casualty companies could or, if they do act with speed, will do so with a paternal indulgence that must cripple industries or seriously burden the general taxpayer who maintains the inspection officials. We feel that it is not proved that the state cannot procure as competent employes as casualty companies, since we have been able to obtain in our service in Washington some of the best trained and most ambitious claim agents and auditors heretofore connected

with casualty corporations in the state. In our state, moreover, where establishments, big and little, are peculiarly anxious that their competitors pay equally with themselves, the compulsory associations of employers are prolific in suggestions, and are ready for the voluntary associations looking to standardization and accident prevention which this commission will be active in getting organized.

Mr. Sherman does not like the Washington law because the compensation is not measured in all cases by the wage. But we in Washington did not like Mr. Sherman's New York law, which provided a payment to a widow of a sum equal to four years' wages of her husband, in no case to exceed $3,000, which she might dissipate in her ignorance of financial pitfalls. Nor did we like the provision of the New York law that a workman totally disabled should receive a weekly payment not to exceed $10 nor to extend more than eight years from the date of the injury, leaving the widow, or the blind workman, in old age, a helpless charge on public or private charity, and depriving the child of its legitimate birthright. Under our Washington law the first care has been that the child of the present shall have an opportunity to be a good citizen of the future.

Mr. Sherman, in his memorial to the congressional commission, insists that the excess paid by the good employer appears to give gratuitous insurance to the escaping firm. We must grant that our administrative problem is difficult as to the intermittent or alien contractor, the dummy corporation, the tramp ship and the elusive little shop. But we believe that our system will catch such employers as readily as the casualty company, because the man hurt will come to the state for compensation and the employer must then deal with our department. If he refuses, we reach him with summary process, with civil suit in the name of the state, with criminal procedure, or with all three.

Our law is criticised as merely an insurance against destitution, and we grant the charge as to the widow and her flock, or as to

the sightless or armless victim of a bloody misfortune of peace. Our law does give compensation in other cases. Perhaps it is fair to the employer to say that no workman has any assurance that he will continue to earn his present wage for eight years or one year; but every workman is entitled to the assurance that he shall not starve in civilized society if rendered unable to labor, and that his helpless dependents shall not be driven to charity, or worse. Our law provides for a monthly payment of from $20 to $52.50 to a workman temporarily totally disabled, providing such payment does not exceed 60 per cent of his wages; and our compensation scale for permanent partial disability runs from $1,500 for the loss of a major arm at or above the elbow and $1,250 for the loss of one eye or of a hand at the wrist, down to $25 for the loss of the little toe or of the first joint of the little finger. Furthermore, we see no reason why, as a matter of public policy, the state should not encourage a skilled workman with large earning power to provide private insurance for his family, by making him familiar with the maximum allowed by the state in the event of his death or disability.

Mr. Sherman believes that state commissions would allow exaggerated and doubtful claims to please the working people. In Washington, however, the commission, with the maximum laid down by the legislature, has prepared a scale for practically all injuries, based on scientific information obtained from reports of the Surgeon-General of the United States Army, standard texts and one hundred detailed schedules from eminent surgeons throughout the United States. The practice of the present commission is to allow no claim until the employer, the claimant, the physician and the witnesses have all made detailed reports. In case of doubt the nearest agent is ordered to make a special investigation. In case of continuing disability, condition reports from the physician or employer are required to check simulation, fraud and error.

The legal theory in Washington is that the sovereign state practically licenses these dangerous agencies which operate for profit, requiring from all operating them such a degree of care that no one shall cause an accident; and further requiring that, if accidents do happen, as we know they must, the employer shall pay into a guaranty fund to care for the victims. And we believe that the Supreme Court of the United States, when it comes to this question, will find

that the public welfare demands this legislation more imperatively than it demands contributions by banks to protect depositors.

The first two months of experience seem to show about six hundred accidents per month, varying from loss of life and total permanent disability down to trivial bumps and bruises and even torn trousers. The statistics now presented must be regarded by this body as purely tentative and not as the finished tables of systematic statistical investigation.

