reached the working people in the 15 per cent class entitled to compensation heretofore under the old system. This situation clearly demonstrates that where some few may have obtained heavy damages, the vast majority were left as charges upon society, or to bear their burden alone with the best courage their crippled condition permitted.

The president of the United States Casualty Company, in a widely circulated address opposing state insurance, solicits condolence because, as he shows for five-year periods, the insistence of juries that damages be paid injured men has compelled casualty companies to disburse over 50 per cent of their premiums received. This means that less than 25 per cent of the premiums collected have reached the victims of accidents (the other 25 per cent being eaten up in attorneys' fees, court costs, time lost and expense in going to lawyers), as against the 100 per cent of premiums going to injured workmen where the state insures employes against industrial accidents.

Casualty companies, with their liking for litigation and their limitation of protection to $5,000, except with double or quadruple premiums, have not afforded protection to the many young industries endeavoring to get a foothold in our undeveloped state, and we were not sure that a system which would practically compel all employers to insure with these companies would protect the injured workman against irresponsible, bankrupt or absconding employers who had lapsed their policies or violated some technical requirement in the same. The establishment of a state fund rests on the insurance principle of distribution of risk-that one employer should not bear alone the exceptional stroke of bad luck.

Economically the old system is wholly indefensible because of the waste of 75 or 80 per cent of the funds taken out of industry to repair the man-loss thereof a waste absorbed by lawyers, by commissions paid for placing insurance policies, by executive salaries of numerous insurance corporations, by duplicated clerical forces, by dividends to clamorous stockholders of such companies, by claimagents who sought advancement through a record of elimination of claims and of contemptible settlements, by unnecessary witness fees and court costs, by the maintenance of a machinery of appeals, and by the multiplication of judges necessary to hear such lawsuits, both meritorious and born of fraud. The magnitude of this litiga

tion, which necessarily arouses class antagonism, recrimination and bitterness, has also contributed in no small way to the restlessness of the working class caused by the delays of justice, and to the criticism of the courts as institutions. It is useless to say to this body that the system so characterized is universally condemned, and the only question which arises in the minds of thinking people is, what is the best system to replace it?

In the state of Washington the workmen have contributed their full share of time and thought and coöperation in evolving a system which, we think, is in most respects superior to any piece of compensation legislation in the United States. To quote Mr. Robert W. Bruere in the October Harper's Monthly, "One state, Washington, honoring the liberal spirit of the West, has inaugurated a system of compulsory state insurance against industrial accidents which for comprehensive justice and social wisdom compares favorably with the most advanced legislation in Europe".

An able corporation lawyer of Spokane had in a previous legislature submitted a compensation bill under the elective plan, which provided a maximum of $3,000 in event of death. This bill, not having the endorsement of either the employers or the workmen of the state, got scant consideration at the hands of the legislature in 1909.

The Tacoma Commercial Club, in August, 1910, at a time when the United Mine Workers were in convention in Seattle, issued a call for a meeting of manufacturers and labor men of the state to discuss some form of remedial legislation.

II. THE INVESTIGATION COMMISSION

As might have been anticipated, neither the representatives of capital nor of labor came into the meeting with any concrete program, yet as a result the governor of the state, Honorable M. E. Hay, was empowered to appoint an investigating commission of ten members, five representing the employers and five the employes. On September 29th, 1910, the commission so appointed organized and secured the services of Harold Preston of Seattle, a profound student of industrial problems and one of the ablest constitutional lawyers in the Pacific Northwest, as its legal adviser.

While the sessions of this commission were often heated and the interests represented not always harmonious, yet it must be said.

that the prompt, courageous, remedial legislation which was born. in this commission was made possible by the fact that in this new northwestern state are to be found, not only big, generous employers who were disgusted with the legal system surrounding them and who often drew large checks, not in charity but in justice, to compensate the men in their employ or their dependents; but likewise, among the working people of the state, the youngest and best blood of this continent and of Europe,-brave spirits who left the old home conditions to become full blown men in a new land of opportunity and to do their part in obtaining justice for themselves and their fellows, the same mingling of stocks which we find in the early settlement of the Atlantic Coast, building a people that, we believe, represent the very flower of civilized mankind.

