some cases as a strong motive to confess that no improvement is taking place in their condition."

Even more lamentable has been the wholly unexpected development of dishonest medical practice to secure to the injured workmen benefits to which they are not rightfully entitled. In France, according to an article in the British Medical Journal, doctors do not hesitate to give false certificates, which are used by workmen to extort compensation. These and other difficulties are, of course, too involved to receive extended consideration at this time. The available evidence, however, is sufficiently clear that the passage of drastic workmen's compensation acts is certain to be followed by more or less unfavorable consequences, both financial and moral, unless the provisions are framed with extreme care and a method of rigid and expert supervision is employed by which alone imposition, malingering, and fraud can be reduced to a minimum.

The alternative to workmen's compensation laws is compulsory workmen's accident insurance on a contributory or a non-contributory basis. The German compulsory system in actual practice has some decided advantages over the English. In the accident branch the whole burden of cost falls upon industry, and there are no contributions from the workmen. The interrelation of the accident branch with the sickness and old-age and invalidity branches makes it difficult clearly to establish the true incidence of cost, since, for the first thirteen weeks of injury, accident cases are compensated for out of the sick fund. Since, however, only a part of the accident risk is really inherent in the industry, and since many accidents occur which are due to other causes than industrial employment, it seems but fair that the workmen should contribute their share to obtain the largest possible benefit on an equitable and moral basis of benefits received for services rendered. The English and German precedents, however, will probably defeat propositions for joint contributions on the part of employers and employees to meet the complete risk of industrial accidents and industrial diseases. From a practical point of view there is much to be said in favor of this principle. It is

necessary to keep in mind that, aside from other reasons, the first requirement is absolute certainty to the workman and his family that compensation will be made in the event of death or incapacity to work, as the result of accidental injury, whether the accident results from his own or his employer's faults and shortcomings or because of the true accident liability inherent in all employments.

Granting, therefore, the right of workmen to compensation under any and all circumstances arising out of industrial accidents and certain well-defined forms of industrial disease, the question remains whether the remedy lies in the direction of the workmen's compensation law of England or the German compulsory system of insurance. The German system in practice has advantages which, thus far at least, have not resulted from the English system. Under the latter the risk to the employer is covered by employers' liability insurance, the cost of which is probably as great, if not greater, in some industries at least, as under the German system. Sir Thomas Oliver has pointed out that the insurance premium has increased from 9s. 3d. per £100 of the wages paid in 1900 in the case of a large coal owners' association to 19s. per £100 in 1907, or more than 100 per cent. In the case of a large engineering firm at Newcastle the rate to-day is nearly twice what it was formerly. It is pointed out, however, that employers who have their own accident funds can run the insurance cost at a smaller sum than when done through an insurance office, which in some trades more dangerous than others may require 15s. or more per £100 of insurance. The cost of insurance rises naturally the more hazardous the trades are considered, but the insurance premium under the English system is only a rough approximation to the risk.

This difficulty is met in the German system by trade associations into which the employers in clearly defined industries are compelled to organize so that each branch of trade pays its own trade risk. The burden is equitably distributed among the different branches by a revision of the actual experience at least once in every five years. The resulting so-called danger

tariffs are in almost exact conformity to the true accident factor in different branches of the industry. For example, in textile manufacture the rate varies from 0.2 per cent. of the wages paid in the case of hand-loom weavers to 3.8 per cent. in the case of shoddy manufacture. It is self-evident that in all these industries there are many mechanical, allied, contiguous, and supplementary employments where the accident rate may be much higher or lower than in the risk of the industry as a whole. It is, therefore, only fair that every well-defined branch of the industry should pay its proportionate share of cost. To illustrate, in textile manufacture the spinning and weaving rooms should be separate and distinct in their contributions to the accident fund from the picking and carding rooms, and in mining the labor above ground should not be charged with the same rate of contributions as the labor below ground. While this at first may seem very complicated, it has, nevertheless, been found practicable in German experience to perfect the danger tariffs with a remarkable degree of success, hence the burden of accident insurance, as it falls upon German industry, is almost identical with the true risk of the trade, and there is in this respect practically no serious complaint.

