“Find the Canadian Druggist the most interesting paper for druggists in the Dominion. I wish you success.”
One of our advertisers says that within two weeks after the publication of the first number, he had business enquiries from two druggists in Prince Edward Island and one in British Columbia, the extreme easterly and westerly Provinces of our Dominion, mentioning the advertisement which appeared in the Canadian Druggist leading to the transaction of business with them.
INSURANCE OF DRUG STOCKS.
By mutual consent of all fire insurance companies (and when will they not agree to increase their own profits by raising rates), the rate on ordinary drug stock is higher than ordinary merchandise rates, claiming the greater risk on the former class. That this is not the case is shown time and again from statistics which clearly prove that although drug stock may and does include goods which are of a particularly inflammable nature, yet the precautions taken, the description of containers in which these goods are kept and the usually small proportion of them in a retail store has reduced the number of fires originating in such premises to a very small percentage of the total fire losses.
In Philadelphia a “Druggists’ Mutual Fire Insurance Company” has been formed, and has issued a large number of policies. Would it not be well for the druggists of Canada to consider the question either of concerted action on their part to compel the insurance companies to give us more reasonable rates, or failing in this to establish a company on somewhat the same lines as the Philadelphia company? We append some extracts from the Druggists’ Circular, showing the feeling which exists in the United States in this matter:
At the annual meeting of the Ohio Pharmaceutical Association, held in 1888, a committee was appointed to investigate the subject of mutual fire insurance. This committee has recently made public the results of its work from which it appears that the druggists of that State pay pretty dearly for their insurance. It is estimated by the committee, from all that they can learn, that druggists by protecting themselves on the mutual plan can save from one-half to three-quarters of the money now expended for premiums.
There has long been an exceedingly strong suspicion in the minds of druggists everywhere that the rates usually charged them for insurance against fire were extravagant. When protesting against these charges they have been confronted with pictures of the terribly dangerous character of their stocks—how their stores were magazines of highly inflammable substances, which by the breaking of a bottle, might in a moment be involved in destruction.
To show that a pharmacy is in fact a rather safe place, so far as fire is concerned, we may quote from the report above referred to that in Cleveland the loss to retail druggists from that cause during a period of eighteen years amounted to only $5,500; and in Cincinnati the loss in eight years was but $3,000.