One of the most inexplicable things in human nature is, commonly, the
stuff out of which other people carve their fetiches. A philosopher is a
man who can understand the incomprehensible selections by other men of
the objects of their adoration. But philosophers are uncommon.
To Helen Maitland, leaving Fifth Avenue at Fifty-ninth Street and
straying northwestward into the early autumn splendor of the Park, it
seemed as though for the first time she could understand the viewpoint of
those unidentified myriads to whom New York is a fetich; and as she
walked on beneath the trees soon to lay aside their valedictory robes,
she appreciated most fully those to whom Central Park is a fetich within
a fetich, a guarded flame within the inmost chamber of the shrine.
Partly the spell was that of Autumn, that grave, melodious season; and as
Helen went forward, her mind lingered on the "tragic splendor" at whose
"mute signal, leaf by golden leaf, crumbles the gorgeous year."
In the past she had never been inordinately fond of New York. In common
with most of her fellow Bostonians, she had found it too big, too noisy,
too garish, and too unfriendly. To her it was iron and stone and dust
and the tumult of a harsh and heartless unceasing struggle. But now,
under the alchemic hand of Autumn, she found herself thrilling to the
town as never before had she thought possible. Only two days had elapsed
since her departure from Boston, but it seemed to her now that she was a
participant in some slow-moving pageant, not a hostile critic in the
audience, but a minor actor in an unfamiliar yet strangely familiar play.
Even the hurrying throng of people who confronted her, when at length she
sought again the street on her way homeward, seemed less hostile and
alien, less inimical to her and her mood than ever before. As she went
southward on the street car--for her careful New Englandism forbade her
taking a taxicab in sunny weather--she found herself reflecting with a
smile that Boston in her recollection was an astonishing distance away.
She also detected with surprise a very slight irritation at the intense
preoccupation of the thronging thousands in their own concerns and their
utter carelessness of her and hers.
As a matter of fact she had no concerns of her own, or at least none
whose vitality would gain attention. And suddenly her friendly sense of
being a part of this flowing life dissolved sourly into mockery. She was
in it and not of it--again the hostile critic. And then it occurred to
her that perhaps momentarily she was a little lonely. And her utter
impotence in this huge careless city heightened this feeling. She could
make no headway against the current of this life. The remarkable
persistent vitality of the thing around her made her feel totally
unimportant and quite helpless. The feeling was far from pleasant, but
it was salutary, and stimulus for the first remedy at hand, and the
natural depression of impotence did not overcome the exhilaration of
curiosity.
When she reached Washington Square again, she said something of this to
Miss Wardrop, who nodded comprehendingly.
"Every one feels that way for a time," she said; "it's like sitting out a
cotillion by one's self. What you need is something or somebody to pull
you into the whirl."
"I suppose that is so," agreed the girl,--"but where am I to find it--or
him? I don't know anybody who is in. Of course I have Uncle Silas's
letter to Mr. Wintermuth, but I didn't really know whether I'd have the
courage to use it or not."
"Who may Mr. Wintermuth be?" demanded her aunt.
"A friend of Uncle Silas, and the President of the Guardian Fire
Insurance Company."
"Fire Insurance? A fire insurance company? Wait one moment.
Jenks. . . . Jenks! Bring me that envelope from the mantelpiece. . . .
No," she added, "my policy is not in the Guardian. I thought perhaps it
might be."
"What is the matter?" inquired her niece. "Have you had a fire?"
"Yes, I have," returned her aunt, "or rather Jenks has. He burned off
the lamp shade from my reading lamp. And Jane Vanderdecken says because
he did it out of sheer clumsiness I cannot ask the company to pay for it."
Helen remembered the shade in question, which had been in the eyes of all
save its owner a horror upon horrors, a mausoleum preserving, apparently
for all time, the ghastly glories of a dead era of alleged ornamentation.
So it was with dubious sympathy that she said:--
"I don't know whether Jane Vanderdecken is right or not."
"You can go and find out. Mr. What's-his-name can tell you, even if it
isn't his company that will have to pay."
