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Show 00 FIRES STARTED FOR INSURANCE The business of arson Is not limited I to New York or Chicago. On Sunday last two colored boys set fire to their I home In Salt Lake to secure $700 in-1 in-1 surance on the contents of the house ' From all accounts, house burning has been a profitable occupation ol ears. An eastern paptr declares that one-half our fires are incendiary land that the reason we have more j fires than Europe Is because we have more fires that are set, procured to 1 he fi or permitted to arise, by peo pie mio want their insurance money J At least one-half our fires are active-I active-I ly or paafllvelj 1 riminal Collier's Weekly proves by static tics that fires Increase or decrease as business In the nation Is dull or (good 1'auic years swell the fire losses loss-es by millions of dollars An line or industry in which there J Is a falling off of activity brings : heavy fire losses n example Is presented In the frills of fashion We I quote from Collier's. One day In January, 1912. I was sitting ai a William tttreet window Jwlth a big New York Insurance man "Do you notice' asked the latter, ( anything about the women's hats?' There was this to notice With the exception of ostrich plumes, almost every hat was destitute of feathers. "Sure!" said the insurance man sorely "The Audubon societies--with a lot of help from I'uris have done thai For about two years the wholesale whole-sale milliners haven't been able to CilVE feathers away And if you'd been getting the losses, you'd think that every feather west of the Mis slssippl had been burned by now Within r month in fact, after Paris j had set Its ban on feathers, three 1 feather factories burned in New York Rut. again, taking our four years, one I Insurance company reports five such losses in 19ftS, eleven In 1909, four teen In 1910 and. despite many can jcellations. twelve in 1911 Two com patties give loss ratios, respectively lof 80.6 and !.'t per cent for the Ia9t I two years Three companies merely answer that the are no longer Insur nig feathers In 1911 the fine plumage destroyed In one New York feather fire was worth $o.V 000 tin Insurance); in another more than $100,000. And a 1912 feather fire, by spreading caused la total loss of about $600,000 In 1 none of these fires, and In none of those to be mentioned specifically be-loi be-loi was there any evidence what-j what-j ever of Incendiarism As far as the 'writer knows, all were perfectly hon est. Aud we make no Insinuation that they were otherwise. Another example from the fashions Ry (he end of 1910 Paris had decreed thai women's suits In 1911 should be simple Draids trimmings and embroideries em-broideries were very largely eliminated eliminat-ed And the elimination by fire of braid and trlmniitig factories began to lollow in due course Within five consecutive con-secutive weeks five 'bad burned in the Hoboken district and five more In Manhattan. So, also, if there Is anything any-thing in insurance statistics, the tlsht fitting sheath gown has been the cause of a burning of mercantile stocks, in the way of petti oats and the like, which can never be calculated! calculat-ed! In the beginning of 1911 the one-piece one-piece gown threatened to end the vogue of the shirt waist Ry the end of 1911 one small insurance company had paid losses on ten shirtwaist factories fac-tories It had had losses on only six during the preceding three vears Collier's claims that Uhio has found a rernedv for the evil In the naming of fire marshals whose duties are to Inquire Into tne origin of all fires and prosecute where fires are started by 'firebugs " Ohio's fires were reduced one-half by the fire marshals. It might be well for I'tah to have a law on this subject and also a fire marshal |