20 



HORTICULTURE 



January 6, 1917 



THE IRON SAFE CLAUSE IN YOUR 



INSURANCE POLICY. DO YOU 

 KNOW WHAT IT MEANS. 



Inasmuch as every reader hereof, 

 if he carries insurance on his stock 

 and fixtures, is bound by what is 

 Itnown as the iron safe clause of the 

 policy, the following letter and my 

 discussion of it should be of uni- 

 versal interest: 



On the lOth of October our store was 

 totally destroyed by lire, oil heater explo- 

 sion i'n the evening. 



That same day we had sold to a man 

 from Detroit. He bad asked to see our 

 books and invoice. Same were accident- 

 ally let out of sate in desk and burned up, 

 we just getting out of upstairs with our 

 lives We bad S'J.OOO insurance in four 

 companies; they refuse settlement because 

 of iron safe clause. . ,„„ „ 



The bank haj totals of Invoice, also a 

 check record of all our business. In this 

 wav we can prove our loss was nearly 

 twice our insurance. We have procured 

 duplicates of our bills bought last year 

 also. J- C- L. 



Indiana. 



As I said, practically every— in tact 

 I suppose literally every— insurance 

 policy on stock and fixtures contains 

 the iron safe clause. It is one of a trio 

 of three familiar clauses which now 

 appear in all insurance policies. The 

 first requires the insured to keep a 

 complete set of books. The second re- 

 quires him to take an inventory, at 

 least once a year, and the third is the 

 iron safe clause, which requires the 

 keeping of the books, at night when 

 the store is closed, in an iron safe. 

 These three provisions are usually in 

 some such form as this. 



It is a part of the conditions of this 

 policy that the insured shall keep a set of 

 books showing a complete record of busi- 

 ness transacted, including all purchases 

 and sales, both for ca.=h and credit and 

 take an itemized inventory of stock on 

 hand at least once every year; and it Is 

 further agreed that insured will keep such 

 books and inventory securely locked in a 

 tireproot safe at night and at all times 

 when the store mentioned in this policy is 

 not actually open for business. It is fur- 

 ther agreed that in event of loss, insured 

 will produce said books and inventory. 

 Failure to comply with these conditions 

 shall render this policy nnjl and void and 

 no suit or action at law shall be main- 

 tained thereunder for any loss. 



The importance of the above cor- 

 respondent's question can now be seen. 

 The iron sate provision has been 

 upheld in almost every State, .^nd 

 there is now no question as to its va- 

 lidity. I have reason to believe that 

 thousands of merchants— not always 

 the smallest ones, either— ignore this 

 provision entirely. It they do, and fire 

 results, and by reason of the fire they 

 cannot produce their books and in- 

 ventory, or any good substitute for 

 them, they will lose their insurance 

 without a doubt. The policy is only 

 void, however, when failure to keep 

 the books in the iron sate results in 

 inability to produce the books after a 

 fire. If the books and inventory are 

 rescued, the policy stands, even though 

 they were not kept in the sate. The 



T«la»h*m« taM ItedlioB Iqasr* 



WOODROW & MARKETOS 



WHOUSSAIX 



Plantsmen and Florists 



37 and 39 West 28th St, NEW YORK 



theorv of this clause is perfectly sound. 

 It is that the books and the inventory 

 are the best evidence of what goods 

 were on hand at the time of the fire. 

 And a merchant who carelessly sacri- 

 fices that evidence will not be permit- 

 ted to guess at what he had on hand. 

 The iron safe clause is in force only 

 when the store is closed for business. 

 As long as it is open, no matter what 

 hour it is, the books need not go in 

 the safe. 



I find from an examination of the 

 cases that there is a tendency on the 

 parts of the courts to prevent insur- 

 ance companies from being too techni- 

 cal about the iron sate clause. In 

 other words, from laying any traps for 

 their customers. The courts realize 

 the need of the very best possible evi- 

 dence of what properly has been de- 

 stroyed by a fire. And they will not 

 shield the business man who careless- 

 ly loses that— where the loss is vital. 

 But there is quite a number of cases 

 which hold that where the failure to 

 keep the books in a safe did not preju- 

 dice the insurance company, in other 

 words, did not make it liable to have 

 to pay too much damage, the policy 

 will be allowed to stand. For instance, 

 in one case, a merchant had kept reg- 

 ular books and taken inventory as he 

 was required to do, but a fire struck 

 him one night when some of his books 

 were out of the safe, and the latter 

 were destroyed. The insurance com- 

 pany pleaded the iron safe clause and 

 refused to pay. although everything 

 bearing on the fire which the burnt 

 books had contained could be supplied 

 from other records. The court re- 

 fused to invalidate the policy for such 

 a season, ruling that the loss of the 

 books was not vital since there were 

 duplicate records of all they contained. 

