Insurance Engineering Volume 5 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1903 Excerpt: ...the cost of maintenance of such services for such purposes only is insignificant, and that the value of the protection afforded is not so great as by its free concession to constitute an injustice to Vthers, is, by every particular, a misunderstanding. The improper use of services, relative to the use of which no means of securing reliable information is furnished, is a natural consequence of their existence, to which the small value frequently placed upon private fire protection largely contributes. It is not unnatural that the appropriation of a commodity esteemed to be nearly, if not quite, valueless should be regarded as a trivial matter. Wherever the misapprehension, quite common at present, as to the value and cost of fire protection is coupled with an apparent willingness of water rate payers to bear the burdens of others, the present rates or lack of rates for private fire protection and the present method of use of such services may reasonably be expected to continue. It is not wholly the well-known tendency to generosity with other people's money, but largely a lack of correct information as to the value of the service rendered, which is responsible for the discrimination frequently existing in favor of the ownership of private fire protected plants. The granting for nothing of so valuable a service to parties abundantly able to pay a reasonable price for it is not charity, and amounts to more than ordinary generosity. It amounts to an injustice to other rate payers, which, in view of the fact that in the establishment of rates for the service of a public monopoly, neither charity nor generosity but justice only ought of right to figure, is conspicuously ill met. Where the furnishing of private lire protection results in either expense to the furn...