Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 January 1892 — Home and Foreign Insurance [ARTICLE]

Home and Foreign Insurance

The Are insurance companies have experienced an exceptionally bad year, according to all accounts. There have been no sweeping conflagrations, hut small fires and incendiary fires have been unusually numerous, and the aggregate losses have been above the average, while rates at the same time have been below the average. Some forty companies have in consequence been driven 'out of business, and the shares of the joint stock companies of New York have shrunk over $1,000,000 in value as compared with five years ago. These latter companies have been forced by the existing demoralization of the business to advance rates, and the turning over to an English company of the business of the Armstrong companies has helped to strengthen the situation there. The Boston companies are preparing to follow suit. Meantime the business here of the foreign and particularly of the, British companies has been rapidly increasing, until it is estimated that they carry fully one-third of the fire risks assumed in the United States.— Springfield Republican.