The gambling spirit, like the desire for stimulants and the tobacco habit, seems to be well nigh universal.
Men bet on the turn of dice, the cutting of cards, or the tossing of a coin, and we very properly denounce it as gambling. We take money without giving an equivalent, or we part with it and have nothing to show for the transfer.
There are insurance companies in England and in other parts of Europe where they insure risks from life to fire, from ships to crops, and from the turning of a card to the tossing of a coin.
The English company, known the world over as "Lloyd's," is ready to insure an ocean liner, or to guarantee that the next child born into your family will be a boy or a girl; it will even insure that there will or will not be twins, and that, if twins, they will be boys or girls, or one of each.
Now, this looks like gambling, and you would be quite right in so classing it, yet it is founded on the well considered law of chance, and the premiums—call them bets—are calculated with a mathematical precision surprising to one who has not studied the matter.
WHAT IS FIRE INSURANCE?
Fire insurance is a contract between the insured and the company taking the risk, in which for a consideration called a "premium," the company agrees to pay to the insured a stated sum, should the property, named in the policy, be destroyed by fire.
If there should be a fire, during the life of the policy, and the damage is not total, the company pays only enough to cover the loss.
Should the property be totally destroyed the company pays up to the amount named in the policy.
No company cares to insure for the full amount of the property; that might be an incentive to incendiarism.