And in this way it came about that Helen found herself, not many days
later, descending from the Elevated Station at Cortlandt Street, and
turning her steps eastward toward William Street. It was half-past ten
when she found herself before a portal on which were the words: The
Guardian Fire Insurance Company of the City of New York.
Intrusting herself to the deliberate conveyance of the elevator, she
arrived eventually at the top floor, and to a clerk near the door she
expressed her desire to see Mr. James Wintermuth. One of the principal
assets of this employee was his readiness to assume an expression, when
any one inquired for the President, suggestive that in his opinion such a
desire could scarcely be expected by the visitor to be gratified, and he
was also supposed to decide by inquiry or intuition whether he should so
far intrude on Mr. Wintermuth's privacy as to present the stranger's
name. He had come to be uncommonly adept at this, but the spectacle of
this dark-eyed young woman was quite beyond the gamut of his routine
experience. In a sort of charmed coma he surveyed the visitor, and found
himself starting to inform the President of her arrival without a
preliminary inquisition even to the extent of inquiring the nature of her
business with that gentleman. Accordingly, after the briefest of
intervals she found herself ushered into the office of an elderly
gentleman who rose courteously to welcome her.
"Miss Maitland, I think. You are the niece of Silas Osgood of Boston?"
he inquired. "Mr. Osgood wrote that I might expect to see you here."
The girl handed him the letter.
"Here are my credentials," she said, with a smile. "I am also an envoy
extraordinary from my aunt, Miss Wardrop, on a diplomatic mission
connected with the burning of a long-cherished but doubtfully valuable
lamp shade!"
"Won't you sit down, please? You will pardon me if I read your uncle's
letter?" Mr. Wintermuth responded.
Helen assented, and the other leisurely read the few lines the letter
contained. In the interim the visitor glanced about the room to
apprehend the setting of the scene into which she was now come.
Presently her host spoke.
"I gather from what your uncle says that you have come not to call on an
old friend of his, but to look at maps and daily reports and surveys, and
find out what a fire insurance company is really like. And although I am
quite old enough to be your father, I would really much rather you had
come to see me," he remarked pleasantly.
"If I had known you before, I undoubtedly would have done so," the girl
smilingly returned.
"Times have changed since I was a youngster," Mr. Wintermuth went on. "I
presume all elderly people say so, and I am afraid we are apt to make it
at once a refrain and a lament, but nevertheless it is true. Forty years
ago young ladies did not feel any interest in business such as fire
insurance, or if they did they kept it to themselves. But," he added, "I
am the gainer in this work of time, to-day at least, for it brings me the
pleasure of a call from you."
"I'm afraid my interest is rather sudden and hasn't any very deep
foundation," his visitor admitted. "I haven't felt it very long. Uncle
Silas has been a fire insurance man ever since I can remember, but I
never knew what he was actually doing, and I never tried to learn. But
now I really would like to find out, and that is what brings me to you.
I have lived in a kind of unreal atmosphere, and I'm trying now to learn
about something absolutely practical. I hope it won't bore you too
awfully to have things shown to some one who will undoubtedly have to ask
the meaning of everything she sees."
"Not in the least," the old gentleman assured her. "I shall give you an
instructor who likes to explain things." He pressed a button under his
desk. "Ask Mr. Smith to come here," he said to the boy who responded.
"Yes, sir. Excuse me, sir, but Mr. O'Connor is going to Baltimore and he
says he'd like to see you a minute before he goes."
"Ask him to come in. Miss Maitland, let me present Mr. O'Connor, our
Vice-President. Miss Maitland is the niece of Mr. Silas Osgood, and she
has come to look over our offices."
"Very pleased to meet you," said O'Connor. "Sorry I haven't time to help
show you around, myself. I see now that I was wrong when I decided to go
to Baltimore to-day. I felt a little doubtful right along, and now I'm
sure I should have stayed here."
Helen thought that he spoke a trifle too glibly, but she made a civil
reply, and turned to the window while O'Connor received some final advice
from his chief. When the door closed behind him she turned once more,
and as she did so she became aware of a young man who stood in the
doorway looking expectantly at Mr. Wintermuth.