In closing, gentlemen of the Labor Legislation Association, as a citizen of one of the newest and most virile states of the American sisterhood, as a workman almost born in the mines of England and a graduate of the child labor system of the mines of Pennsylvania, as an operative in and about the coal mines of Washington for ten years, and as one who has been honored with the privilege of representing organized labor on various occasions and for considerable periods, I point with pride, as an old phrase goes, to my magnificent state that, without cowardice and without hypocrisy, threw aside all fetters of ancient custom, entangling legal verbiage and hide-bound decisions, and enacted a law, not in charity and not in malice, but in justice to every man who invests his brain or his brawn in developing the resources of the commonwealth. And in so doing the workmen of the state and the employers thereof are not unmindful of the greatness which must come to this state and to its people. The Panama Canal will bring ships and products, not only from the Atlantic seaboard but from abroad, with steerage cargoes of wistfuleyed men from all sections of Europe searching for work in a new land. We are tributary to the undeveloped empire of Alaska, and the front door to the millions of the Orient. We are providing for that industrial empire on the western edge of the continent which is yet in its infancy. We are not unmindful of the magnificent mountains that surround the valleys and the inland sea of Puget Sound, from which leap white torrents with the harnessed energy of a million wild horses, sufficient for the turning of countless wheels that will grind and maim and dismember men unless such dangerous agencies are so operated that accidents will be reduced to the minimum. And we are not evading full responsibility that human beings who have given all that God gave them to the service of mankind shall be compensated for their mite offering, even though they be known by number and are of that class which have heretofore been termed "just wopps."

ACCIDENT COMPENSATION FOR FEDERAL EMPLOYES

I. M. RUBINOW

Chief Statistician, Ocean Accident and Guarantee Corporation.

When the act of May 30th, 1908, was passed, granting compensation for injuries sustained in the course of employment by certain employes of the United States, it was hailed as the first important victory, the first milestone on the road to scientific compensation legislation. Barring the ill-fated Maryland act of 1902, conceived in ignorance and quickly forgotten, this indeed was the first act which not only proclaimed the word "compensation" in its title, but also embodied at least some elements of the compensation principle. To the legislators in Congress it may have been only an effort to do a mite of justice to the government employes who under the statutes had absolutely no redress and, therefore, were in a position infinitely worse than were private employes even at the time; but to those who worked and hoped for a day when efficient and just compensation laws would sweep aside all of the complex and wasteful structure of liability legislation to us it meant a good deal more. The situation has changed so much since then that one can approach an analysis of this law in an entirely different spirit. When about twelve states have passed various compensation and accident insurance laws, we can study the federal compensation act simply as a piece of legislation and not as a piece of propaganda, so as to be able to find out how satisfactory are the conditions under which a fairly large number of industrial employes of the United States government may expect their compensation in case of industrial injury.

It is somewhat unfortunate that, though the act has been in force three years, as yet no report of its application has been published by the department administering it. When published, the report promises to be an interesting and valuable contribution to our literature on accident statistics and compensation. In the annual report of the Secretary of Commerce and Labor for 1909 we read: "In order that full data may be available in regard to accidents to

all classes of employes, regulations have been issued requiring a report to the department of all injuries to government employes. It is believed that in a comparatively short time the statistics of such accidents will be of considerable general value aside from their bearing upon legislation to enlarge the scope of the law." It is well known how limited and unsatisfactory are as yet our American accident statistics. While several states have made praiseworthy efforts to make special studies, European experience has clearly demonstrated that in the absence of compensation laws accident statistics are bound to be of doubtful value. As yet the volume of experience collected by the federal government in connection with this act is the only valuable experience obtainable in this country. While it applies to a limited number of employes, it still presents a tangible basis of calculation of compensation costs, in a few important industries at least, such as large construction operations, machine shops, navy yards, etc. As such it will be of great value, not only to the legislators, but to our various state compensation commissions, and also to private accident insurance companies; and, by means of a display of some actuarial ingenuity, it may extend its usefulness over other branches of industry as well.

But even before these data are published, the act of 1908 may be carefully studied on the basis of its legal provisions, as well as of the personal experiences gained in its application, both in the office and in the field, in the investigation of special claims; for in this way its shortcomings, as well as the general problems arising out of the administration of all compensation laws, have been clearly brought out. We are yet at the threshold of compensation experience, and there is hardly a law among those enacted that does not display in some provisions this sad lack of practical experience with the actual working of compensation acts. In this paper I intend, therefore, to go a little beyond the analysis of the act of 1908 itself, and touch upon some fundamental features of administration.

The act is so brief that a bare statement of its provisions can be made very quickly. It establishes a system of compensation for injuries received in the course of employment, which cause disability for more than fifteen days or death, provided the injury is not due to the negligence or misconduct of the employe injured. It does not apply to all employes of the government, but only to artisans and laborers employed in certain rather hazily defined establishments of the federal government: namely, manufacturing estab