HAIL INSURANCE ON FARM CROPS. 5 
As time went on the nature and severity of the hail hazard in the 
different States became better known. Insurance laws, as well as 
the administration of these laws, became in general more effective in 
safeguarding the interests of the policyholders, and farmers to an in- 
creasing extent became aware that it is necessary to know something 
about the men in charge of the mutual organizations as well as to 
see that the plan on which insurance is offered is a reasonably work- 
able one. Because of these changes in conditions ill-considered and 
speculative promotions of hail mutuals appear in general to have 
passed their climax in each State a few years after the organization 
of the first hail mutuals in the State. Such climax in promotions 
was reached in the State of North Dakota in the middle nineties, in 
Minnesota and Nebraska during the last few years of the past cen- 
tury, and in Iowa during the first years of the present century. In 
Oklahoma the promotion period centered about the year 1903, and 
in Texas it occurred nearly 10 years later. The State of Kansas 
presents an exception to the general rule, in that the period of most 
rapid promotion of short-lived companies came more than two 
decades after the first hail mutuals were organized. The earliest 
hail mutual in Kansas, as already stated, began business in 1889, 
but the climax in the promotion of hail mutuals in that State was not 
reached until the five-year period following 1910. 
One of the most spectacular mutual hail insurance promotions that 
has occurred in any State took place in Missouri in 1919, and the 
organization in question is now in the hands of receivers. This com- 
pany did not limit itself to hail coverage, however, but included de- 
structive storms of whatever nature, and partly for this reason the 
risks assumed by it have not been included in the data contained in 
this bulletin. 
The total number of mutual hail insurance companies of which 
record has been found, either from insurance reports or from other 
sources, is 121. Of these 121 hail mutuals, only 41 companies were 
in existence at the date of the most recent insurance reports. The 
other 80 hail mutuals have ceased operations, either voluntarily for 
lack of patronage or under pressure applied by State insurance de- 
partments. This relatively high mortality among the mutual hail 
insurance companies as a class has frequently been interpreted as 
proof of unsoundness and instability in every mutual hail insurance 
company, without regard to its individual record or merit. Such a 
conclusion is no more justified than would be a conclusion that all 
joint-stock fire insurance companies are unsound because of the large 
percentage of such companies that, for one reason or another, have 
gone out of business. No reliable figures are at hand for the total 
number of joint-stock fire insurance companies that have been organ- 
ized in the United States. According to some of the best-known 