"Ah, you are here, Richard," said the President. "Miss Maitland, this is
Mr. Smith. Miss Maitland is Mr. Silas Osgood's niece, and she wants to
know how the Guardian runs its business. Do you think you can show her?"
"I think I can," replied the younger man, pleasantly. Then, turning to
the girl, he said, "I shall at least be very glad indeed to try."
Mr. Wintermuth then went on to tell what Smith should show the visitor,
and while he was doing this the two younger people looked at one another,
Helen swiftly and Smith with a steadier glance. To him she seemed a girl
of unusual charm, but whether this could have been guessed from his
manner was problematic.
Helen, with discreet but none the less comprehensive scrutiny, saw before
her a man of thirty-three or four years, erect of figure, with a
clean-shaven face and gray eyes. One thing she noticed about him was a
certain odd immobility of carriage, which was not in any way to be
mistaken for lassitude or lethargy; on the contrary, it reminded her of a
coiled spring. He was somewhat above the middle height, and he had
rather lean hands, and he wore no jewelry except an unobtrusive scarf
pin--thus far had Helen's assessment proceeded when a question from Mr.
Wintermuth recalled her.
"Would you like to start now to look us over?"
"If it is quite convenient to you," replied the girl, a shade stiffly.
This impassive young man, who seemed quite different from any one she had
met in her Boston set, was a little out of her calculations. She knew it
was unreasonable to expect Mr. Wintermuth himself to act as cicerone, but
just the same she was not entirely certain that she did not resent being
so definitely turned over to this youthfully unexpected substitute.
Probably Mr. Otto Bartels would have been initially more acceptable to
her.
"Show Miss Maitland everything--begin at the beginning, and don't leave
anything out," said the President, and dismissed them both with a
fatherly wave of the hand as he pressed the button that summoned his
stenographer.
Smith looked keenly at the girl as they walked slowly out into the
office; he was wondering what her object might be in this pilgrimage.
His mind flitted briefly over the ideas of muck-raking reporters and
inquisitive lady novelists; yet surely this self-possessed but quiet
young lady suggested nothing of either class, and besides, a niece of
Silas Osgood's could scarcely deserve suspicion. At the same time,
detecting in her manner what impressed him as a slightly Bostonian
attitude of mental hauteur, Smith remained wary.
"This is the Eastern Department," he said, stopping before the first long
map desk that stretched along the whole side of the room. Helen assented
politely to this information, and the young man led the way through the
other departments. Through the lower floors they went, Smith sketching
briefly the function of each department as they passed it.
"Here is the City Department," he said, as they reached the ground floor;
and for a little while they stood and watched Cuyler in his traffic with
the brokers. He was engaged in a spirited argument with a very small and
somewhat soiled person who insistently thrust upon Mr. Cuyler what that
gentleman had obviously no intention of accepting. Risk after risk was
declined, and the turns and _ripostes_ were fast and furious.
Finally the soiled placer presented a binder which called for five
thousand dollars to cover Jacob Warbalowsky on his stock of artificial
flowers and feathers while contained on the fourth loft of a six-story
factory building which Mr. Cuyler knew to be of cheap and light
construction, dirty and hazardous throughout, and each floor but one of
which was tenanted by a concern whose name indicated that its
pyromorality, so to speak, was to say the least questionable. Mr. Cuyler
quite distinctly recalled, scanning the names of the tenants in the card
cabinet which gave the occupation and tariff rate of each, that a few
years before, the concern on the third floor, having manufactured a stock
of raincoats which it found impossible to sell, had been strongly
suspected of disposing of its goods to the fire insurance companies
instead of to the retail trade by the simple expedient of the double gas
jet. This popular device was as follows. The proprietor, who was
detained at his office after his employees had gone home, would, when he
himself departed, leave two gas jets turned on, one at each end of the
factory, one burning (as usual) and the other unlit. Long enough
afterward so as to establish an alibi and remove all suspicion from
himself, the escaping gas would meet the flame, and there would be an
explosion and a fire which usually resulted in the desired destruction of
the useless but fully insured merchandise. The cause of the fire could
almost always be traced to a leaky gas jet, for which, of course, the
assured was not responsible.
