Cominereinl sickness insurance is as yet of fered by only ten or n dozen regular insurance eompanies in the United States. The policies generally guarantee a weekly indemnity during illness or for at limited period, in ease of certain specified diseases. Sometimes the company nil dert keS to pay a stated lump sum for a per manent disability such as total blindness or paralysis.
'flue moral risk constitutes a very large clement in both accident and sickness insurance, espe cially in the case of with sinnll incomes. _Merely limiting the indemnity to au amount less than the wage of the laborer does not remove all incentive to simulate or even bring :Omni the disability which entitles the insured to indem nity. fle is comparing not merely daily indem nity with daily wage. hut indemnity and idle ness with wage and eight, ten, or twelve hours of work. Experience has shown that the moral risk can be much better controlled where the in surance is granted by a body like n trade union or a lodge. Here the knowledge the members have of one another's affairs ntTords a more efficient check tqem malingering than any NVII eh a regu larly estiblisheil insurance company is able 10 use. lIence it is not surprising to find that by far the largest part of the insurance of workers against sickness and accident, in those countries where the Covernment has not taken lip the business, is in the hands of these organizations of the laborers themselves.
rn ploycrR' 1, lability I nsuraner.—Cloqely al lied to accident insurance is the insurance of employers against claims for damages arising from accidents to their laborers. em liability insurance. This rro of in surance. like the preceding. originated in Eng land. It was introduced into the United States in 1881; by a London insurance eompany. There are now twelve or fifteen companies engaged in the business in this country. They no longer con fine their operations to the employers' liability for accident to his employees. but cover also lia bilities for accidents to not in the en ploy of the insured. Railroad corporations, eon struction companies, mannfacturing concerns, protect themselves in this way. The risk varies greatly in different occupations and there is a corresponding variety of premium rates. The
schedule of classifications adopted by the corn panics einl•i•es nearly a thousand different kinds id risks. .1 he del,elopnient of the inilb1 in 'VAT lit \ been greatly accelerated through the general extension by statute of the liability of the employer for indemnity for acci dent which he was out obliged to indemnify un der the common la W.
f min/dot/son( faxurance.—Insurance of work ers against hiss of income on account of lack nt eniplo2. mem presents greater difficulties than those linoked in accident insurance. The moral risk here beemlies very great. Such insurance has iii.%er been carried on suceessfully by com mercial insurance companies. .Many of the trade union, pay out-of-work benefits to their members, but the business is not run on seientific insur In none of the benefits paid by the trade unions is there any attempt to corre late the risk and the assessment. nor is there any separation of the insurance fund from the other funds of the union. Unemployment insurance has been tried by some of the Swiss eoniniunes, but with poor success. It is an unfortunate fact that insecurity if employment, which consti tutes such a serious evil in the life of laborers, is n form of uncertainty with which it is .ex treniely difficult for insurance to deal.
Fidulily and Surety Inxitrance—Of the remain ing forms of commercial two arc of special interest, fidelity and surety insurance and credit insurance. Fidelity and surety in surance is almost entirely the growth of the last fifteen years. and vet the amount written in the United States in IO01 exceeded $1,700,000,000. Fidelity insurance, according to the distinction made by the New State Depart m•nt, consists in giving bonds for the honesty of employees and public officials, while surety insurance consists in going on the bonds of ad ministrators and executors of estates. This kind of insurance is interesting as illustrating the regularity in human conduct to which Qiietelit first called attention. It is only because of the eomparative regularity in the annual number of defalcations and similar crimes that the insur ance company is able to assume the risk of such oceurren•es for a premium small enough to make the business practicable.