AMERICAN FIRE RISKS.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 560, 19 April 1913, Page 6

AMERICAN FIRE RISKS.

A sensational series of articles from the pen of Mr A. E. McFarlane was commenced in "Collier's Weekly" last month. Mr McFarlane sets out to prove that the production of "commercial fires" has become a regular business in big American cities, and that there ere gangs of paid incendiaries working in almost every large com mercial centre in the United States. The annual fire loss of the United States, Mr McFarlane says, is relatively eight to thirteen times as great as that of any nation in Western Europe. For years the newspapers have been attributing the high American fire rate to "American carelessness," to "flimsy construction," and to "insufficient fire protection." In Mr McFarlane's opinion, however,- none of these causes will stand the test of investigation. While o'-.her nations build mostly in wood, America builds all hor greater structures of brick, stone, steel, or cement. The fire departments of most Continental cities are slow old-fashioned and inadequate, while in America every year shows an improvement in the personnel training, discipline, and apparatus of the fire departments. Mr McFarlane says that the stock fire insurance companies are responsible for a system which encourages crime and destruction. In other forms of big business the representatives of capital, the central bodies, have control over their agents, but in the fire insurance business alone the agents have control of the central bodies. -Through ths faults of the system brokers and agents are enabled to profit through the assumption of bad risks, by issuing policies to men with a proved reputation for arson, by insufficient inspection of properties and by overinsurance.