Waterbury evening Democrat., 1908-12-04
What Being Burned Out May
 Mean to a Business.
DAMAGE ONE CANNOT COVER.

the basement last night?' remarks the man In the car
 '"No" exclaims the friend who hasn't seen the morning paper. "I suppose they carried insurance?"
 "Oh, yes-a hundred thousand of itr returns the first speaker, at which his friend settles back with the comment that everything is all right then.
 This is the layman's conclusion al most invariably Some big concern burns out, but with insurance to an amount seeming to cover the loss the average man is disposed to feel that it is all right. He doesn't stop to think of the enormous risks of business which cannot be covered by insurance and which for weeks, months or years after fire are crippllng and perhaps ruinous to the fire victim.
 Take, for example, a highly organ. ized factory plant in prosperous times which has been turning out vast specialized product from the hands of thousands of expert workmen. This plant, fitted with costly machinery, is covered by insurance upon Its visible, material assets. Fire sweeps 1t and lays everything in hopeless ruin. If every piece of machinery. every build. ing and all material adjuncts of the plant have been covered to full value in such plant will the reader dare make a rough guess as to what the limitations of loss may be?
 Only the other day I stepped into . bookbindery, transformations in its street signs and occupying a fifth floor in an obscure street. In the ele- vator shaft was that peculiar odor which marks the track of fire and fire men days and weeks after such an accident.
 Most of the fire was next door," ex- plained the proprietor, but I guess the smoke and the water were about as bad for us. Sometimes it is almost better to have the fire yourself than be next door to it."
 Which seemed to be especially true of book material Where smoke and soot had failed to blot and ruin the stock, water from the engines in the street had flooded it until ruin alone was descriptive. Everything had been closed down, workers in the plant were idle, and the proprietor was awaiting the adjustment of the insur- ance which he had been carrying. But in the extent of this insurance itself was knotty situation.
 ,i lOrdinarily the house had carried pol icies which would have left it the minimum of risk on its machinery, stock and materials. Ordinarily a still further blanket policy was carried for the purpose of covering the normal amount of book material on hand owned by others and contracted for rebinding. But only few days be- fore the fire the house had received d consignment of 5000 worth of law books to be bound. These volumes, aside from intrinsic value, represented so much of other value as to make the risk abnormal for almost any sea son. And these books were ruined. g Before receiving them the binder had asked the owners to take out a policy for themselves protecting them against such fire loss. The firm had not done so, and when the fire dam- age came the disposition of the owners was to hold the binder for them under one of the binders blanket policies.
 On this one disputed point, taking it into court. will some one make a guess as to what this one feature of the fire may cost the binder, who to all purposes was insured" if it should be settled ia the supreme court after five or seven years, for example?
 But in the case of the big manufac- tory, with its imported special machin- cry, its season of rush work and its enormous and fuctuating stock of ma terial-if on the morning after the ire the assuring companies settle in full for the visible losses, how much has the company been damaged?
 Of first consideration, perhaps, is the enormous payroll of the concern. If most of the mechanical work of the plant has been done by pieceworkers, still the necessary force of directing employees on salary is problem. The determination of the owners is to start up anew. Tried and proved employees must be retained while the work of rehabilitation goes on. They must be paid even if they are to do no more than wait. Settlement of some kind must be made with contractors who have been supplying raw materials from the hands of other thousands of workers. No matter what the clauses in contracts providing immunity in case of fires. strikes and acts of Provi- dence, every line of business affecting the welfare of the manufactory has been affected.
 The plant is a total loss. Before it can be rebuilt the ruins of the old fac tory must be cleared away.
 In the meantime all those customers of the manufactory who have been pressing for the filling of contract or ders find themselves shut out of any chance for receiving them. They turn at once to other competing establish ments for the work Not only does the burned out firm lose all chance of profits from this work, but it is run ming long chance of losing some of it's oldes. and best customers of