Mr. Cuyler, regarding the names of the tenants, noticed that the top
floor was occupied by a maker of automobile accessories, named Pendleton.
He turned cheerfully back to the placer.
"Phil, I'd like to help you out," he said, "but I can't write anything in
that building. I know it's hard to get. Why, my brother-in-law's
factory is on the top floor, and only last Sunday, when I saw him up at
the house, he asked me if I wasn't going to loosen up and put the
Guardian on for a small line. His broker can't get anywhere near enough
to cover him. And I had to tell him nay, nay. You couldn't really
expect me to do something for you, Phil, that I couldn't do for one of my
own family."
The soiled placer removed a cigarette butt from his mouth, and threw it
on the floor with a gesture of extreme impatience.
"Your brother-in-law like hell!" he remarked, quite disregarding the
presence of Miss Maitland in the background. "What kind of a fairy story
are you trying to put across on me? I suppose you're claiming that
Pendleton, the automobile man, is your brother-in-law. Well, he moved
out about a month ago. The card hasn't been changed yet, but the firm in
there now is a bunch of Kikes that make boys' pants--Lipper, Loeb, and
Kahn. I saw their sign when I went up to get this order from
Warbalowsky. Which of them did your sister marry?"
Mr. Cuyler was momentarily discomfited, but his presence of mind almost
immediately returned.
"All three," he said calmly to his excited adversary. "All three. You
just saw the sign, you say. You didn't meet any of them personally, did
you? Well, you couldn't have."
"Why, what do you mean?" asked the astonished placer, pausing in the act
of lighting a fresh cigarette.
"Why, Phil," said Mr. Cuyler, kindly, "my sister married a man named
Reginald Whitney. His name isn't his fault. And he is a manufacturer of
boys' pants. Now, Phil, you understand local conditions as well as
nearly any one I know, and I ask you: What chance of success would a
boys' pants manufacturer named Reginald Whitney have? Absolutely none.
He therefore operates under the name of Lipper, Loeb, and Kahn, and I
don't mind saying he is doing very well, but I hope he won't stay long in
that building, for some of that bunch of crooks under him--I don't mean
Warbalowsky, you understand--will probably touch off the place some night
and leave him with a total loss and only forty per cent insurance to
value."
While this controversy was going on, Smith, watching his companion
shrewdly, saw the light of real interest for the first time dawn in her
eye. And when Cuyler finished, she laughed outright, and the two
returned to the elevator the better for one shared amusement.
"I suppose Mr. Cuyler was--embroidering the truth a little?" queried
Helen, comprehendingly.
"He never had a sister in his life!" nodded her escort, cheerfully.
"I'm afraid, Mr. Smith," Helen said as they regained the top floor, "that
I don't really understand the first principles of fire insurance well
enough to appreciate what you have shown me. It's a humiliating
admission, but I must make it. I don't believe you began near enough the
bottom--with the elementary, one-syllable things."
The underwriter surveyed her thoughtfully but with covert approval. Wary
though he was, like all idealists, regarding the things near to his soul,
it now for the first time struck him that he wished very much that Miss
Maitland should understand what meant so much to him. And he felt that
he could make her understand; hitherto it had not seemed so.
"I wonder if I could really show you," he answered, half to himself, and
there was something in his tone that made the girl reply, "I wish you
would try."
"Let's start all over, then," said Smith, buoyantly. "We'll begin right
here. Now, this is a map desk in which the maps are kept and on top of
which they are laid out when in use. The map desk is really the home of
underwriting, just as the stage is of the drama. And just as there are
stage conventions, certain things which are taken for granted, such as
the idea that a character on the stage cannot escape over the footlights
into the audience--that there is an imaginary blank wall between the
audience and the players--so we have our conventions and symbols in the
maps." He called for Boston One, which the map clerk laid instantly open
at his elbow. It was a large volume bound in gray canvas, perhaps two by
three feet in dimensions, and weighing several pounds. Smith turned to a
page which showed some of the blocks surrounding the Common, and Miss
Maitland bent close to look. "All these little colored objects represent
buildings, red for brick and yellow for frame; and they are drawn on a
scale of fifty feet to the inch. We get so accustomed to them that
automatically we grow to visualize the buildings themselves from these
diagrams. See, there is the State House on top of the hill; there's
Beacon Street; there's--"
"Beacon Street! Where is number forty-five? I want to see what that
looks like."
