The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1902-07-18
WORK OF FIRE
CLAIMS COURT
THE PROBLEMS PRESENTED AND
HOW THEY WE'RE
SOLVED.
AN IMMENSE AMOUNT OF CLER-
ICAL WORK.
Right of the Commission to Charge
Were Charged-work Completed.

Chairman f. w. Macfarlane gives a
very interesting history of the work of
the Fire Claims Commission.
Under the law creating the commits
sion, and under the rules adopted by
the commission, the law giving it pow
er to adopt rules, each claim had to
contain an itemized statement OF the
loss alleged, verified by the oath of
the claimant As a matter OF fact,
practically all the claims came to us
prepared by attorneys and in the case
Of the Chinese and Japanese claimants
under the supervision of a committee
Of business men, They were all sworn
to. Hence the commission, at the out
set thought it might rely on the cor
rectness of the mere clerical part OF
the claims We thought that the ex-
tensions of quantities and prices ana
the footlngs Of totals would at least be
correct But we found very soon that
no reliance could be placed on many
Of these. FoOtings were wrong. In
some cases for instance, an item Of $l.20
would appear in a long column of fig
ures but instead of being in the right
place in the dollar and cents column,
Une dollar would be out in the thou
sands place, for instance, so that the
fOOtingS, though each column would
be ADDED correctly, would be wrong.
"Iypewritists OF all degrees of Capa-
bility were employed, resulting in err
rors of all KINDS. that is errors of d
clerical character. Then we found that
extensions were made in all sorts of
ways For instance, in the Chinese
merchandise claims, there would be an
item for so many cases of fungus at so
much a case, while other like items
would be extended as so many pounds
of fungus at so much a pound. There
were merchandise of every description,
and 50 much variation in the form of
| extending the amount and value OF the
| commodity, and so many errors of all
kinds, that the commission soon found
| that if it were going to investigate
and make awards on the basis of fact.
every item must be Investigated sep
arately, all extensions and footings
| checked up This involved an immense
| amount of labor and required the em-
| ployment of additional clerical force.
In order to reduce the amount of cler-
| ical force to be employed by the COM
| mission to minimum, itemiZed state
| ments filed were returned to attorneys
| to be itemized according to one general
| system. For instance, commodities in
| bulk were to be itemized in denOmina-
| tions of pounds, yards, or whatever
| the proper denomination was, uniforms
! ily so that the commission could deal
with them Understandings, and all of
! the same kind on one basis
| Notwithstanding this the amount of
| clerical work devOlving on the commits
| sion and its employees was something
| stupendous. Many of these claims fill
| ed thirty or forty pages of typewritten
copy. Every item had to be gone over
! separately, checked up for errors, and
the footings all verified In order to
make progress at all, and to keep up
the clerical work with that of adjudi-
cation the clerk work had to go on at
| night.
Then when the items of the claims
were found to be clerlcally correct. the
commission had to take up each item
| separately, take evidence as to the
fact of the loss of the commodity Item
ized its value, and that it was lost un-
der conditions bringing it within the
| law under which we were acting. This
involved the production of certified
| copies on custom house invoices, a
search through the Board of Health
| records, and all sorts of evidence, the
securing and production of which took
the time of the claimants and their at
! torneys, and interrupted the hearing of