The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1904-01-21
MUTUALS OFFER
LARGE SAVING
SAVANNAH MAY FORM co.
ADDRESS URGING SUCH ACTION
MADE BY F. WADE VAUGHAN.

Before Chamber of Commerce.
Speaker Secretary of Merchants
Mutual Fire Insurance Company
of Monroe, and Georgia Vice Pres
ident of National Association of
Cooperative Insurance COmpa-
nies-Gave History of Insurance
and Figures of the Business in
state and in Savannah for Last
Nine Years.
The question of mutual insurance
was discussed at the January meeting
of the Chamber of Commerce last night
before an interested audience by Mr.. F.
Wade Vaughan, secretary of the Mer-
chants Mutual Insurance Company of
Monroe, Ga, and state vice president
of the National Association of Cooper
ative Insurance Companies of the
United States. The address was made
at the invitation of President ]. H.
Estill of the Chamber of Commerce.
Mr. Vaughan not only discussed the
subject in all it's bearings, but pre-
scented a table of figures showing the
amount of insurance carried in Savan-
nah for the nine years from April
1894, to April, 1903, and for the year
ending April, 1903. The figures show
that Savannah has materially inn
proved, rather than become a field of
greater risk to the companies.
After explaining the pleasure that it
gave him to appear before the Cham
haT Of Commerce apd ano1ooizipc tha 7
he was not the orator that all insur-
ance agents are supposed to be, Mr..
Vaughan gave an exhaustive history
of the origin of insurance companies.
The first of these organizations to be
established in either England or Amer
lea, were mutual companies, and they
are still in existence.
Mutual Companies Not New.
THE principle of mutual insurance
is not new" said Mr.. Vaughan.
ut passed the experimental
stage over a century ago. The
Oldest insurance company in the
world is mutual company,
and is still doing business. The
oldest company in America is mutual
company, and is still doing
business. The oldest insurance COM
panies in the states of Maine, New
Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut,
Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Pennsyl-
vania, Maryland, Virginia, South Car
DINA, Georgia, Michigan, Iowa, Ne
braska. Kansas and North Dakota are
mutual companies.
THE first few companies organized
confined their risks to brick and stone
buildings. About fifty years after the
first mutual company was organized the
stock companies began to come into
existence. They began by reaching
out after more hazardous property, and
as little was then known of the burn
ing ratio of any class of property, the
percentage of failures among them was
then even greater than now. The stock
companies usually insured all classes
of property, combining the good, bad
and Indifferent, making the good pay
for the bad, a practical example of
which is found in Georgia to-day.
You arc now paying % per cent.
more for your insurance than you were
a year or more ago. The reason as
signed for this is that losses have been
excessive, and premiums inadequate to
meet them. Is this true? 1 ask your
attention to the following statistics,
compiled from the sworn report of all
fire insurance companies doing bust
ness in Georgia to the Insurance Com
missioner of the state, a careful cOnsid-
Grafton of which will enable you to an
swer the question to your own salts
faction:
ERuafnRSa in