INSURANCE AND CRIME.
Insurance and Crime. By Alexander Colin Campbell. (G. P. Putnam's Sons. 10s. 641. net.)—Mr. Campbell brings a formidable indictment against the practice of insurance. He does not pre- tend to state the case exhaustively, but he produces evidence enough to show that the matter is a very serious one. Marine, fire, and life insurance are the three divisions of the subject. That crime in the insurance of ships was lamentably common in past times can hardly be doubted. Things have now improved. Load- line legislation, among other regulations, has done some good. Fire insurance probably offers the greatest opportunities for malprac- tice. The proportion of incendiary fires is put very high by enevi people who ought to know. If the insurance companies could confine their operations to such business as they might themselves choose, they would do well. A company, for instance, that had the monopoly of middle-class private dwell- ing houses would prosper exceedingly. The legitimate risks are small, and the illegitimate almost non-existent. Life insurance remains. Mr. Campbell, who writes on the other side of the Atlantic, has made a really terrible collection of sinister stories. Here, we imagine, it is in the insurance of children for burial expenses that the worst abuses occur. It is almost incredible how poverty hardens the heart in this direction. " The churchyard has been no friend to we," said a woman who had had twelve children, all of whom were alive. That woman, we happen to know, was incapable of crime, but the sentiment was nearer the border than she knew. This is a book of great though painful interest.
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