consideration. Do insurance companies pay higher dividends to their shareholders than companies doing any other sort of business ? Most of the gas companies pay high dividends, which come out of the consumers' pockets. Why then should not Government come to the rescue and start the manufacture of gas ? Why should it not open grocery and drapery stores in order to prevent storekeepers from making a " pile? " In short, why not take up every industry and hunt away all enterprise and capital from the colony ? It is on record that proprietors of newspapers have made fortunes. Could not Government come to the rescue there also, and drive them out of the colony ? State fire insurance would doubtless create a number of comfortable billets for Government supporters, but that it would lower the rates is a matter of doubt to me. Before concluding, I may say that were it not for the steam fire engine here I do not believe that the insurance companies would have continued to accept risks in Hastings. Should youj.- space admit of it, I shall be pleased to see this letter in print, as I cannot see the justice of dropping on any one particular line of business. Surely there are enough insurance companies competing to bring rates down as low as they can be brought in justice to •oaceholders, who expect as good a percentage on their money as they could obtain in any other investment.—l am, &q. Fma Pi*?,