Since, under the German system, employers are federated in accident insurance institutions, they are subject only to statutory requirements as to what they must do and what they must not do, but otherwise they have complete control over their own affairs. They are supervised through the Imperial Insurance Office, but there is a minimum degree of actual interference, and this only for strictly justifiable causes. The German system, therefore, makes it decidedly to the interest of every branch of industry to reduce accidents and industrial diseases to a minimum, and, while even under the German system malingering cannot be prevented, there are strong reasons to believe that there is less of it in Germany than in England.

The remarkable success with which industry is supervised in all its branches at a minimum of expense and a maximum of benefits is in itself a justification for the German system, even

if it did not as a first consideration grant to workingmen financial relief as a right in the event of accidental injury. It imposes the duty upon all industrial establishments to improve the conditions of work and to reduce industrial accident and disease liability to a minimum. This has been carried out through thoroughly intelligent rules and regulations of accident and disease prevention, which are without a parallel in any other part of the world. There are no workmen to-day anywhere whose health and safety are better safeguarded than the workmen in German industrial establishments, and there is not the slightest doubt but that the effect of these rules and regulations has been far-reaching in both its moral and economical consequences. The industrial efficiency of the German workman in important respects is superior to that of any other, because his health and his strength are better conserved than is the case in other lands. Many valuable lives are saved or prolonged, which represent years of industrial experience and acquired ability, and which are recklessly wasted or destroyed in our own country.

While for the time being we have certain economic and other industrial advantages, and while our native-born workmen have admittedly a higher degree of mechanical skill, ingenuity, and adaptability to new processes of manufacture, this is probably only a transitory condition which must soon pass away. Where the German workman has a substantial advantage is in the fostering of the conditions which favor plodding industry and average mechanical skill, accompanied by rising wages and shorter hours, which, after all, make up the sum and substance of enduring industrial success. In the sustaining of these qualities and in the perfection of these abilities the German accident insurance system is unquestionably of the greatest possible assistance.

When a system or method of social reform is productive of decidedly beneficial results to the people of one country, it is certain to cause the adoption of similar or corresponding methods in other countries. Whether American employers of labor will ultimately be compelled by law to make specific

compensation for industrial accidents and diseases, but in a more or less haphazard manner and subject to the risk of widespread imposition and fraud, or whether they will succeed in meeting this liability by employers' liability insurance, or whether they will voluntarily inaugurate a system of workmen's insurance through the federation of large industries and joint contributions to a common fund, are, of course, open questions to which at this time no answer can be given. It is certain, however, that one of these methods will finally be adopted.

All problems of this character depend for their successful solution upon a sound basis of statistical facts. While the present state of our knowledge with regard to the true degree of accident or disease frequency in industry is not very satisfactory, nevertheless, data to a considerable amount are available, which have been briefly consolidated in the form of a series of tables in the Appendix to this paper. The tables will afford a convenient means of reference, since most of the facts are not easily obtained in their present form, even from the official reports which contain them. They will prove useful to those who are interested in the best possible solution of the problem under consideration, as well as in a correct presentation, of the available facts regarding the probable rate of accident frequency in American industry and the related subjects of American employers' liability insurance experience and workmen's compensation law in England.

Granting that the day is not far distant when employers' liability will be both real and practical and when the right of the employee to relief or compensation will be made corresponding to the duty on the part of the employer to introduce all reasonable safety precautions and devices, large employers of labor would seem to be indifferent to their own interests in not taking time by the forelock in the inauguration of federated accident institutions, with a full equipment of modern methods for technical supervision and resulting accident and disease prevention. There can be no doubt that the actual cost of the most effective method of accident insurance, granting to the