REPORT OF LIBRARIAN. Secretary Munn The Librarian reports that there has been no change in his affairs since last year, and therefore he has made no formal report. The President Gentlemen, you have heard the remark of our Secretary. If it is satisfactory as a report from the Librarian, we will so receive it. No objection being offered, the report was accepted. PRESIDENT'S ADDRESS. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN OF THE FIRE UNDERWRITERS' ASSOCIATION OF THE NORTHWEST : By your election it is my privilege and pleasure to welcome you to this Twenty-Second Annual Meeting, and to congratulate you upon the promise of very full attendance, which indicates that instead of being on the wane, the appreciation of the value of our Association is constantly increasing. May it ever be so! We are honored to-day by the presence, as our invited guests, of a delegation from the New England Insurance Exchange-its President, Mr. U. C. Crosby, Special Agent of the Phenix of Brooklyn; Mr. J. C. Hilliard, an honorary member of the Exchange; Mr. Samuel G. Parsons, Special Agent of the Fire Association of Philadelphia; Mr. Fred B. Carpenter, Special Agent of the Western of Canada; and Mr. W. A. R. Boothby, Special Agent of the National of Hartford. And from the Pacific coast we have Messrs. Geo. D. Dornin, Manager of the Scottish Union and National Insurance Company, and Mr. C. F. Mullins, Manager of the Commercial Union Assurance Company. I need not inform you that every one of these gentlemen are veterans in our profession, who recognize the true worth of associated effort, and are always to be found in the front ranks of progressive movement. Our Association is highly honored by their presence. An invitation was extended to a delegation from Canada, and accepted by seven or eight of the prominent underwriters of Toronto. and Montreal. I greatly regret to say that by yesterday's mail we were informed that important local matters would prevent their coming. And to you, gentlemen, we will say, that we are glad beyond measure to have you with us, and in behalf of the Fire Underwriters' Association of the Northwest, I extend to you, one and all, the most cordial welcome. We shall reap pleasure and profit from your presence, and we sincerely hope that each one of you may take away such pleasant recollections of his stay, as will compensate in part for the effort of coming. While with us be of us; participate in our work as the spirit may move you, and for this purpose the usual courtesies of the floor are freely extended. I need not assure you, gentlemen of the Local and Insurance Press, of our appreciation of YOUR presence. For many years you have had special invitations, and we are always glad when you respond. At other meetings members of your craft have contributed some of our very best papers, and we have called three of your number to address us on this occasion, and we know that a feast of good things is in store for us. The services you have so frequently rendered to our Association in publishing and commenting upon our proceedings, and in lending us your encouragement in so many ways, has from time to time been duly acknowledged by my predecessors in office, and I take this opportunity of recording my own personal appreciation, and heartily thank you for your ever-helping hand in our labors. When standing before you one year ago, to express, in a few hastily spoken words, my thanks for the honor conferred in electing me your President, I confess I did not begin to appreciate the importance of the occasion, but in the interval I have found opportunity to study a little the birth and growth of the Association, from the first meeting of a small band of field workers, who, realizing the disadvantages of singlehanded efforts, resolved to join their issues and work for mutual benefit and the elevation of their chosen profession. At once the number of members began to grow, and while having no executive functions the Association has afforded the means of bringing together, annually, the thinkers and seekers for knowledge in our business, and who can gainsay the silent influence for good these meetings have had in the operations of our executive bodies and State Boards. Do you not know that many of the good suggestions first presented at some general meeting of this Association, have been in some way adopted into our everyday practice? And when I contemplate the possibilities in this direction, I cannot but feel that a membership should be highly prized and enjoyed by every eligible person. As advancement in position comes, as it has to many of our members, it would seem but fair that those thus preferred should not lose their interest, but increase it and their efforts for our common benefit. Many lights might have remained hidden under the bushel had it not been for the advantages enjoyed by an active membership here. A glance at our records will corroborate this suggestion, and in this matter history will repeat itself, and most assuredly selections for high places will continue to be made from our membership. Having no executive functions, we have avoided heated discussions and hasty action, which might have led to entanglements and possibly disruption. We have gone on from year to year spreading the leaven. of good fellowship and harmony throughout the Northwest, rendering it possible for executive bodies to live and thrive in our midst, and if the results have been so striking as to cause a war of words between the West and East, or the East and West, touching ratio of profit in underwriting, it is my honest opinion that the founders of this Association are wholly responsible for it, but these results are not more than were expected, for the Association was started for the express purpose of bettering our business. Twenty-one years of this work, and this work only, has given to working underwriters twenty volumes of printed matter, which in variety of topic covers the whole range of our business, physical and moral, in a style singularly free from weakness and singularly full of earnest observation, sobriety, dignity and vigor. It is not flattery when I say that these volumes are in themselves