No longer bound to a 24/7 workweek, my wife and I managed to avoid the horrible winter of 2014 by being in sunny Florida. But it was not a time for beach and sun — we kept busy with classes, reading, studying, concerts (both in the audience and as participants) and other activities that the time flew by.

Each year I save up the new books I want to read for the trip; books on politics, religion, history and especially novels. These include Nevada Barr, who writes mysteries about National Parks (we've been to most of them); Les Roberts, whose Cleveland detective writes about places in which I grew up; Sara Paretsky, the former CNA Chicago insurance claim attorney I once met; Daniel Silva, whose Israeli secret service assassin, Gabriel Allon, is bound to thrill; and finally the first two books of Ken Follett's "Century Trilogy," all 1926 pages of them.

What stirred me most were Follett's descriptions of what led to World War I and World War II. He traces a Welsh nobleman, a Welsh coal miner, a German, a Russian and an American political family through the events leading up to two world wars, their lives intertwined by sex and politics. The stories primarily involve conservatives vs. liberals, Fascists vs. Communists, and the rich vs. the poor. What is troubling is how similar the facts he describes in the 1905-1920 era and the 1932-1946 era are to what is happening in 2014. It is still the liberals vs. the conservatives, and the rich vs. the poor. In a recent New York Times article there was a graphic showing how the percentages of rich and poor varied between 1962 and 2014. It varied over the years, but the bottom line was that there are a greater percentage of U.S. poor in 2014 than in the 1960s. What ever happened to all of that "post-war prosperity"?

Getting your Kicks on Route 66

One of the classes we took was on the history of Route 66. For those of you born after 1955, the history of a highway might seem like nonsense — but for those of us who rode on it between Adams Street in Chicago and the Santa Monica Pier in Los Angeles, it was, as John Steinbeck called it in The Grapes of Wrath, the "mother road." At some points it was only nine feet wide, at others two lanes, but it was the road of legend and a way around the uncrossable Rockies (other than by rail) for the migrations of unemployed or farm-foreclosed victims of the 1930s Dust Bowl and Depression in America.

When I traveled it with my parents in 1954, it was still a road with wayside wigwam motels, giant ice cream cone-shaped shops, and phony cowboy stuff. On our trip, however, something was new: the beginnings of the Interstate Highway System, Interstates 55, 44 and 40. One would drive fifty miles on a two-lane road and then five or ten on the new duel highway, then back on two-lane roads for another bumpy ride east or west.

A Transcontinental Journey

In our class we learned that sometime around 1913, the U.S. Army sent a troop of soldiers on a transcontinental journey from California to New York City. It took them over a month to get there with no paved roads, places to stop for fuel, motels or Howard Johnson Restaurants. There were four or five transcontinental railroads, including the Santa Fe (the AT&SF) and the Harvey House girls at periodic spots along the route — but highways were non-existent for the thousands of Model T Fords rolling out of Detroit. The leader of this vagabond land voyage was a young officer named Dwight David Eisenhower. Many decades later, when he was Supreme Commander in World War II, he experienced the only good thing Adolph Hitler ever accomplished — the German Autobahns. He immediately saw the advantages of nationally planned intercity super highways, and as president, launched the Interstate Highway System.

Eisenhower was not the first to recognize that dirt roads were not the best way to win a war. In 1846, General William Tecumseh Sherman said, "No army dependent on wagons can operate more than a hundred miles from its base because the teams going and coming consume the contents of their wagons." During the Civil War, this led to the struggle to control the railroad between Chattanooga and Atlanta, and then between Atlanta and Augusta.

No Place to Spend the Money

We also learned that those with money during the Depression had few places to spend it. While many became millionaires during the Roaring Twenties, there were few places they could spend all that dough except on luxurious mansions, yachts, trans-Atlantic cruises (but who would want to go to war-torn Europe in the early 1920s?) or in speakeasies. Women had been given the vote and prohibition was in place. Many just saved their money, if they had any, unless their bank went broke. Better financial times came during World War II, but no one could go anywhere since there were no new cars and gas was rationed; the railroads had become troop trains. So when WW II ended, there was all that pent-up cash and few places to spend it, except on vacations.

More Autos, More Need for Auto Insurance

Automobiles have been around since the late 1890s, as well as some auto insurance. (See the History of Adjusting series.) Between 1900 and 1945, most people rode to work on streetcars and interurban lines, or commuter railroad cars. After the war, when everyone became a consumer, automobiles were big business, and everybody had to have at least one. That led to more need for automobile insurance and the rise of auto insurance companies, many with the word "auto" in them.

The gecko tells us that Government Employers Ins. Co. (GEICO) is 75 years old. That is just about right for the rise of the family auto trip (1939). Allstate has been around since 1931, a part of rural America that bought everything from a Sears Roebuck catalog, including insurance. Nationwide Mutual got its start in 1925; United Services Auto Association, a reciprocal exchange for military officers, soon after the end of World War I in 1922; State Auto in 1941; and Liberty Mutual all the way back in 1912. Many of the other auto insurers of today trace their history into the 1800s, before automobiles were invented. So by 1950, there were lots of new cars and plenty of insurance companies willing to insure them, but only old, two-lane highways to drive them on (other than a few "turnpikes" in the East and Midwest), until Ike started the interstates.

