does not end even here. He must
watch the risk for changes in occupancy, protect his client's interests
in the event of a loss, and constantly fight like a tiger before the
rating bureau to reduce the rate lest some alert rival offer his
customer better terms.

All this detail is quite smoothly transacted, supposing the business to
be in the companies' opinion desirable, but when the risk offered is
what the street terms a "skate" or a "target," there is a sudden halt,
and the completion of the binder becomes a more difficult matter. Then
the really astute placer has a chance to demonstrate his efficiency.
It is his function to persuade with winged words his adversary, the
company's local underwriter or "counterman," that the stock of cheap
millinery belonging to the Slavonic gentlemen with the unfortunate
record of two fires of unknown origin and two opportune failures is
even more desirable--at the rate--than the large line on the
substantial office building which he half exhibits, holding
suggestively back. It is his duty to place all his business, not the
good alone, and generally he succeeds in eventually doing so, although
some binders become tattered and grimy with age and from having been
handed futilely back and forth over the company counters. The owner of
many a Fifth Avenue dwelling would be surprised could he know that the
insurance on his property had been utilized to force on some reluctant
company a small line covering the sewing machines in Meyer Leshinsky's
Pike Street sweatshop. Many an ingenious placer has had the binders of
his very worst risks--that he had been totally unable to cover--freshly
typewritten every morning in order to convey the impression that the
order had that moment been secured by his firm and that the hesitating
counterman to whom it was being presented with elaborate indifference
was the first--the best friend of the placer--to whom the line had been
offered.

On an eligible corner on the west side of William Street, at the very
center of the Street's activity, stood, in the year 1912, a gray stone
structure of dignified though scarcely decorative appearance. On the
stone slabs each side of the doorway, old style brass letters
proclaimed--if so modest an announcement could be termed a
proclamation--that here were the offices of

THE GUARDIAN FIRE INSURANCE COMPANY
OF THE
CITY OF NEW YORK

Over this portal gray walls rose to the height of eight stories. S