The midland journal. (Rising Sun, Md.) 1885-1947, 1896-11-13
WHY THE PAPER STOPPED.

The journalistic business in London
is very much cut up nowadays and if a
person wishes to start a successful
weekly he must be man ofideas. This
does not necessarily mean that he needs
to know anything about literature OF
art; in fact, the less he knows about
these obsolete departments the better;
but his ideas must run in the direction
of some scheme that will appear very
attractive to the public and yet not en-
able them to collect any money from
him; this usually takes the form of life
insurance.
Somehow or other it is imagined that
the public simply yearn for life insur-
ance, especially that kind which con
soles the widow after the insured ia
smashed up in a railway accident. Rail-
way travelling in England is so safe that
very rarely anyone is killed, yet never
theless on the off chance, hundreds Of
thousands of papers are sold every
week, and many Of these estimable
journals have their life insurance pol
icies so arranged that unless the train
dOSS CCCCCllul ouSA Hs
on it's head or turn three somersaults,
TO money can be collected by the
mourning relatives.
There are running in London several
journals that have offered millions in
insurance, and yet never have paid a
penny. This all comes about because
the editor is a man of ideas who blazons
"a of h a
pounds on his title page, aHd then wraps
up the conditions in small type some-
where inside so that even the most inn
pecunious of us do not hail a railway
accident in which we are interested,
with unseen joy.
When johnson thought of starting
his paper to be made up of clippings
from the American press, he deter
mined to offer a thousand pounds in
surance to a subscriber who died from
any aeciden whatever, so long as he had
copy of Johnson's Weekly in his
pocket at the time of the disaster, John
son had only "a thousand pounds capital
when he started, and he was naturally
very anxious that his money should not
be looted from him the first week by
some one stumbling over cliff with
the paper in his pocket, so he went to his
solicitor, told him frankly the state of
his case and asked him to draw up set
of conditions which would make it i'm
possible for the relatives of the dead
man to collect the money. The lawyer
thought over the matter very seriously
for a few minutes and then said:
I'm afraid, Mr.. Johnson, you will
have so many cases on your hands if
you send out such general accident
policy like this with your paper that
some one will be sure to collect from
you. You see the safety of the other
papers lies in the fact that there are
so few railway accidents. A paper Of
fering a railway insurance has SO few
claims that there isn't much publicity
even when a claim is not paid, but so
many accidents happen entirely uncon-
nected with trains that you would be
almost certain to be brought into court
by somebody on an average of once q
week."
II should not mind that" said John
son, "if the paper went up to 100000"
"The danger is" put in the man of
law, that you would have so many
claims to settle that if your paper went
up to million the legal expenses alone
would cripple you. Now, how would it
be if you were to offer insurance of this
kind? Suppose you allow the taker of
the paper to insure somebody else, not
himself, and then when that other per-
son happened to be killed you pay the
thousand pounds to the one who in
sured the others life. It sounds a little
involved, but perhaps you understand
what | mean"
81 understand what you mean," said
johnson, "but l don't see the advantage
of it,"
"Why, my dear fellow, the advantage
is this-so many men hate so many 9TH
ers that they live perpetually on the
verge of killing their enemies. Now,
this offer of yours would throw the bal
ance completely over, and some man
who wanted to slay that other man
would insure him in order to draw the
thousand pounds
"Yes." obviously ventured johnson,
"but I don't want to pay the thousand
pounds at ALL"
Certainly not" answered the law
yer, "and you wouldn't need to; the
murderer would not dare to claim the
reward; he would do the murder as
quietly as possible, Of course, and when
it was done would get frightened and
make no claim. The oddity of the Of
fer would attract great attention every
where, and probably some case would
come up in which it would be shown
in all the papers that this subscriber of
yours had committed murder for the
sake OF getting the Thousand pounds,
then the government would step in and
make you stop offering a thousand
pounds, which was practically an in
centiye to murder. You would protest