creased satisfaction the manifold successes, with which the Lord has blessed our Reign, could we carry with us to the grave the consciousness of having given our country an additional and lasting assurance of internal peace, and the conviction that we have rendered the needy that assistance to which they are justly entitled. "Our efforts in this direction are certain of the approval of all the federated governments, and we confidently rely on the support of the Reichstag, without distinction of parties. In order to realize these views. a bill for the insurance of workmen against industrial accidents will first of all be laid before you, after which a supplementary measure will be submitted providing for a general organization of industrial sick relief insurance. "But likewise those who are disabled in consequence of old age and invalidity possess a well founded claim to a more ample relief on the part of the State than they have hitherto enjoyed. To devise the fittest ways and means for making such provisions, however difficult, is one of the highest obligations of every community based on the moral foundations of Christianity. A more intimate connection with the actual capability of the people, and a mode of turning these to account, incorporated societies, under the patronage and with the aid of the State, will, we trust, develop a scheme to solve which the State alone would be unequal." 998a

§ 17. German Industrial Insurance Acts.-The end sought by these reformers was that a workingman, unfitted for work by sickness, accident, invalidity or old age, should have a legal right to due and just provision, in order not to be compelled to rely upon public charity. This could only be attained by a system of general and compulsory insurance, based on mutuality

8a Dr. George Zacher's Guide to Workmen's Insurance of the German Empire, pp. 1, 2.

and self-administration." After 50 sittings the bill for sick insurance passed on May 31, 1883, with a majority of 117 votes. It did not include, at first, employés engaged in agriculture but it was contemplated, ultimately to include practically all employments.

Afterwards the following accident insurance laws were passed:

(1) The so-called fundamental law of July 6, 1884, for Industry, Transport Trades, Telegraph, the Army and Navy.

(2) The "Agricultural Law" of May 5, 1886, for Agriculture and Forestry.

(3) The "Building Law," July 11, 1887, for Building Trades so far not insured.

(4) The "Marine Law," July 13, 1887, for Navigation.

§ 18. British compensation legislation.-In England the first employers' liability act was passed in 1880. The most important provision of this law was the extension of the principle of the vice principal, but the relief appears to have been slight and unsatisfactory. The unimpaired rigor of the rule as to the assumption of risk became more in evidence as the use of safety appliances became more general and the number of accidents traceable to the employers' negligence fewer; so that after an unsuccessful attempt by Mr. Asquith, in 1893, to do away with the "Common Employment" rule and the implied contract of assumption of the risk, the time became ripe for the introduction of Mr. Chamberlain's Workmen's Compensation act, the gist of which is to provide unfailing and universal compensation for workingmen's injuries, without regard to negligence, which passed in 1897.

9 Dr. George Zacher, Guide to the Workmen's Insurance of the German Empire, p. 3.

The efficiency of the British compensation act as compared with the employers' liability act is shown by the figures in 1904 which disclose that there were 3,065 deaths of employés in industrial accidents covered by the compensation act and of these 524 came before the county courts and but 112 were brought under the employers' liability act.

§ 19. Some characteristics of German insurance legislation.-In Germany the compensation is fixed officially, after an investigation by the police and by the organs of the trade associations without delay. Against the decisions of the trade association the entitled person. may appeal within a month for an arbitration court of two representatives chosen by the employer and two by the employés, with a state official as chairman. The arbitration courts have been established and working since 1901, for both accident and invalidity insurance.10

As it is evident that both the trade associations and their individual members have a strong interest in diminishing the chances of accidents, the law confers on the trade associations, the important privilege of recommending regulations for the prevention of accidents. By such regulations not only the employers can be compelled, under penalty of higher assessments, to adopt the necessary measures for safety but also the workmen may be forced by fines to follow these rules.

"As regards the participation of the insured workmen in the organization of the Trade Associations, they are neither members of the Associations nor have they to bear any of the corporate burdens. They have, however, to take on themselves a portion of the aggregate liabilities caused by accidents, in so far as, together with

10 Dr. George Zacher's Guide to Workmen's Insurance of the German Empire, p. 13.

the employers they contribute to the sick relief club, to which, for practical reasons, the care of patients is left during the first thirteen weeks of illness ("waiting time": about six and two-thirds percent of the whole burdens of Sick Insurance, i. e. four and one-half percent to the charge of the workmen). But the statistical calculations made show that the contributions of the workmen to the Accident Insurance stay in an inverse ratio to the contributions of the employers to the Sickness Insurance, for while the workmen, on their part, bear only eight percent of the entire burden for the accidents, the employers have to contribute four times as much (thirty-three and one-third percent) to the Sickness Insurance. From these reciprocal relations it follows as a necessity, that the employers should participate in the management of the Sick Associations, and that to the employés in their turn, must be conceded a share in the administration of the accident insurance. Accordingly the law permits representatives of the workmen, elected by them, to take part in the discussion of preventive regulations, and in the police investigations of accident cases, as well as in the proceedings of the Arbitration Courts and of the Imperial Insurance Office; on all these occasions the workmen enjoy the same rights as the representatives of the employers, and the law guarantees them the free exercise of this honorary co-operation."

CHAPTER IV.

THE ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF COMPULSORY INDUSTRIAL INSURANCE FOR WORKMEN IN THE GERMAN STATES-SICK INSURANCE, ACCIDENT INSURANCE, AND INVALIDITY AND OLD-AGE PENSIONS.

§ 20. Conditions in Germany which induced consideration of the subject.-Germany was the pioneer of Workmen's Insurance against the economic insecurity arising out of the modern wage system. This was brought about by the peculiar condition which surrounded the German workmen and the peasant classes. The governments of the several German states, which ultimately were to constitute the German Empire, were monarchial in form. Their absolutism remained substantially intact until the creation of the constitutional government which brought into existence the German Empire. For this reason individualism had little opportunity to develop in Germany and industrial freedom among the working classes had been strangled. Individualism and industrial freedom developed in the latter part of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth century and was brought about and advanced by the discussion of German philosophers, as to what

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