chief of the fire department, took out the first perpetual policy in this company. While doing a general business the company has made somewhat of a specialty in perpetual insurance and has now deposits of $693,288. Total assets January 1, $1,294,839. List of officers and directors: president, Robert B. Beath; vicepresident, Joseph L. Caven; secretary, Dennis J. Sweeney; assistant secretary, William G. Wible; directors, Henry Bumm, Wm. M. Singerly, Chas. M. Lukens, Alfred Moore, Holstein D. Haven, Henry B. Tener, Geo. B. Bonnell, William Wood, Jacob E. Ridgway. United States Fire Insurance Company, New York city. Organized 1824; capital, $250,000. W. W. Underhill, president, W. H. Griffin, secretary. United States Industrial Insurance Company, Newark, N. J. Organized 1888; capital, $280,000. F. B. Mandeville, president, T. E. Gay, secretary. United States Life Insurance Company, New York city. Organized 1850; capital, $440,000. G. H. Burford, president, C. P. Fraleigh, secretary. United States Mutual Accident Association, The, of New York is the oldest of the associations doing an accident business on the mutual plan. The idea of this form of accident insurance originated with this company, and has been developed as the company has grown and gained in experience of what an accident insurance company could safely do. In the first years of its existence the association provided for the payment of $25 per week, up to a limit of twenty-six weeks, for disabling injury, and $5,000 in case of death from accident. It established limits of travel and residence confined to the civilized portions of the United States and Canada, and required a special permit for any ocean voyage. As experience showed the possibility of more liberal conditions, these terms were changed from time to time. At present the association offers a variety of forms of accident insurance. It makes every policy written a simple contract, containing only what are believed to be necessary conditions or restrictions. Restrictions as to travel in or to almost any part of the civilized world have been removed from its policies. In "preferred" occupations its policies cover, as incident to a "preferred" classification, accidental injuries sustained while traveling for business or pleasure, discharging the ordinary duties of gentleman about his house or grounds, or while engaged for pleasure or recreation in amateur base ball playing, bicycling, yachting, fishing, gunning, or other sports and athletic exercises. Under one form of preferred" policy indemnity is provided, not only for such casualties as are covered by the ordinary accident policy, but also for fatal injuries resulting from sunstroke, lifting, freezing, gas, poison, somnambulism, or choking in swallowing, a class of accidents which are not usually covered by accident policies. The benefits under this policy are $5,000 for death by accident, the same amount for loss of sight, of two hands or two feet, or hand and foot, half that amount for loss of right hand or either leg, $1,000 for loss of one foot or left nand, $2,500 for permanent total disability, and $25 weekly indemnity up to a limit of fifty-two weeks. Premium calls on this policy amount to $24 a year. Another policy for the same amount of premium calls gives double the above amounts in case the accident occurs to a traveler on a conveyance moved by steam, electricity, or cable, and the above amounts for all casualties otherwise occurring and covered by the ordinary accident insurance policy. This policy is peculiarly liberal in that the double benefits are not conditioned on the wrecking of the conveyance, but are payable whenever the injured policy-holder receives such injuries while a passenger. The association has furnished insurance during its existence to over 266,000 policy-holders, and has paid to its policy-holders, in cash benefits, $3,444,833.93. Beginning with a membership at the end of its first year of only 65, at the end of the second year of 684, it has grown until it reported at the close of business in 1893, 50,877 members. It made during the year an average daily payment for loss claims of over $1,500, and has more policy-holders and a larger premium income than any other company doing a purely individual accident business. Beside the home office at 320, 322, and 324 Broadway, New York, where most of its business is transacted, the association maintains offices and agencies in all of the principal cities of the thirty-three states in which it is doing business. Its reports for the year 1893 shows that it paid to 3,575 claimants, as the result of accidental injuries, $446,295.20; that it has assets of $295,083.65; and insurance in force amounting to $267,957,600. The business record is: The present officers of the association are: Charles B. Peet, president; Winsor B. French, vice-president; Wm. Bro. Smith, secretary; Calvin T. Hazen, treasurer. The directors are: Charles B. Peet, president National Mutual Building and Loan