[Footnote 237a-6: Usually so that the regular yearly contribution is higher than the average damage and cost of administration; this excess is then returned in the form of a dividend, either immediately at the close of the yearly account, or which is still safer, after several years. In the Stuttgart private insurance company, the reserve must amount to one per cent. of the amount insured, before the premium-surplus is returned. The Gotha fire insurance company, between 1821 and 1842, paid back an average of 46 per cent.; and even in 1842, after the Hamburg conflagration, there was an after-payment of only 98 per cent. necessary. This collection in advance of a fund for extraordinary losses is more secure than borrowing in case of need, and paying back in good years. Thus, the Baden Landes-Brandkasse had a debt in 1837 of 800,000 florins. (_Rau_, in the Archiv., III, 320 ff.) In a mutual insurance company, where entrance and exit are free, this would be scarcely possible.] [Footnote 237a-7: Nearly three-fourths of the public insurance institutions insure also against fire caused by war (Mitth., 1874, 85), a matter of importance even as war is waged in our own days, since in 1870-71, the damage from fire by the Franco-Prussian war in France was estimated at 141,000,000 francs. (Mitth., 1873, 33.)] [Footnote 237a-8: In Prussia, the mutual fire insurance companies, in 1865 and 1866 had an administration outlay of 0.24 and 0.22 per 1,000 of the amount insured; the premium insurance companies of 0.80 and 0.96; the latter doubtless including large assessments for common purposes. (Preuss. Statist. Ztschr., 1868, 269.) In all Germany, the outlay for administration is, for public institutions, 4 per cent. of the contributions; for premium institutions, inclusive of their dividends, 37.1 per cent.; for the more important French private institutions, even 68.8 per cent. (Mitth., 1874, 89, 92.)] [Footnote 237a-9: German public fire insurance institutions generally have a territory of their own, in which that institution is the only one of the kind. On the other hand, the premium institutions in the whole empire keep about 80,000 agents, i. e., a number 50 times as large as the number of officers of the former, (loc. cit. 90.)] [Footnote 237a-10: Mutual insurance companies, as they have extended, have sometimes split up into several; for instance, the insurance companies against damage by hail at Lübeck, Güstrow, Schwedt and Griefswald, daughters of that at New Brandenburg.]