This body will be interested in the contested questions before the commission. The limitation of the amount to be paid in event of death was one of these, and resulted in the adoption of the principle that $4,000 to a beneficiary aged thirty years would be a reserve that would guarantee a pension throughout life or dependency and insure the self respect and good citizenship,-insure the grocery bill, if you please, of all survivors, most of whom heretofore had been obliged to lower their standard of living, if not to accept the bitter bread of public or private charity. In other words, the principle adopted in the state of Washington is not the damage measured by the earning power of the workman killed or permanently disabled, but the insuring of a monthly payment to one who in the front ranks of industry has gone down before the flying shafts, whirring saws, munching cogs, smothering gases or falls of rock, and stands before society a crippled and deserving veteran. Heretofore governments have gladly pensioned the young soldier injured in the course of duty in defending hearth and home, or in righting insufferable wrongs abroad. The working people, at least, now insist that the soldier of peace, also obeying the commands of society, --who produces clothing for the body or food for the blood, or a roof for the household,-shall also be pensioned when mangled, maimed or dismembered by the machinery that moves with nerves of steel and fingers of brass, so gigantic and elemental that flesh and bone are as nothing in its power.

The commission, therefore, with one accord agreed on the principle that lump sum payments to helpless survivors should rarely

be given. At its discretion, however, the commission has ample power to pay off a mortgage on a widow's home or advance money to permanently cure a crippled child,-in other words, to commute a portion or all of the reserve fund set aside for the survivors' use into a lump sum payment. The scale of payment for partial disability was graduated down from $1,500 maximum, the compensation for the loss of the major arm.

III. FIRST AID FUND

The principle of a fund as a buffer, for first aid to the injured, was recognized by the commission on the insistence of Labor's representatives. The following sections are taken from the draft presented by the commission to the legislature:

Sec. 10. Creation of First Aid Fund.

A fund is hereby created in the state treasury to be known as the First Aid Fund, Into it shall be paid by each employer, on or before the fifteenth day of November, 1911, and each month thereafter, the sum of four cents for each day's work or fraction thereof done by each workman for him during the preceding calendar month or part thereof. Two cents of such four cents shall be deducted by the employer from the pay of the workman.

Sec. 11. Disbursements of First Aid Fund.

Upon the occurrence of any injury to a workman, he shall receive from the First Aid Fund proper and necessary medical, surgical and hospital services and compensation for the period of temporary or other disability in the sum of five dollars per week, for not to exceed three weeks, payable at the end of each week. It shall be the duty of the employer to see to it that immediate medical and surgical services are rendered, and transportation to hospital provided, and all charges therefore shall be audited and paid and be payable only by the department out of the First Aid Fund.

In the first aid the principle of joint contribution by employer and workman was approved, and the amount, four cents a day, equally divided, approximates the payment of $1 per month, the usual contribution to hospital funds in the lumbering and coal mining industries in our state. The payment for ambulances, physicians, hospital treatment and surgical appliances, limited to three weeks and to $5 per week, was designed to prevent simulation and fraud upon the state, as well as to secure that instant attention to the injured on which humanity insists.

Labor opposed joint contribution to the fund further and other

than first aid, for the reason that the employer owns and operates the dangerous agencies for his own profit and has heretofore contributed to the man-loss resulting from such dangerous agencies, so far as compelled to, by payments to casualty companies or through the channels of the courts,-in many instances both, since the usual limit of protection in a casualty policy is $5,000 and the amounts claimed in lawsuits tend to greatly exceed that sum. The employer, so far as allowed by competition, and if not bankrupted by a sympathetic jury, has passed these charges on to the public, along with the depreciation of machinery and plant, in the price of the product. Labor saw no injustice in providing that the buying public should pay for broken men in the industry as well as for broken machinery, the equivalent paid out and wasted heretofore being now turned into legitimate channels for the actual sufferers of the industrial system. In either event the public must pay the price, if not in the product then in institutions of relief or in charity's grudging doles.

In the fixing of rates according to the presumed hazard of the occupations regarded as extra hazardous, the commission was guided by an actuary of long casualty experience. In the lumbering industry, for instance, $1.50 per $100 was the average rate charged on insurance policies. One per cent more was added, making the state rate $2.50. The term "extra hazardous" in the Washington draft and law was inserted out of fear of constitutional objections otherwise, but any employer outside the law may voluntarily bring his business under its terms by joint agreement with his employes.

IV. IN THE LegislaturE

The bill, as approved by the commission, reached the legislature as one of the leading measures of the administration of Governor Hay, and its passage was widely advocated and as vigorously opposed, particularly in the state senate, where various other bills. were proposed to protect particular interests, or to promote the pet schemes or advance the political fortunes of certain senators. As the bill emerged into law the first aid feature was stricken out. It was opposed through fear that state supervision of hospital treatment would result in the upbuilding of a political machine for administration and in the location and construction of state-built hospitals; it was opposed as abolishing hospital funds in remote logging