Association of New York; Winsor B. French, attorney, Saratoga Springs, New York; Leopold Wormser, Harlem & Westchester Clothing Company, New York city; J. W. Hinkley, Poughkeepsie News Press Company, Poughkeepsie, New York; William Gibson, director of agencies, National Mutual Building and Loan Association, New York; Hon. B. W. Woodward, 320 Broadway, New York; Lewis D. Beck, 58 Cedar street, New York; John H. C. Nevius, Nevius & Haverland, 500 West 42d street, New York; George J. Peet, attorney, 49 Chambers street, New York city. United Underwriters Insurance Company, of Atlanta, Ga., reinsured its business in the Atlanta Home of the same city, in January, 1893. It was organized in 1886 and was controlled by substantially the same persons in control of the reinsuring company. Universal Mercantile Schedule. In the latter part of 1891, four underwriters, F. C. Moore, James A. Silvey, George W. Babb, Jr., and E. G. Richards, were appointed a committee to prepare a schedule for rating the mercantile business of the country. They were assisted by co-operating committees nominated from important rating organizations, such as the New England Exchange, New York State Association, National Board of Fire Underwriters, and others, and, after numerous sessions and months of labor, issued, in successive stages of proof, a form of schedule which has been carefully reviewed by most of the underwriters of the country. The first "proof" was a short form of schedule, intended to facilitate the easy rating of risks, without much detail, but the committee became convinced that whatever time was saved in studying a short schedule would be more than lost afterwards in applying it, as the rating expert would be delayed at every stage which required consideration or thought. Therefore the committee found it necessary to go into every detail of hazard, leaving as little as possible to the judgment of a rating expert, so as not only to save his time and thought at every stage of the rating process, but to prevent, also, those inconsistencies of rating in risks of one and the same hazard, which so often produce dissatisfaction on the part of owners and result in appeals for legislative interference with rating organizations. Before the committee had issued their third proof" they had abandoned all idea of a so-called short schedule, and had addressed themselves assiduously to the task of preparing one which should recognize every feature of a risk which ought to be considered, either in fixing a rate or determining a line. They submitted, at the close of 1892, the sixth or final edition as the result of their labor with the suggestion that the only test which should be applied to determine the question as to whether or not it is unnecessarily long is that if there be a single item in it which ought not to be considered by an underwriter in fixing his price or line, it should have been omitted, but if there be no such item, then the schedule cannot be too long. It was claimed by some critics that a schedule could not be prepared which would properly rate risks in all parts of the country. The committee believed otherwise, holding that local reasons could be found everywhere for abnormal losses, either in faults of construction, de fective materials, deficiencies in fire departments, or other physical features, and that, failing to discover local physical reasons for abnormal loss, the previous fire record for a five-year period should govern the fixing of the key rate of a city to cover any possible moral or unknown hazard. To this end they provided for an increase of the key rate of a city by adding to it twenty per cent. of its amount for each one dollar of loss in excess of $5 per $1,000 of insurance. The percentage of loss to premium is, of course, a changeable and unreliable quantity, varying with the rate obtained. The amount at risk and the amount of loss per each $1,000 at risk, on the other hand, present reliable bases for determining what the rate of premium should be. The working schedule does not charge for all variations from the standard, which is ideal and educational; being designed to be handed to a builder or owner contemplating the erection of a building, as an explanation of safe construction. Some of the specifications cannot be examined or tested afterwards, such as filling in hollow partitions at each floor, for example, but the recommendation may, nevertheless, secure them at the hands of a conscientious owner. Having established the key rate or starting point of a city by determining the rate of a building of standard construction in such city, the next process or step is to determine the variations or deficiencies of the particular building to be rated from standard construction. The rate of a standard building in a standard city, or under the best possible surroundings and conditions, was fixed by the committee at 25 cents. Fire departments, under the universal schedule, receive three-fold treatment, whereas all other