"What number did you say?" inquired Smith.
"Forty-five."
"There it is."
"Why, so it is! What is that queer little wiggle sticking out of the
front?"
"It looks like a bay window in the front room of the second floor. Is
there one in that house?"
"Yes. . . . Have you got Deerfield Street in this map?"
Smith found the place.
"Number?" he asked again.
"Here it is," the girl said amusedly. "That is where I live. Now let me
see how much visualizing you can do on that. Let me see how nearly right
you can get it. And why is it brown instead of red?"
"With pleasure," said the underwriter, with a smile. "In the first
place, it is brown because it is of steel and concrete fireproof
construction. It is an eight-story and basement apartment building with
a tile roof and a short mansard of tile in front only. There are two
sections, cut off from one another except for a metal-clad door in the
basement. The elevator is at the right as you enter; the stairway runs
around it. There are two light courts, one front and one rear, both with
stairway fire escapes. Which is your apartment?"
"West front, on the fourth floor."
"You have probably seven rooms, with four windows along the street side
and four on the court. Well," he finished, laughing, "is that
sufficiently visualized?"
"You have told me nearly everything except where we have our piano,"
Helen returned. "I don't suppose your diagram would show that?"
"Well, no. That wouldn't interest us as a rule, and besides, people move
pianos so often. We don't try to keep them all located."
Smiling together, and better friends than they had yet been, the two
turned from the map of Boston.
"Here," said Smith, "are the other maps of the Eastern Department, from
Maine to Maryland, Rhode Island to Ohio. Also Canada--Halifax, Quebec,
Montreal. Over at the other end of the room are the Southern cities,
Atlanta, New Orleans, St. Augustine--with some of the old Spanish houses
still standing. Do you know it strikes me there is something Homeric,
something epic, about a map desk. You can turn to any building in any
city on the continent, at a moment's notice. I can show you the Old
South Church, or Fraunce's Tavern in New York where Washington bade his
generals good-by, or Montcalm's headquarters at Quebec before Wolfe
scaled the heights. Or you can see the Peace Conference Hotel outside
Portsmouth, or the Congressional Library in Washington, or the new
Chinatown in San Francisco, or the great shops of the Pennsylvania
Railroad at Altoona, or even the site of the arena at Reno, Nevada, where
Mr. Johnson separated Mr. Jeffries from the heavy-weight title of the
world."
So engrossed was Smith that he did not notice the almost imperceptible
withdrawal of his auditor. Among her Boston friends there was no one who
spoke of prize fights; even Charles Wilkinson, whose conversational
reservations were certainly few, ignored the prize ring. Smith went
unconsciously on, but for his hearer, for the time at least, the spell
was snapped. Still, she listened. He told her more of what the maps
showed--how they indicated the location and size of the water mains in
the streets, of the hydrants, the fire department houses, even the fire
alarm boxes--everything, in short, which the fire underwriter desired to
contemplate when passing on a risk submitted for the company's approval.
By this time they had reached the other end of the big room and were
close to O'Connor's office.
"I really must have taken you on a walk of several miles," said Smith,
contritely; "and if you are going to let me continue this monologue, I
may at least let you sit down. Suppose we go in here; Mr. O'Connor has
just left town, and we may as well use his office."
Again Miss Maitland hesitated, although not sufficiently to attract her
companion's notice. She was not accustomed to interviews in private
offices with strange young men. But she entered, and Smith behind her,
and the glass door closed on them both, shutting out the sound of the
clicking typewriters. Helen seated herself with her back to the window.
"Go on," she said. "I want to hear everything."
Smith went on.
