Reader's Guide — 11th Edition

Ancillary  ·  Articles
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Chapter XIVFor Insurance Men

For the insurance man, whether veteran or tyro, the new Encyclopaedia Britannica has much of value and importance, and it has it in quickly available form so that the desired information may be readily found, whether the experienced student wants an authoritative statement on a difficult point, or the beginner wishes an outline course of the subject. This availability, whether for the expert or the novice, is secured by the Index (the 29th volume), which guides the reader immediately to desired information, if he does not find it in the alphabetically arranged articles in the body of the book upon first turning up the article in which he expects the subject to be treated.

To be more concrete—if you want to know something about insurance, turn first to the article Insurance in Volume 14, beginning on p. 656. You find an elaborate article, which would occupy about 75 pages if printed in type and on a page like this Guide.

In other encyclopaedias you would have no clue to the whereabouts of any information about insurance except what would be given in the article Insurance or in articles to which it might refer you in that article. For anything else you would have to guess how the editor’s mind had worked to find where in the book he had put other information about insurance; and to guess how each contributor’s mental processes have been related to his interest in insurance so that you might know whether in some article, on a topic apparently not related to insurance at all, the contributor had put in some interesting and important fact about insurance.

But in the Britannica you have one entire volume, the 29th, which was made for the sole purpose of increasing the practical efficiency of the other 28 volumes. Under the heading Insurance in this index, you will find references to many articles and cross references to Title Insurance and to Title Guarantee Companies.

Apart from the fact that he has the initial assurance that what he gets from the Britannica in the first place is fuller and better than he would get from another work of reference, what are the advantages offered by the index in this particular instance?

First: Instead of having a reference to volume 14 only he has references to volumes 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27 and 28,—nineteen volumes in all,—say a gain of 1800% in efficiency.

Second: Instead of having one article Insurance to refer to, he has reference to specific information in the following articles:

  • Annuity,
  • Austria,
  • Average,
  • Barratry,
  • Bonus,
  • Employers’ Liability,
  • Fire and Fire Extinction,
  • Friendly Societies,
  • Gaming and Wagering,
  • Guarantee,
  • Income Tax,
  • Infanticide,
  • Japan,
  • Land Registration,
  • Lloyds,
  • Mensuration,
  • Novation,
  • Old Age Pensions,
  • Post Office,
  • Probability,
  • Shipbuilding,
  • Socialism,
  • Switzerland,
  • Title Guarantee Companies,
  • Tontine,
  • Underwriter,
  • Unemployment,
  • Warranty.

That is, to 28 new articles,—say 2800% additional gain.

Observe, too, that this is a gain that cannot be expressed in figures. The index references are classified. First there is a main head Insurance; then subheads, Fire, Life, Marine, Title, Workmen’s; and under the subheads special topics arranged alphabetically.

In brief, the Index facilitates and accelerates reference to anything in the Britannica that bears on any desired topic.

The article Insurance opens with a definition of that word and with drawing a distinction between it and “assurance.” The general history of insurance traces marine insurance back to Greek commerce in the 4th century B.C., but shows that modern methods of marine insurance were unknown until the 14th century; that fire insurance dates from the 17th century and especially from the Great Fire of London in 1666; and that, although there were a few instances of life insurance in the 16th and 17th centuries, it did not become a regular business until the 18th century and was not widely extended until the 19th century. Separate sections of the article deal with Casualty (or accident) and Miscellaneous Insurance, Fire Insurance, Life Insurance, British Post Office Insurance, and Marine Insurance.

The section on British Post-Office Insurance will give to the American insurance man a knowledge of this innovation in the post-office to which the American post-office seems to be tending, if one may judge by the introduction of postal savings-banks and the adoption of the parcels-post system.

In the same way the article Old Age Pensions will make you acquainted with another radical measure which has been adopted in Great Britain, Germany, France, Denmark, Victoria and notably New Zealand, with fuller description in the article New Zealand. The importance of the subject to the American insurance man lies in the fact that similar schemes are under consideration or actual operation in Massachusetts, New Jersey, and other states of the United States. In the same way the article on Employers Liability and Workmen’s Insurance will give him a wider grasp of the subject of state insurance, mandatory or elective, for workmen.

The principal articles on insurance topics have already been mentioned. It is to be noted, however, that the actuary will find important information in the mathematical articles Mensuration and Probability; that the article Friendly Societies is supplemented by such special articles as Free Masonry, B’nai Brith, Building Societies, Burial Societies, Odd Fellows, etc.

In the Classified List of Articles in the Index Volume the student of insurance will find on page 893 a list of articles in the field of economics and social science, many of which will bear more or less directly on the subject. Among these articles and sub-articles are: