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number of industrial accidents which if not compensated for would lead to poverty, unemployment, and the suffering of innocent women and children.

That the burden of industrial accidents should be borne by the industry itself or the consumer and not by the laborer or his family is very generally recognized; and most foreign countries, together with the federal government and more than half of the states, have replaced or supplemented the old law of employers' liability with workmen's compensation acts. The laws are described and discussed in a later chapter, on Insurance. They have worked well: not perfectly, but with much more certainty and with far less cost than the old laws. Defects naturally exist in the new system which should be remedied in the future. The usual compensation is too low to indemnify the victim and his family adequately for the loss resulting from the accident, and the limitation of payments for permanent disability to four or six years or less is illogical and will cause hardship. But the new system is so much superior to the old that, despite these defects, its adoption must be regarded as a noteworthy step in social progress achieved through legislation. As a concrete contrast with the awkward, expensive, capricious working of the old liability law, the results of the operation of the Wisconsin compensation act during the year ended June 30, 1915, are suggestive of the improvement effected by the change. Of all the industrial accidents occurring that year, 93 per cent were settled between the employers and workmen with no outside interference beyond a simple "approval by the state Industrial Commission; 3 per cent of the cases were carried to the industrial commission for adjustment; and only one fifth of 1 per cent was carried to the courts. The injured workmen received for indemnity and medical expense $1,350,000, while the administrative cost to the state was only $13,771.

Philosophy of Labor Legislation. In the preceding sketch it has been possible only in the most superficial way to call attention to a few of the more important modern labor laws. It is equally impossible to discuss adequately the general aspects

of the labor movement as it expresses itself in legislative action. In conclusion, however, it may be suggestive in a rather dogmatic way to pass in review some of the broader aspects of this movement:

Mercantilism and its alleged failure, or the breakdown of old labor legislation in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, furnish no adequate reason for concluding that the new legislation will fail. The old laws were enacted by a ruling minority in behalf of that minority. They had to contend with the persistent and growing opposition of a large majority of the people. They lay athwart the path of democracy. The new laws have a much greater chance of success because they cannot be passed until they have the support of a majority, and we may now reasonably look for an administration thoroughly in sympathy with their purposes.

Administratively, an improved mechanism has been developed in the industrial, labor, or welfare commission. From the standpoint of labor legislation the tripartite division of American government has been deeply unfortunate. Legislatures have enacted laws, courts have passed upon them, and executives have administered them who did not understand the conditions and technical facts with which they dealt. More legislative power and more judicial power must be lodged in labor commissions, manned by real experts (whom we are just beginning to train) and empowered to deal with complex labor problems by administrative orders or, more properly perhaps, legislative and executive orders. The original formulation of general social policy must be left to the legislature; ultimate constitutional and judicial questions must remain with the courts; but all special questions, legislative, judicial, and administrative, should be left as fully as possible to a body supplied with means and time to learn the technical facts and to enlist both employers and employees in formulating and then observing the details of the law.

So far as constitutional questions are concerned, the main battle in the courts has, we believe, been won. Individualism and freedom of contract have constituted in the past a chronic

American disease; but an adequate antitoxin has been developed in the police power. The doctrine of the police power raises essentially a question of fact: does the condition in question genuinely menace the health or morals or safety of the community? Because this is primarily a question of fact, it is vitally important that we should have commissions or officials empowered to get the facts in an impartial and authoritative way. When we have the facts we shall recognize fully that "liberty" is a composite and mutually contradictory term; that there are liberties rather than one single liberty; that to preserve a deeper and more genuine liberty we must frequently sacrifice liberties of a smaller and more superficial character, and to preserve the liberty of the many it is sometimes necessary to restrain the liberty of the few. If there is an inalienable right of free contract, may an individual in the exercise of that right bind himself to slavery for life?