Briefly but clearly he sketched the foundations of insurance. How, in
more primitive times, when a man's house burned, his neighbors used to
provide him with materials and come to help him rebuild; but this proved
onerous, and instead a communal fund for the purpose of assisting fire
sufferers was established. The modern insurance company had gradually
come to assume the management of this fund and eventually to undertake
the function of insuring against fire. But the people were still the
arbiters of the fire cost, and the companies merely barometrically
reflected the condition of the community as to fires. When fires are
numerous and costly, the price of insurance must advance. Insurance is a
tax which the companies collect in premiums from the many and pay out in
losses to the few. But the idea remains the same.
"That is interesting," said the girl. "Now will you think me very stupid
if I ask you to explain what all the terms mean as you go along? You
spoke a moment ago of underwriting: I don't know what underwriting is. I
thought big loans and stock issues and things of that sort were
underwritten. Is this the same?"
"So they are, but this is another matter. Fire underwriting is a thing
all to itself--_sui generis_. Similarly, a fire underwriter is a person
like no other--at all events he likes to persuade himself that he is.
And frequently he succeeds."
Smith smiled at his own reflection.
"A fire underwriter, to be a real one," he went on, "should be a chemist,
financier, mechanic, lawyer, engineer, and diplomat, and a dash of a
clairvoyant, too. He should know everybody's business, including his
own. Consider what he is expected to know: there is no class of industry
which can dispense with insurance."
"Except the Massachusetts Light, Heat, and Traction Company," interposed
Helen, quickly.
"That is true up to the present time," Smith assented; "but their wisdom
in having done so is not sufficiently proved, and Mr. Charles Wilkinson,
whom I met in your uncle's office, is in hopes of being able to change
their ideas on that subject. But I have my doubts if he will succeed,
from what is said of Mr. Hurd."
"I think Mr. Wilkinson spoke of having met you," the girl said
carelessly; which was positive disingenuousness, for she remembered very
well indeed. And here she sat, talking to the man whose suggestion, as
Charles quoted it, had roused her interest in the business. Helen was
not sufficiently Oriental to find anything predestined in this meeting,
but it nevertheless seemed a little odd. Abruptly she spoke, to rid her
of her own thoughts.
"Mr. Hurd believes in carrying his own risk--isn't that the expression?"
"Absolutely. No life-long fire insurance man could have phrased it more
correctly."
"I'm afraid it was mere plagiarism. I think Mr. Wilkinson used it."
"Credit withdrawn," said Smith. "What were we talking about? Oh,
yes--about underwriters. Now, the fire underwriter has to pass upon the
danger of every risk whose insurance is offered to his company. The
company, of course, makes its underwriting or trade profit--or hopes to
do so--by receiving more money in payment of premiums than it has to
disburse, after deducting expenses, in losses. It must therefore accept
its business as scientifically as possible. It must know how much money
to risk--that is, how large a policy to write--on every class of risk in
the world. When a line on a foundry and machine shop comes in, let us
say, from Silas Osgood and Company, the underwriter is supposed to know
how much premium, or rate, the risk should pay, and how many dollars the
company can safely hold."
"But I thought you said Uncle Silas sent you the risk. Doesn't he also
determine the amount the company takes?"
"The amount for which the policy is issued; but he is merely the agent.
He exercises his best judgment, but the home office underwriter is the
court of last resort. Generally speaking, the agent secures the business
and offers it to the company for its acceptance. If, when it comes, the
underwriter feels that the rate of premium is not commensurate with the
hazard, he writes the agent, 'Rate too low: please cancel.' And there is
where his diplomacy comes in. The agent, who must now get back the
policy from the assured, must not be offended, or his more desirable
business will be placed in some rival and more liberal company. If, on
the other hand, the rate of premium seems adequate, but the amount at
risk is too great, the underwriter reinsures or cedes a part of his line
to another company, paying it a proportionate part of the premium, and
holds only what he thinks safe. And here is where his judgment is
needed. The company has what it calls its idea of line--which means that
it doesn't want to lose more than a certain amount, say five thousand
dollars, in any ordinary fire. . . . I'm not boring you?"