Both the differences and the sameness of the 2014 political world to the first half of the 20th century are amazing. Big business vs. the poor working class. Laws seem to favor the wealthy over the rights of the commoner, the now nearly extinct middle class, and the minority. Bankers getting million dollar bonuses are lobbying Congress not to raise the minimum wage for workers. Fifty years ago a man could support his family on "the minimum wage." Today that is impossible, so the man has to work two jobs and his wife must also work, and although paid slightly less, may have a better job. Why is it so?

The answer to that question lies in the history of what led to the three wars of the 20th century: World War I, which had no real cause other than an assassinated emperor; World War II, which was a fascist attempt to rule everything; and the Cold War, which included the Korean "police action" that is now again threatening to freeze the world into "blocks." It's the "haves" vs. the "have nots," and right now it looks like the "haves" may have it! As president, Ike warned us about the "military industrial complex." That's what fascist Germany had under Hitler.

'Stand Your Ground' With a Gun

Down in sunny Florida there are hundreds of registered (and unregistered) hate groups, neo-Nazis, the KKK, gun fanatics who, under the state's infamous "stand your ground" law, would sooner shoot someone than agree with him. As in every American city these days the evening news is full of body bags, the deceased from some senseless shootout or gang warfare. Back here in Georgia, there is also a "stand your ground" law, and the governor has signed into law a bill that permits gun owners to carry a concealed gun into bars, restaurants, schools, airports and even churches. As recently occurred in Central Florida, if you don't like the guy sitting in front of you texting his babysitter, shoot him. Don't agree with the preacher? Shoot him, too. It's the Wild West moved South.

Could the insurance industry help control the gun violence? There is no standard firearms exclusion in the Homeowners Part 2 liability policy, but perhaps there should be. Insurers could then make more money with a buy-back endorsement, and the non-gun gang wouldn't have to pay for gun-related claims. There is a corporal punishment exclusion — why not a use of firearms exclusion? Shooting claims do get made. In the Alaska case of Neary (USAA v. Neary, 307 P.3d 907 [2013]) the Alaska Supreme Court held that a single policy limit of $300,000 applied to a case where a minor had taken his father's gun, loaded it, fired it at himself with no injury, then aimed it at his friend and shot him dead. The parents of the deceased child, of course, sued, wanting the policy limits "per parent."

In a State of Washington school shooting case (Kok v. Tacoma School District, 2013 Wash. App. [2013]) the issue was the foreseeability on the part of the school board (and probably on the part of the parents, as well) when a high school student took a gun to school and killed another student. The shooter was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, and had been "hearing voices," but the school was unaware that the boy was dangerous. The appellate court decided that "foreseeability" issues were for the trial court to determine.

Shootings and New Drugs Every Night

Every night the news is full of yet another shooting, killing, drunk driver going the wrong way on an interstate highway, or another kind of drug that is making the rounds of the elementary schools. School shootings are so common now that we can easily forget about them. Maybe it's that way where you live too. It was that way when workers tried to force big manufacturers to allow union bargaining in the years before World War I; the workers formed picket lines and the owners hired "goons" with clubs and guns to beat them up or shoot them. It was fear of Communism, not fascism, that kept America out of World War II until 1942. Europe's gun battles raged and Washington stonewalled. FDR was the most hated man in America, but we've forgotten all that.

All the benefits of FDR's New Deal, things like Social Security and unemployment insurance, were the target of hatred 80 years ago, just as Wilson's idea for a League of Nations never passed Congress and we got World War II instead. History has a bad habit of repeating itself because we forget.

Lessons Learned

There is a lesson for insurers in all this. It has to do with those new insurers in the first half of the 20th century who handled claims by going out and investigating, by meeting with claimants and insureds, and verifying what was true and what wasn't. It made those insurers strong. Nobody ever thought about just "processing" a claim — each was adjusted individually. Of course back then there were not as many cars, not as many highways, and certainly no interstates. The U.S. population was one-third of what it is now. True, cars are safer than they were then, with air bags, safety glass, seat belts and uniframe construction, but they can be just as deadly, especially when we don't know about the defects that should have caused a recall.

Was there as much "road rage" then as now? Will the next road rage event involve standing one's ground with a machine gun? Many a man is dead who thought he had the right-of-way. Contributory negligence rules have morphed into comparative negligence, and undoubtedly some idiot who intentionally bangs his car into someone else's because "the guy cut me off" will claim it was the victim's fault. The courts are full of auto claims that ought to have been settled by adjusters who knew how to investigate, evaluate and negotiate, but who chose to simply process the claim instead. Hence, claims that may have been owed were denied, with litigation resulting. But worse, claims that were not owed got paid, even if they were fraudulent. Perhaps it doesn't matter — maybe insurers can just raise next year's premium to cover the loss.

We know fraud in rampant: somewhere around $30 billion in the property/casualty field, but still insurers think they are saving money by not hiring enough adjusters to go out and investigate the claims. I guess it's easier to just raise our premiums, but to me that seems just a tad fraudulent. Look at history. Sometimes we don't really know what is going on all around us, even when it is something evil, like hatred, violence or fraud, unless we investigate.

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