 Another case bore considerable 

 similarity to the correspondent's. A 

 store which was covered by a policy 

 containing the iron safe clause was 

 closed one night, but the proprietor 

 stayed behind to take an inventory. 

 The books were accidentally left out 

 and destroyed by a fire which oc- 

 curred while the proprietor was actual- 

 ly working there, and the insurance 

 company refused to pay. Here, too. 

 the merchant could furnish from other 

 records all that the destroyed books 

 would have shown. 



The court said it must pay, because 

 the destruction of the books did not de- 

 prive the company of any information 

 about the goods on hand at the fire; 

 all this was forthcoming from dupli- 

 cate invoices. 



As I understand the correspondent's 

 case, the store was closed for busi- 

 ness, and some of the books were out 

 of the safe, and were destroyed by the 

 fire. The occupants of the floor above 

 liarely escaped with their lives. If the 

 goods on hand at the time of the fire 

 can be shown by other records, and 

 if all the information which the cooks 

 would have given can be supplied in 

 some other way, I believe that the 

 court will probably rule that the object 

 of the iron safe clause, i. e., the sup- 

 plying of complete information re- 

 garding goods on hand, has been ful- 

 filled, and the policy will not be in- 

 validated. But I apprehend that it 

 will be a close call. 



(Copi/right, December. WIG. l)ij 

 Elton ./. Buckley.) 



RETAIL TRADE IN NEW YORK. 



Max Schling of New York writes 

 that when his Christmas business 

 stopped as a Christmas rush, it began 

 to be a New Year's rush, and there 

 was no intermission between the two 

 holidays. He says "We have at pres- 

 ent in New York, a scarcity of the 

 early bulb stock, and to a certain ex- 

 tent, a scarcity of some other stock, 

 but this scarcity is not based on an 

 insufficient production, it is only 

 based on a splendid business, it is 

 based on the immense increase of buy- 

 ers in New York; the exceedingly 

 large number of travelers stopping in 

 New York, possibly most of whom 

 generally traveled in Europe. 



"The imaginative scarceness of azal- 

 eas or any other plants is not exist- 

 ing. If you should consult the dif- 

 ferent growers, and they should tell 

 you the truth, then they will tell you 

 that they grew more stock than the 

 previous year, and sold all the stock 

 out. It stock had been scarce they 

 would not have done as they did, a 

 much bigger business than any other 

 year. Certainly it is in the interest of 

 the seller— in this instance the grower 

 —to tell the buyer— that means the 

 florist— 'stock is scarce, hurry up and 

 place your order.' The most florists, 

 even the timid ones, were taken by 

 that suggestion and were prepared 

 that they might not get all they or- 

 dered and so ordered more than they 

 intended. I hope that each one was 

 lucky enough to dispose of all he or- 

 dered, because I am pretty sure that 

 each one did get what he ordered and 

 possibly more. 



"It might be of interest in general 

 to the trade, that I base my buy- 

 ing for holidays on the sales of the 

 three months previous to the holidays 

 —in this instance. September, Octo- 

 ber and November, and the increase 

 in business of these three months 

 against the three months of the pre- 

 vious yei^r, gives me the rate at which 

 I have to increase my buying for the 

 holidays. 



A proof that stock was not scarce 

 is following: I worked up a very good 

 New Year's business just the same as 

 1 have always had a splendid Christ- 

 mas, but this year I was prepared to 

 change plant orders for New Years pos- 

 silily into flower orders in case I 

 should run short on stock, and I also 

 prepared for selling palms, ferns, an- 

 thuriums, philodendrons, specimen ma- 

 rantas, and other good-keeping house 

 plants, but the day after Christmas I 

 had call after call from growers and I 

 secured $1,400 worth of flowering 

 plants, and was not forced to talk my 

 customers into something else than 

 they were used to, and the business 

 was so good that I even sold all my 

 palms and other stock which I had 

 secured as a precaution in case flower- 

 ins stock should be scarce. 



"Of scarcity, we did not feel any- 

 thing, and I hope it will always keep 

 up at the same rate; that my brother 

 tlorists will believe in the scarcity and, 

 in consequence, buy liberally and sell 

 out always, as it seems they did every- 

 where this Christmas." 