"Oh, no," said Helen. "I'm following it all."
"Well, then, what the underwriter is supposed to do is to decide, from
the kind of risk he is asked to insure, how much the Company can write,
and still not be liable for a greater loss than five thousand dollars in
any ordinary fire."
"How can he do it?"
"By knowing his business. When he passes on a foundry, for example, he
ought to know, first, the fire record of foundries in general; second,
what rate of premium they ought in general to pay; and third, what the
dangers, or, as we call them, hazards, are. By looking at the map he
must be able to tell where the fire is most likely to start--where, in
other words, fires usually do start in foundries. Probably it will be
the cupola charging platform or the core ovens. Then he can closely tell
from the construction of that particular foundry, considering also the
protection, extinguishing appliances, public water pressure, nearness of
the fire department, and fifty other considerations, how much of the
whole plant would burn--probably. If only half, then he feels safe in
writing ten thousand dollars on the risk, since only half of it is likely
to be destroyed by one fire."
"I don't see how you can tell."
"Well, most companies have quite elaborate line sheets to assist their
underwriters in determining how much to hold on various classes of risks,
but between you and me, you _can't_ tell surely. But you do the best you
can, and the ablest underwriter is the man who tells the closest. A
really good underwriter should know the hazards of all the ordinary risks
in the world, and be able to tell you offhand what is the danger point in
a brewery, a playing-card factory, a paper mill, a public school, a
shovel works, a Catholic church, a chemical laboratory--every sort and
kind of risk. Of course he has surveys, made by inspectors, to help him,
showing details the map fails to show, such as the location of your
piano, and where the hazards lie and how they are cared for. But
inspectors are fallible, and he must _know_--everything."
"You make my head whirl," Helen said. "To know everything! It sounds
colossal. Do you know everything?"
Smith laughed.
"No," he replied. "Decidedly not. I'm afraid I know only a very small
proportion of what I ought. But the big men of the business do. There
is one man who I verily believe is perfectly familiar with every kind of
risk in the United States. If there is a chemical process he doesn't
know or can't find out about, I'll eat the thing myself. He knows every
explosive mixture, every fulminate, every sort or manner of dust, paste,
or grease which burns or explodes of itself."
"But that one man must be a genius! What does the average man do?
Doesn't he need some one to help him in all this? It sounds like such a
terrific undertaking to keep track of so many things. Doesn't it make
your own head swim at times?"
"Well," said Smith, "of course there are a thousand and one things in the
nature of aids to the underwriter--things whose proper action he doesn't
directly control, although he has to keep a father's eye on them to see
that they don't run amuck."
"Such as what?" asked the girl.
"The inspectors I spoke of, for one thing; the map makers who make the
pretty brown buildings in Deerfield Street; the rate makers who go around
applying schedules to buildings, and from the various hazards of
construction, occupancy, and exposure fixing the rate which the schedule
brings out; the stamping bureaus that check the rates as the agents send
through the business. And then there are the field men, called special
agents, who travel from agency to agency, appointing and discontinuing
agents, straightening out difficulties, adjusting losses, and making
themselves generally useful. All these the underwriter has to help him,
as well as information such as building inspections by cities, police
regulations, fire alarm systems, municipal rules and vagaries of all
sorts--oh, a category of things as long as one's arm, which of course an
underwriter doesn't actually himself supervise, but whose accuracy he
must be able to estimate--and often repair if they get out of order and
cease to run smoothly."
"But--" said the girl, slowly.
"But what?" Smith asked.
"But isn't it awfully technical, this business? I had an idea that fire
insurance was done principally by clerks writing endlessly in large
books. That's what they always seem to be doing in Mr. Osgood's office.
And now you tell me it's like this. This is absolutely different from
what I thought it was, and it seems incredibly difficult, but--"
"Well, but what?" demanded her companion.
"Well, then--it seems to me a little dry. Or perhaps not exactly that,
but a little too scientific, too technical. Not so vivid, so vital--"
She stopped short at the expression of Smith's face.