Equally injurious might be the illness of the president of the Board, throwing upon an incompetent member the duty of presenting the library’s claims and needs. It is surely unjust that a public-service institution should be at the mercy of such trivial chances. In some states, including my own, the library is removed from such ill-luck as this by a statutory provision fixing its public income, subject to proper checks and taking away the ability of an individual’s illness or indisposition to lower it. But where this ill-chance is still in its baleful working order, why should not the library be protected against it by insurance? Such protection would be analogous to the corporation insurance taken out by large industrial companies to offset the loss likely to result from the death of an officer on whose administrative ability much of the company’s earning power depends, or to the payment of death duties by insurance, now being advocated by many companies, and adopted on a huge scale by Mr. J.P. Morgan. Insurance is the great equalizer; it multiplies instances, enlarges the field of possibilities and abolishes ill-luck. We are availing ourselves of it in case of possible damage by fire or storm, or of loss through our liability as employers. We may in future use it to cut out chance and luck in other fields also and to make our resources so dependable that we may devote to the extension and betterment of service the ingenuity now often spent solely in devising means “to get along”.