to justify this practice of making one man pay damages for the negligence of some one else is like this:

If a man chooses to carry on the operations of his life and business by having others to do the work for him, he can only be allowed to do so on the terms of guaranteeing the capacity of his servants to answer for acts and defaults committed by them in the course of the work he has ordered them to do.

The course of reasoning thus followed to justify the principaland-agent theory of liability also justifies the workmen's compensation acts adopted by all the leading countries of Europe, which require the employer to assume all the risks of the employment which he calls into being. But while the employer makes the primary payment, just as he pays for the wear and tear of his machinery or the loss of his plant by fire, the consumers ultimately pay the cost. The alternative to such a general distribution of the financial burdens of industrial accidents is the present method, by which the entire burden is put primarily upon the poorest classes and, when it crushes them, to the damage of the community, is at last tardily assumed by the latter, through the public charities.

While all of the principal European nations have, by the recognition of such social obligations, reached what we have designated as the third stage in the evolution of accident legislation, many of them have advanced to a fourth stage. In England, Denmark and Spain the legislature was content to prescribe the compensation which an employer should pay for the injury of an employee. It did not furnish to the injured employee any security for such payment further than the usual liens upon the employer's property or upon any insurance money due him. The omission might prove a serious onè upon occasion; for example, when a great colliery explosion kills scores of workmen the resulting indemnities would almost inevitably bankrupt the employer unless he had taken out an accident-insurance policy upon his mine. And on the Continent, where indemnities usually take the form of pensions rather than cash or lump payments, the possible bankruptcy or failure of an employer is an ever-present contingency. In

order to guarantee the payment of these indemnities the countries outside of the three mentioned above have resorted to compulsory insurance. Germany, the pioneer in the whole movement, adopted, as we have seen, the simple expedient of the collective responsibility of employers organized by industries. Austria employs the same system, except that the employers' mutual associations are organized by districts or provinces rather than by industries. In Italy and Finland

employers may transfer their liabilities to such mutual associations; otherwise they must carry accident insurance in the state insurance office or authorized companies, or deposit securities with the proper state officers. Holland allows only the three latter alternatives, while Norway has gone still farther and made its state insurance institution the sole means of collecting premiums from employers and paying indemnities to workmen. France, finally, is trying the original method of giving injured working people a government guarantee of their pensions, through the proceeds of a special tax upon the establishments subject to the law.

Should the United States, or any of the states, enact a workmen's compensation law, one would expect the example of England rather than the Continent to be followed, at least until the impracticability of leaving the matter of insurance to the initiative of the employer has been fully demonstrated. And while the genius of America favors voluntary rather than compulsory insurance, the private institutions to furnish such insurance are already developing. Should Congress enact a law requiring interstate carriers to compensate employees for all injuries of their employment, it would find many of the largest systems already provided with insurance institutions in the form of relief funds, which, under government supervision, would serve their purpose admirably. On the other hand, should the individual commonwealths enact such compensation laws for all mechanical industries, they would find already in existence a large business in liability and accident insurance, which is being transacted by private companies. These companies are now issuing to employers workmen's collective

policies that promise the payment of stated sums for certain definite injuries; for example, in the event of death, or the loss of two eyes or limbs, a sum equal to one year's wages, not exceeding $1500; for the loss of one limb, a sum equal to one-third the above. Such blanket policies would be issued by many companies if public statutes required the compensation of accidents upon an established scale; and as insurance companies are already subject to public supervision, it would involve the introduction of no new principle to require their accident-insurance policies to conform to certain standards that might be embodied in a workmen's compensation act.

ALBANY, N.Y.

ADNA F. WEBER.

THE ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF

HISTORY.

III.

TH

VIII.

'HUS far I have set forth the theory of the economic interpretation of history and have studied some of the objections that are commonly advanced. There still remain among the criticisms most frequently encountered two points which seem to be somewhat more formidable. Of these perhaps the more important is the one that figured fourth in our original list,1- the objection, namely, that the theory of economic interpretation neglects the ethical and spiritual forces in history.

It must be confessed, indeed, that the attempts thus far made by the "historical materialists" to meet the objection have not been attended with much success.2 On closer inspection, nevertheless, this criticism also turns out to be in some respects less weighty than has often been supposed. For what, after all, is the realm of ethical or spiritual forces? To answer this question it is necessary to distinguish between the existence of the moral law and its genesis. The failure to draw this distinction is largely responsible for the confusion of thought which still prevails.

From the historical point of view it no longer admits of reasonable doubt that all individual ethics is the outgrowth of social forces. Moral actions are of two kinds, those which

1 POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY, XVII, 88.

2 This is true not only of the Germans, but of the English, like Bax, and of the French, like Labriola, Deville and Lafargue. Cf. especially Mehring, Die Lessing Legende, p. 463, and the articles in Die neue Zeit: by Bax, vol. xv, pp. 175, 685; by Kautsky, vol. xiv, p. 652, and vol. xv, pp. 231, 260; by Bernstein, vol. xi, p. 782. Bernstein has also treated the subject in his more recent books.

As to the French socialists, see Labriola, Essais sur la conception matérialiste de l'histoire (1897); Lafargue, Idéalisme et matérialisme (1895); and Deville, Principes socialistes (1896).

directly affect other individuals, and those which primarily affect only one's self. In the first class, comprising to-day the great mass of activities to which we apply the term ethical, the sanction was originally social in character. The conception of sin or immorality is not the primary conception. Historically we first find crimes and torts, that is, offenses against society as a whole or against the individuals comprising society; it is only at a much later period that the idea emerges of an offense against God or against the moral law as reflected in one's conscience. When the conception of sin was once reached it was indeed gradually broadened so as to include the other offenses, until to-day the commission of either crime or tort involves a sin. But historically sins were not recognized as such before torts and crimes.

Among brutes there is in all probability no such thing as morality, no conception of good or evil. The female may protect her young through instinct; but to maintain that this is a moral action is, to say the least, premature. It no doubt conduces to the perpetuation of the species, and thus is a powerful factor in natural selection; but there is nothing moral about the action unless we are willing to apply the term "moral" to every act — whether instinctive or volitional that makes for the permanence of the species. Morality in its origin indeed implies utility; but utility does not necessarily connote morality. Even if we predicate morality of animals, however, future investigators will no doubt explain its origin on very much the same lines as that of human morality.

For with the institution of human society we are on safer ground and can trace the glimmerings of a moral development. In the primitive peoples that still exist in almost the lowest.

1 The reason why it is not safe categorically to deny the existence of morality among animals is that the older contention of an essential psychical difference between man and animals has broken down before the flood of recent investigation. Comparative biology has proved that psychological phenomena begin far down in animal life. Some writers even profess to find them among the very lowest classes of beings- so low indeed that it is even doubtful whether they belong to the animal or the vegetable kingdom. For a popular presentation, see Binet, The Psychic Life of Micro-Organisms (1894). Binet's views, however, are not shared by the more conservative biologists.