Finally it is being found that this protective legislation protective against poverty and exploitation either by persons or circumstances (the last is far the more important) - does not pauperize or weaken human fiber, or check the competitive struggle for existence upon which so much is believed to depend. Underfeeding, undereducation, underthinking, all the handto-mouth vicissitudes that accompany abject poverty, undermine human fiber and pauperize far more effectually than state regulation or assistance can ever do. Moreover, the modern labor law is the antithesis of paternalism. It is the collective way by which the wage-earning masses help themselves; and it is political because the evil which it seeks to remedy is political as well as individual. "Of all national resources labor is by far the most important. So important is it that one may almost say that all else depends upon it. Not until a nation has secured a body of sturdy, skillful and contented workers can it be said to have met the first requisite to national efficiency. ... As in the past the nation that would succeed had to apply itself to the training of its soldiers, so now it must apply itself to the training of its industrial workers. We are appalled at the suffering, loss of life, and destruction of wealth entailed

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by war and preparation for war. They are as nothing compared with the misery, sickness, and death now due to the failure of society properly to control the conditions under which industrial work shall be performed. No one can calculate the loss daily taking place as the result of the use of feeble, untrained, discontented workers." Labor legislation represents above all else an organized effort to achieve national and social efficiency.

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QUESTIONS

1. Under what circumstances is the labor law used to determine conditions of employment? What are its characteristics in this connection? What differences are found in the determination of conditions of employment by law and by a strong trade union?

2. What is the difference between a primary and an indirect or compound boycott? Is the latter lawful in the jurisdiction in which you live? Is a strike to prevent the employment of non-union men lawful?

3. Does the anti-trust act of your state apply to labor organizations? What is a conspiracy? and what are the peculiar characteristics of the law of conspiracy?

4. Against what aspects or characteristics of the injunction do trade unionists protest?

5. Summarize the child labor laws of your state and those relating to industrial education, continuation schools, and mothers' pensions. What arguments have been advanced against mothers' pensions?

6. Do minimum wage laws operate to reduce all wages to the legal minimum? Summarize evidence on this point from the Frankfurter-Goldmark brief and other sources.

7. What bearing has the minimum wage on the immigration problem? Is it socially expedient that minors living in families with adequate incomes should be prohibited from working for less than the living wage?

8. Does compulsory insurance against sickness and old age tend to undermine or strengthen individual thrift? Give reasons.

9. Briefly summarize the law on employers' liability in your state; or if it has a workmen's compensation act, summarize the results of that law as given in the latest published statistics.

REFERENCES

(See also references for Chapter XXII.)

American Labor Legislation Review (quarterly).

ANDREWS, IRENE. Minimum Wage Legislation (with select bibliography on the minimum wage).

1 W. F. Willoughby, in American Labor Legislation Review, vol. iv, p. 44.

AVES, ERNEST. Report to the Secretary of State for the Home Department on Wages Boards and Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Acts of Australia and New Zealand.

BEVERIDGE, W. H. Unemployment. A Problem of Industry.

CLARK, L. D. The Law of the Employment of Labor.

CLARK, V. S. The Labor Movement in Australasia.

COMMONS, J. R., and ANDREWS, J. B. Principles of Labor Legislation. DICEY, A. V. Relation Between Law and Public Opinion in England in the Nineteenth Century.

FRANKFURTER, FELIX, and GOLDMARK, JOSEPHINE. The Case for the
Shorter Work Day (2 vols.). (Brief in the Oregon ten-hour-law case.)
GOLDMARK, JOSEPHINE. Fatigue.

HUTCHINS, B. L., and HARRISON, A. A History of Factory Legislation.
RUBINOW, I. M. Social Insurance.

STIMSON, F. J. Popular Law Making; Handbook to the Labor Law of the United States.

United States Bureau of Labor Statistics. Bulletin (Separate series upon (a) Labor Laws of the United States (including decisions of courts relating to labor), (b) Foreign Labor Laws, (c) Workmen's Insurance and Compensation); Report on Condition of Won Toman and Child Wage Earners in the United States (19 volumes).

WEBB, SIDNEY and BEATRICE. The Prevention of Destitution.

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