The total number of employees, therefore, in the 52 States and Territories deprived of the benefits of workmen's compensation legislation is over 8,000,000. In addition, there are about 1,400,000 interstate railroad employees not subject to State acts and for which no Federal compensation law has been enacted.

Table 6 shows the States arranged in the order of the percentage of employees covered:

TABLE 6.-COMPENSATION STATES ARRANGED IN DESCENDING ORDER OF PERCENTAGE OF EMPLOYEES COVERED.

[The estimates of "employees covered" used in this table are made on the assumption that all elections provided for by law have been made. Owing to lack of definite information no estimates have been made of employees unprotected because of failure of employers to elect under elective acts.]

Columns 2 and 4 show what proportion the number of employees covered and not covered is of the total gainfully employed in the State. By bringing the two classes of percentages into juxtaposition the effect of the industrial character of the States in determining the percentage of gainfully employed persons subject to an act is brought out; for example, Illinois (55.4 per cent) and South Dakota (58 per cent) have nearly the same percentage of employees covered, but in industrial Illinois these constitute 39.8 per cent of the total gainfully employed, whereas in agricultural South Dakota they constitute only 25.6 per cent.

New Jersey, with 99.8 per cent of its employees covered, heads the list of States, while Porto Rico, with 20.5 per cent, stands at the bottom. Nine States cover over 80 per cent, 18 over 70 per cent, 24 over 60 per cent, and 31 over 50 per cent. One covers only 20 per cent, 8 cover less than 40 per cent, and 14 less than 50 per cent. The States which include only hazardous employments stand lowest in the scale; next come the numerical-exemption States, and these are followed by those excluding agriculture and domestic service only. Naturally there are deviations from the group by individual States. Texas, for example, because of the exclusion of her dominant industry-agriculture has fewer of her employees covered than most of the hazardous States. On the other hand, Rhode Island, which excludes all employers having less than 5 employees, has a higher percentage of employees covered than California, which excludes only agriculture and domestic service. Table 7 shows the effect of the three main exclusions upon the number of employees covered:

TABLE 7.-COMPENSATION STATES CLASSIFIED ACCORDING TO EMPLOYMENTS EXCLUDED AND PER CENT OF EMPLOYEES COVERED IN EACH.

[The estimates of employees excluded used in this table are made on the assumption that all elections provided for by law have been made. Owing to lack of definite information no estimates have been made of employees unprotected because of failure of employers to elect under elective acts.]

All public employees exempted.

2 Hawaii exempts employments not in the usual course of the employer's business and those not conducted for gain. 3 Public employees partially exempted.

Agriculture and domestic service not specifically exempted.

Taking the median in each group as a basis of comparison there is a difference of from 13 to 20 per cent between each two groups of States; 96.2 being the median for the two States including all employments; 76.2 per cent for the 13 States excluding agriculture and domestic service; 63.1 per cent for the 17 numerical-exemption States; and 46.3 for the 13 nonhazardous-exemption States.

The relative importance of the principal exclusions is shown more clearly in the following table, in which the exclusions for each State have been divided into their main constituent elements; i. e., agriculture, domestic service, and numerical and nonhazardous exemptions. The purpose of this subdivision is to show what relation each individual exemption bears to the total number of employees excluded and also to the total number of employees in the State. The agriculture and domestic service exclusions have been put in separate columns, irrespective of whether these employments were exempted specifically or through the numerical or nonhazardous exclusions.

TABLE 8.-ESTIMATED NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES EXCLUDED UNDER COMPENSATION ACTS AND PER CENT OF SUCH EXCLUDED EMPLOYEES WHO ARE EXCLUDED BECAUSE OF EMPLOYMENT IN AGRICULTURE, DOMESTIC SERVICE, NONHAZARDOUS EMPLOYMENTS, ETC.

[The estimates of employees excluded used in this table are made on the assumption that all elections provided for by law have been made. Owing to lack of definite information, no estimates have been made of employees unprotected because of failure of employers to elect under elective acts.]

It will be recalled that 6,564,381, or 29.8 per cent of the total employees, are not covered by compensation legislation in the 45 compensation States, and that these exclusions have been brought about

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in several ways. It will be noted that of these, 40.6 per cent75 have been excluded through the exemption of agriculture, 35.2 per cent76 through the exemption of domestic service, 8.2 per cent" through the exemption of the small employer, and 16 per cent through the exemption of nonhazardous and other employments. These exclusions constitute, respectively, 12.1, 10.5, 2.5, and 4.8 per cent of the total number of employees.

The per cent each exclusion is of the total exclusion in any given State depends upon the total number excluded in the State as well as upon the number of employees in the excluded group. To illustrate, agriculture might constitute 60 per cent of the total excluded if farm labor and domestic service only were excluded, but would constitute a much smaller percentage of the total if nonhazardous employments also were excluded.

It will be noted that the percentage of total exclusions due to agriculture alone ranges from 18.7 per cent in Rhode Island to 83.7 per cent in Idaho, while the exclusion due to domestic service ranges from 15.4 per cent in New Mexico to 93.4 per cent in Hawaii. The percentage of employees excluded by exempting the small employer is much less than either the agriculture or domestic service exclusions. In the foregoing computations as to the number of employees covered by the compensation laws no distinction has been made between compulsory and elective acts. It has been assumed that all the employers in the elective States are under the law. As a matter of fact, however, this is not true. In some States practically all employers have accepted the act, while in others relatively few have done so. For this reason elective compensation acts have been severely criticized. It is maintained that the substitution of the compensation system for the old liability system has not been brought about and to this extent elective compensation laws have failed. A large number of employees must still resort to damage suits and be subject to expensive litigation in order to be indemnified for industrial injuries. In New Hampshire only 19 employers, employing 19,000 persons, were under the compensation law in 1916. These constituted less than 25 per cent of the employees potentially covered by the act and only 13 per cent of the total employees in the State. Very little reliable information as to the number of employees actually covered by compensation acts in the elective States is available. Table 9 gives the estimates furnished by the States themselves:

75 2,663,123 employees. 76 2,311,829 employees. 77 539,359 employees. 78 1,050,070 employees.