equal the average annual casualties of the American Civil War, plus all those of the Philippine War, increased by all those of the Russo-Japanese War. As many men are killed each fortnight in the ordinary course of work as went down with the "Titanic." This single spectacular catastrophe appalled the civilized world and compelled governmental action in two hemispheres; while the ceaseless, day-by-day destruction of the industrial juggernaut excites so little attention that few states take the trouble to record the deaths and injuries.

The point especially to be emphasized in this connection is that the appalling waste of life revealed by the above cited estimates is, in great part, unavoidable. Doubtless the number of work accidents may be considerably reduced in the United States, as it has been reduced in Europe, by preventive measures. Yet when all possible precautions have been taken modern industry will continue to exact a fearful toll of life and limb. Even in the German Empire, which leads the world in accident prevention, there were reported in 1911, the last year for which statistics are available, 662,321 work accidents, whereof 9,687 terminated fatally and 142,965 caused disability for more than thirteen weeks. Scientific accident prevention in Germany has produced a lower accident rate and a much lower rate of fatal accidents than obtains in the United States, but it has left the total casualty list of industry deplorably large. Indeed, the number of work injuries in Germany, as elsewhere, is increasing, both absolutely and relatively to the numbers employed, as industrial development goes forward. The ugly fact is that work accidents, in the main, are due to causes inherent in mechanical industry on the one hand, and in the hereditary traits of human character on the other hand.

In the first place, a high degree of hazard inheres in present-day methods of production. Modern technology makes use of the most subtle and resistless forces of nature-forces whose powers of destruction when they escape control are fully commensurate with their beneficent potency when kept in command. Moreover, these forces operate not the simple hand tools of other days, but a maze of complicated machinery which the individual workman can neither comprehend nor control, but to the movements of which his own motions must closely conform in rate, range, and direction. Nor is the worker's danger confined to the task in which he is himself engaged, nor to the appliances within his vision. A multitude of separate operations are combined into one comprehensive mechanical

process, the successful consummation of which requires the co-operation of thousands of operatives and of countless pieces of apparatus in such close interdependence that a hidden defect of even a minor part, or a momentary lapse of memory or of attention by a single individual may imperil the lives of hundreds. A tower man misinterprets an order, or a brittle rail gives way, and a train loaded with human freight dashes to destruction. A miner tamps his "shot" with slack and dust explosion wipes out a score of lives. A steel beam yields to a pressure that it was calculated to bear and a rising skyscraper collapses in consequence, burying a small army of workmen in the ruins.

In the second place, human nature, inherited from generations that knew not the machine, is imperfectly fitted for the strain put upon it by mechanical industry. Safely to perform their work the operatives of a modern mill, mine, or railway should think consistently in terms of those mechanical laws to which alone present-day industrial processes are amenable. They should respond automatically to the most varied mechanical exigencies, and should be as insensible to fatigue and as unvarying in behavior as the machines they operate.

Manifestly these are qualities which normal human beings do not possess in anything like the requisite degree. The common man is neither an automaton nor an animated slide-rule. His movements fall into a natural rhythm, indeed, but the beat is both less rapid and more irregular than the rhythm of most machines-with the consequence that he fails to remove his hand before the die descends or allows himself to be struck by the recoiling lever. It requires an appreciable time for the red light or the warning gong to penetrate his consciousness, and his response is apt to be tardy or in the wrong direction. Fatigue, also, overcomes him, slowing his movements, lengthening his reaction time, and diminishing his muscular accuracy --thereby trebly enhancing his liability to accident.

The machine technology, in fact, covers so small a fraction of the life history of mankind that its discipline has not yet produced a mechanically standardized race, even in those communities and classes that are industrially most advanced. And so there is a great number of work injuries due to the "negligence of the injured workman"-due, that is to say, to the shortcomings of human nature as measured by the standards of the mechanician. This maladjustment is aggravated by the never-ceasing extension of machine methods to new fields of industry, and the continued influx of children, women, and untrained peasants into mechanical employments. Ac

cordingly, the proportion of accidents attributable to want of knowledge, skill, strength, or care on the part of operatives appears everywhere to be increasing.

There is, then, no prospect that the "carnage of peace" will be terminated, as the carnage of war may be, within the predictable future. An industrial community must face the patent fact that work injuries on a tremendous scale are a permanent feature of modern life. Every mechanical employment has a predictable hazard; of a thousand men who climb to dizzy heights in erecting steel structures a certain number will fall to death, and of a thousand girls who feed metal strips into stamping machines a certain number will have their fingers crushed. So regularly do such injuries occur that every machine-made commodity may be said to have a definite cost in human blood and tears-a life for so many tons of coal, a lacerated hand for so many laundered shirts.

