Note 1 — INTRODUCTION

“Within a score of years disasters ... have cost thousands of lives, have affected by personal injury, or destruction of property no fewer than a million and a half persons and have laid waste property valued at over a billion dollars ... the expectation based on past experience is that each year no less than half a dozen such catastrophies will occur.” (Deacon J. Byron, Disasters, N. Y., 1918, p. 7.) This quotation refers to the United States alone.