40 CANADA - INSURANCE AND THRIFT 



benefits. In other words this form of insurance had the advantage of 

 the most legitimate of forms of all advertisement. 



])) The Minimum of Indemnifidde Loss. — Under the Act of 191 2 no 

 farmer conld claim indemnification for a loss of less than 10 per cent of his 

 crop. It was deemed advisable to lower this minimum, by an amendment 

 passed in 1915, to 5 per cent. Since the rate fixed b}- the Act of 1912 was 

 five cents for one per cent, of damage, the minimum indemnity payable 

 came to be 25 cents an acre. 



c) Wifhdrawal oj Lands from- Lnsurnnc^. — A criticism of the scheme is 

 that it causes all lands to be taxed for insurance against hail alike, wheth- 

 er or not they are cultivated. Its defenders point out th»t this system 

 allows the tax to be comparatively low, and moreover brings under contri- 

 bution — ultiniatel}' to the benefit of the farmers — the big land compa- 

 nies and speculators who do nothing to enrich the country-. From the be- 

 ginning howe\'er certain categories of land were exempted, as has already 

 been said, from obligation to pay the tax — in practice lands pernianently 

 under grass and the sites of villages — , and exemption for cne year can 

 be obtained for lands belonging to certain other categories. The latter 

 were modified by the amendment to the Act passed in 1915 ; and as 

 the law afterwards stood they included : 



i) Lands which compiise one or more quarter sections in area, are 

 completeh' surrounded b>' a substantial fence of not less than two strands 

 of barbed wire upon posts not more than 33 feet apart, and are used ex- 

 clusively for grazing and for growing hay, only b^' the person who wishes 

 to withdrav/ them from insurance. 



2) Unpatented quarter sections held under homestead, jjre-eniption 

 or purchased homestead entrv', having less than 25 acres under cultivation. 

 The ability to withdraw these allows new settlers and others who have only 

 a small holding of cultivated land, exclusiveh^ on unpatented lands, to a\'oid 

 paying the hail insurance tax until their lands are patented or until tliey 

 come to be grain growers on a large scale. 



3) A patented or unpatented quarter section in which less than 25 

 acres is under cultivation and the remaining land fenced as described un- 

 der i). The provision for the withdrawal of land of this category is made in 

 the interests of certain parts of the cotuitry where most of the land is graz- 

 ing land and only a minor portion arable. 



d) Inspection oj Damage toy which Lndemnity is Claimed. -- This 

 very important part of any scheme of insurance was inevitably found to 

 admit of improvment after experience of it had been gained. 



In igiz] the Commission provided that an}' claimant who was dissat- 

 isfied with the inspector's estimate of the damage his crop had incurred 

 might ask to have it re-inspected. The system of re-inspection thus inaug- 

 urated proved to be so useful that in 1915 the Commission further provid- 

 ed that if after re-inspection the claimant were still dissatisfied, his claims 

 could be referred to two arbitrators, one chosen by himself and the other 

 by the chief or general inspector, and that these, after they had inspected 

 the crop in question, had power to call in a third person who should de- 