an insurance library of great value. I am proud, we all may be justly so, of this work of our membership in these volumes. I do not expect, nor see how you can reasonably expect, from this body or elsewhere, that these topics will be treated with more ability or greater interest than is done in these published proceedings, so that an invitation from this Association to prepare a paper for it may be properly accounted an honor—an opportunity to be embraced and not a task to be avoided. It is a pleasure to know that a committee was appointed at our last meeting to reprint these volumes, that all our members might have the high privilege of having them for reference and study. A reprint of the first five years has been completed and forms a substantial and elegant volume, the expense of which has been defrayed chiefly by subscriptions from our members, and a generous donation from the Manager of the Connecticut Insurance Co., Mr. Abram Williams, one of the ex-Presidents of this Association, and I recommend that appropriate action be taken to secure the reprint of the second five years' series. But these volumes are not the limit of this Association's work. Just as real and quite as valuable is the union it has secured in feeling, binding and guiding in many important ways our endeavors into channels of common good to all. These annual meetings are not to be measured in their importance by the numerical attendance; this at most can be but a few hundred. But we ought to accustom ourselves to the thought that in our combined number we represent an enormous amount of capital, and that our business bears vital relation to the varied business of all the world. It is something, it is much, to remember that this busy world moves along all the more steadily in its activities because of the business which we in some modest part assist and conduct. Millionaires there are all around us, mighty corporations, too, of finance and manufacture, but no gathering of these can surpass in real importance the possibilities controlled by a meeting of the executives of the Fire Insurance busiDo not mistake these remarks as an eulogy of the dead; they are only in fair praise of the living. ness. Our membership in the beginning consisted of fifteen field men of the best sort, but no one of whom possessed greater than State jurisdiction. To-day its list of membership contains the names of fiftythree Managers, seven Assistant Managers, five Presidents, twenty Secretaries, and about two hundred and fifty Special Agents, Adjusters and Managers of Inspection Bureaus. In working authority capital is represented in this Association from fourteen companies in New England, ten in Pennsylvania, three in New Jersey, eighteen in New York State, three in Michigan, seven in Illinois, three in Wisconsin, three in Minnesota, two in Kentucky, three in California, three in Canada, twenty of the great companies of Great Britain, and one in Germany. The centers from which this great business is managed in America are Hartford, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Louisville, Milwaukee, St. Paul, Denver and San Francisco, but the business of the West and Northwest is at this date largely managed from Department quarters in Chicago, and the aggregate assets represented in this body amount to nearly two hundred millions of dollars, and the amount of premium written in 1890 in the territory here represented approximated forty millions of dollars. The personnel of this Association remains as nearly identical as could be expected for so long a time, but its power for work is largely increased. While its membership has not increased for some years, the administrative powers of a large number of its members has increased, and thus it is possible for this body to do and to be now what it was not possible for it in the first ten years of its existence. In thus contemplating the past history of our Association, its works and its wonderful representative power, you are, I trust, now quite ready to follow me into the inquiry that has been in my own mind for a long time: What next can this Association do to best serve the business of Fire Underwriting? In the past it has kept reasonably abreast of the times, and indeed has gone ahead with its eyes open to see the coming things. The State Boards, Inspection Bureaus, schedule rates, were met more than half way, and now, what next?' To this inquiry I have given much thought, and to me there seems a problem now waiting for us quite worthy of our united wisdom and our united work, viz.: The Loss Ratio-Can it be reduced, and how? To this I would, for a few moments, ask your attention. The persistence of the loss ratio at a given point (of 60 per cent.) has not escaped your attention, defying year after year, decade after decade, every environment, every improvement of architecture, fire appliances and water supply. For figures illustrative of this result I refer you to tables submitted by our brother Deven, of the Glens Falls Insurane Co., in his address to the Association last year. In carefully scanning the facts and usages in our business, it seems as though the things that had yielded the least to amendment are the loss ratio and the mode of inspection, and between these two there may be a vital connection; possibly that of CAUSE and EFFECT. Think over this. There can, I think, be no disagreement to the following propositions: First-The object of inspection should be to acquaint ourselves with the pertinent facts about the risks we are assuming. Second-That such information, to be of much value, should be had, if possible, in time to prevent defective or badly exposed property being placed upon our books. Has our inspection in the past, or does it now, fulfill these two functions? If we answer these questions candidly, we must say that a great deal of defective risk is accepted by us before inspection by our Special Agents; and further, that when our inspections are made by our Special Agents conscientiously, as they are, do they not lack the expert tradeknowledge to give them full value? Let me not be misunderstood. I mean simply to say that our Special Agents, industrious, faithful and |