513
Brigade may be taken as $18,000, in addition to which the Local Insurance Companies spend $10,000 a year in maintaining a very efficient Volunteer Brigade. Here then is $28,000 expended annually by the Community in precautions against fire, without reckoning anything for Chinese Engines and Brigades, or for the water rate of 2 per cent on rentals, a portion of which is for fire purposes.
The result of this expenditure from purely Colonial funds has been to make Hongkong a very safe place regarding fire, Hongkong being good risks. In consequence, the Home Companies, contributing nothing to the arrangements by which this has been brought about, collect premiums here to an annual amount estimated at $500,000. These Home Companies used to maintain Fire Engines here, but I am told they have all been allowed to drop into disuse.
Nor is this the whole evil. Some Companies, in their anxiety to get business, have adopted a system of insuring the contents of Chinese shops without sufficient enquiry and of paying for losses also without much enquiry, which has proved very fruitful of incendiary fires. The Local Companies therefore find themselves in the position of having to pay for the extinction of fires caused by the reckless policy of their competitors, who, whilst contributing nothing to the Colonial Fire Fund, reap large annual profits, as shown above. To all of which must be added that when Hongkong Companies insure elsewhere, they are taxed, as previously stated. The foreign Insurance Companies practically avoid the payment of any tax whatever, for, with one exception (the Straits Fire-Insurance Company), they do not maintain Offices here, but entrust their...