systems of rating give them single treatment, rating all risks in a city as if they shared equally in the benefit of a fire department, whereas acres of buildings and stocks may be on the lines of small and insufficient water pipes and remote from engine service and therefore inadequately rated. The universal schedule gives all risks in the city the credit of fire departments to the minimum extent, only, in the key rate. It is of course an advantage to a risk that the city in which it is located should have a fire department and waterworks even though the building may be two miles from a water pipe or fire engine house, since if a fire should start two and a half miles away it might be prevented from spreading to the risk. Only to this minimum extent, however, in the key rate should it get the credit for a fire department. A fire department for the maximum benefit is brought home to each risk by deduction for proximity to hydrants. Under the old systems of rating, risks on the line of 8-inch or larger water mains are paying for risks without water mains, or on the line of 4-inch mains. Fire departments are treated separately as to buildings and stocks, a clear necessity if correct results are to be secured, for the benefits of water throwing differ as to each. Exceptional and unusual features of construction and fire extinguishing appliances are provided for by deductions. The property owner may be safely trusted to remind the rating expert of any feature of his risk which would entitle him to a deduction; but not more than nine property owners in ten would call the expert's attention to a fault overlooked in order that a charge should be made. The treatment of exceptional features of fire departments by deductions, instead of by charges, makes it possible to handle non-fire-department towns, whose key rate would be too high if built upon ideal standards. The next important feature of the universal schedule is the treatment of stocks as compared with buildings, and this, in view of the astounding inconsistencies of rating throughout the country, may well be considered the most important of all. The committee find there are at present four ways of rating stocks throughout the United States. One is to add to the final building rate, including the charge for exposure, a fixed sum of thirty cents- no matter what the character of the building, and no matter what the character of the fire department to get the stock rate. A second plan is to add 20 cents, a third to add 10 cents, and a fourth to add nothing, the stock rate being, in some cases, the same as the building rate, while in others it is actually less, even in fire department towns. The only advantage afforded to a stock by a building of the best construction is the advantage of protecting it from an outside fire, or of preventing a fire from spreading from one floor to another. Even a fire-proof building is of no other advantage than this to its stock, which may be as effectually consumed within its fire proof walls as would the contents of a stove. A stove is fire-proof, but its contents are not. Indeed, fire-proof buildings, with air-shafts, elevators, stairways, etc., to insure drafts from cellar to roof, perform the office of stoves, for the effectual cremation of their contents. Mr. Moore, in his analysis of the schedule, from which the above is condensed, says: "The schedule will expedite the rating process. An expert can rate a risk more quickly with it than without it. By rating a risk is, of course, meant the fixing of a proper price or figure upon each feature of it, and an inspection of the building from roof to cellar floor. Any test of comparative speed in rating should require, without argument, this scratch' line as a starting point; the expert is to make the tour of the building, is to observe everything that ought to be seen, and to fix a price upon it-the uniform price for the same feature in all cases. He will rate more quickly with the schedule for the reason that he will lose no time in considering or estimating any detail. "It will encourage safe construction. "If the schedule, as the total result of raising the rates on the worst risks, as well as lowering them on the best, did not secure one dollar of premium in excess of that now collected, it would, nevertheless, be a direct advantage to the insurance companies in the respect of improving cities and of preventing by its operation some of the enormous losses resulting from sweeping conflagrations. The prevention of fires is not less a source of profit than an increased premium account. If one-half the conflagration losses to date could have been saved, the companies in this direction alone would have secured a fair profit on the business. Witness the Boston fire of November, 1889, as compared with that of November, 1872. In the pathway of the '89 fire was a building of proper construction, against whose side walls the fire department was able to hold the fire. The difference in loss in |