HAIL INSURANCE ON FARM CROPS. 25 
growing and giving promise of a fair harvest. This means that, in 
order to secure business in any considerable volume, competent 
solicitors must be employed during the relatively busy summer 
months, while the company has no employment for them after the 
hail-writing season ends except to the extent that the same men are 
also used as adjusters. The adjustment work, however, begins 
shortly after the hail-writing season opens and continues but a few 
weeks at the most after the acquisition of business has ceased. What 
is true of the field work in hail insurance is true to a considerable 
extent also of the office work, most of which is coincident with the 
writing of insurance and the adjustment of losses. 
This seasonal nature of the business adds materially to the prob- 
lems of administration as well as to the expenses of operation, it 
being obviously difficult, if not impossible, to attract efficient workers 
under these conditions without the offer of special inducements. In 
the case of most mutuals writing term policies the cancellations at 
the end of the first season are relatively large. Even in such com- 
panies, therefore, the risks in force during a given season rest to a 
considerable degree on policies written after the fields were giving 
substantial promise of harvest. 
There is, of course, a considerable economy in the expense item of 
an insurance company resulting from term policies, providing the 
policies actually remain in force for the term contemplated. As a 
rule, this advantage, for reasons already indicated, has been only 
partially realized. Certain notable exceptions are to be found, how- 
ever, a few mutuals having succeeded in making their membership 
practically as continuous as is the general rule in the case of farmers' 
mutual fire insurance companies. In such cases, as might be ex- 
pected, the expense item of the company has been strikingly small 
and the total saving to the members has been correspondingly great. 
A particularly difficult problem in the administration of a hail 
insurance company as compared with that of a company insuring 
isolated buildings and other farm property against fire, is to be 
found in the peculiarly erratic nature of the hail hazard, and the 
resulting wide variation in the losses experienced. In 1914, for ex- 
ample, the total hail premiums collected by all classes of insurance 
institutions in the United States approximated $5,558,000 and the 
losses were only $2,677,000, or 48 per cent of the premiums. The fol- 
lowing year, 1915, the total hail premiums received amounted to 
about $9,752,000, while the losses incurred were $11,833,000, or over 
121 per cent of the premiums collected. The summer of 1916 was 
again a season of severe losses for the hail insurance companies, as 
well as for the farmers who carried their own risks. The years 1917 
and 1919 were both years of relatively small hail losses for the coun- 
try as a whole, while 1918 was what may be termed moderate or 
approximately an average year. During the six years above men- 
tioned the percentages of total hail premiums paid out for losses by 
