The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-10-18
STRONG WORDS AGAINST
 FEDERAL SUPERVISION
SENATOR BULKELEY SPEAKS BEFORE INSURANCE MEN IN NEW YORK.

Declares Supreme Court Has Never Had
 an Act of Congress to Decide the
 Question but It Has Always Had
 Something Higher Than the Law-th0
 stitutfon-Insurance Not Com
 merce-state Commissioners and
 Politics
 New York, Oct. 1.-The necessity for Iesislation regulating casualty in- surance as well as life insurance conn panies was laid before the annual con yentfon of the board of casualty and surety underwriters here to-day by John T. Stone of Baltimore, Md. MT. Stone, who presided at the convention said:
 "While the public has more or less knowledge about life insurance, com- paratively few know anything about casualty and surety insurance, and the result is the passage of inequitable and inappropriate laws. Sometimes they are defective, but more often the law making powers pass these obnoxious measures. The most baneful of the legislative matters come under these heads: Taxation, resident agent loans' and deposits
 United States Senator Morgan G. Bulkeley of Hartford made long and exhaustive speech against federal su- pervision in which he said in part:
 Tt is true that the supreme court has never had an act of congress to de- eide this question in the past, but 1t has some thing higher than the law the constitution. It has decided that insurance is not commerce..
 The senator then read a long brief on the decisions of the supreme court of the United States covering a period of forty years, from 1865 to the present day to prove his assertions. Among the points he brought out were:
 A corporation is not citizen within the meaning of the constitution. # The issuing of a policy is not an arti- cle of commerce in any sense of the word.
 corporation, not being citizen, can be taxed for any amount state sees fit to impose. .... ..-...
 IS there any prospect of any better legislation from congress?
 The senator continued: Look how insurance companies are treated by congress now. There is a bureau of in surallce in the District of Columbia now. and it embraces all discriminatons and objections that have been raised against the state superintendents.
 .'You talk about state insurance com missioners being politicians. Any per- son in washington who holds a position of a similar character is politcan, the creator of the statesman who put him there. What have you to day in any line of federal supervision that you can point to and say that the super vision of insurance would be commend able or sensible? Take the national banks. I point to the failures in a short period of time of national banks amounting to $2O0,0OO00O in capital The money lost is from the same widows and orphans that you claim you want to protect in insurance supervision by the feQefa gOVeFilHleIL'
 T want to tell you also that a com mittee of United States senators who recently investigated these failures re- ported back to the senate that they were caused by the dishonesty and in- competency of the men sent out from Washington to do the work of super vision. They don't pay enough at Washington for the right kind of men z to do the right kind of work. For any office,s from the president down, they ought to pay three times as much.
 "The man that they would put for commissioner of insurance would get only $5,O0O year. MT. Morton desert2 ed the cabinet for most tempting off, fer here in New York, ana I told him when he left that I would be tempted to desert the United States senate if similar position came along my way. I don't believe that congress will put it. self in the position of passing a ques- tiorl up to the supreme court that they are; sure of getting turned down on.
 T believe that we would be better off if each state could be held to a strict accountability for the deeds of it's cor porations, and that we can accomplish more for insurance if we push our en- ergies along the line of 8 uniformity of legislation among states than in fed eral legislation"