New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1905-05-25
INSURANCE AND GENERALIZATION.

INSURANCE AND CENIRiLIZAIION.
The request made to President Roosevelt that
he take a hand in the Equitable Life Assurance
Society controversy and start a federal investi-
| CATION of the insurance business is one more
s4gn of the migrating tendency of our national
! life 1t would be easy to dismiss this appeal
as merely piece with the request TO the Pres-
dent 10 undertake the settlement of the Chicago
strike and the hundred and one other su%ges-
tons by interested parties that he take up mat
/ ters with which he has no business. No doubt
some people when their local water supply
| gives out are moved to invite him to visit their
| town and cure the trouble. But there is some
! thing more behind the appeal than that. 1t is
! founded on Il belief that the insurance business
| has become a matter of national concern, and
that purely local regulation is not adequate TO
the protection Of the people all over the country
who are interested in insurance company funds.
Here is n company organized under the laws
of New-YOrk, and subject at every turn to the
inspection and regulation of the Newly DIRK IN
surance Department. Every State in which it
does business likewise has the power TO examine
its books and force conformity with the insur-
ance laws of that State The necessity not only
of conducting business in any State accord
ing to its peculiar requirements but also
of managing its central administration and
investments in harmony, perhaps, with forty
five different and contradictory prescriptions
might easily be embarrassing 10 an inSur-
ance company, though such a multiplicity
of supervision might be thought an adequate
safeguard for the pocyholders in any State
Evidently however. it is not so regarded by
some persons at least. and we hear demands not
only for a Presidential investigation, but for
legislation to place insurance companies under
national control like national banks. OF course
there is no legal parallel; for national banks are
! 0iu IF federal
and their regulation is not an extension Of fed
| eraI authority over State institutions. State
| prerogative in no way diminished by the
| national bank act except by the imposition Of
the tax on circulation. which practically re
! served to the national banks the power to issue
| notes. A parallel TO this legislation would be
not the federal supervision of old insurance COM
panies, but the creation of ones, under fed
eraI charter, with superior privileges or superior
| safeguards which commended them to popular
| favor, while the old companies went under
| State law.
ANY such extension of federal activity is of
| debatable wisdom. But the natuTaneSs with
! which the idea is taken up now the instant the
| administration of a great insurance company is
under discussion shows how our people have
| come to think continentally, and how much
more centralized is their idea of government
than its actually, a few years ago the affairs
1
| holders all over the land, the subject Of
| controversy which led TO a radical reorganiZa-
| ton. We do not remember at that time to
| have heard n suggestion that it was matter
| in which the United States government could
| have any hand though it was unquestiOnably
| a matter of national Importance. A new realiZa-
| ton has come upon of the interdependence
| of all people and of the stake which the
| citizens of Illinois and Kansas have in doings
| regulated by New-Iork and New-Jersey law.
| The old isolated life which the early theories
of State rights and local self government were
| based has largely vanished Hence the talk of
| national divorce laws national corporation laws
and now national insurance laws And these
demands do not come exclusively from socialists
who want TO bait corporations. Many of the
corporations themselves weary with trying to
| do business under forty-f1ve sets of laws. and
! thinking how much the Fourteenth Amendment
| has done to protect them from spOation by
! State enactments, look with longing to the
privileges of federal incorporation a fair off
| set to the restrictions of federal control. This
centraizing movement may be thought danger
Gus or healthfu but it is too significant too vital
and too popular TO be ignored.