263. Imputation of Responsibility for Accidents1o
a) Safety First

Employees, before they attempt to make couplings or to uncouple, will examine and see that the cars or engines to be coupled or uncoupled, couplers, drawheads, and other appliances connected therewith, ties, rails, tracks, and roadbeds, are in good safe condition. They must exercise great care in coupling and uncoupling cars. In all cases sufficient time must be taken to avoid accident or personal injury.

b) Efficiency First

Entirely too much time is being lost, especially on local trains, due to train and enginemen not taking advantage of conditions in order to gain time doing work, switching and unloading and loading freight. Neither must you wait until train stops to get men in position. It is also of the utmost importance that enginemen be alive, prompt to take signals, and make quick moves. In this respect it is only necessary to call your attention to the old adage, which is a true one, that when train or enginemen do not make good on local trains it thoroughly demonstrates those men are detrimental

10The first of the two selections given here is an excerpt from an official bulletin of a railway company; the second is an excerpt from a letter of instruction to employees issued by the same company. The first suggests that there may be truth in the frequently repeated statement that "the most effective way for railroad employees to practice sabotage is to live up to the rules of the company."

to the service as well as their own personal interests, and such men, instead of being assigned to other runs, should be dispensed with. I am calling your attention to these matters with a view of invigorating energy and ambition, in order that your families who are dependent on you to make a success shall not some day point the finger of scorn at you, and that the public may not be able to say you lost your position due to lack of energy and interest in your own personal welfare, for which you can consistently place the responsibility on no one but yourself.

264. Industrial Accidents and the Theory of Negligence11

BY LEE K. FRANKEL AND MILES M. DAWSON

Let us consider the principles which, only a quarter century ago, determined the right of a workman to recover compensation from his employer. Those principles still apply, with some modification, in all the states of the United States, and have but recently been discarded in part by the federal government itself. The elementary theory of "the law of negligence," as it is usually called, in its relation to the liability of employers for financial loss to workmen and their families, was originally the same in all civilized countries. The development of the law of liability has not been identical in every country, but nowhere, probably, has the principle been pushed so far as in the United States. The doctrine has, however, been modified somewhat by decisions of the courts and by act of our legislatures.

The underlying principle of the law of negligence is that the employer is liable only in case he is at fault; that is, he must have been neglectful in some respect and this negligence must have been the proximate and sole cause of the accident. In that case it declares that he alone must bear the financial burden of compensation.

Liability of the employer for his own negligence is qualified as follows:

First, it is not enough that he was the chief cause.

If the employe himself has been negligent and if this in any degree contributed to the accident, the employer is not held. This is known as the principle of "contributory negligence." The idea is that the courts, not being able to separate results flowing from these two causes and to determine how much was due to one and how much to the other, will refuse to grant compensation if the employe's negligence contributed to the accident even though only in a slight degree.

"Adapted from Workingmen's Insurance in Europe, 5-7. Copyright by the Russell Sage Foundation (1910).

Second, the accident must not have been a consequence of the ordinary risks of the occupation.

If it can be shown or the conclusion fairly be deducted that the employe assumed this particular risk as a condition of his contract of employment, or as the ordinary risk of his occupation of which he knew or was bound to know, the employer is not held. If the employe was aware that a certain danger existed and notwithstanding continued to work, this action on his part would bar recovery. As a corollary to this, the courts have held very generally that the employe must be presumed to know what are the ordinary dangers of his occupation, and even what are the unusual dangers connected with continuing to perform the duties of that occupation, when the place where it is carried on, or the machinery or tools with which it is carried on, are defective.

This is called the principle of "assumption of risk." Some courts have gone so far as to hold that, even though the employer is required by law to keep the machinery, tools, and the place in which the work is done in a certain condition of safety, and that although by failing to do so he has rendered himself liable to a penalty, the workman, notwithstanding, will not be able to recover if he has known of these defects and has nevertheless continued to work. The same courts have also held that the fact that he has called the defects to the attention of his employer and asked that they be remedied, will not render the employer liable if the workman, notwithstanding that the defects have not been remedied, continues to work. In fact, calling the defects to the attention of others prejudices his claim in that it is proof positive that he knows of them.

Third, the accident must have been the result of the employer's own negligence and not that of another employe or employes.

If the workman has been injured because one or more of the employes working with him were negligent, the employer will not be held. This proceeds from the idea that each workman whose negligence has caused the injury should himself be held financially responsible; and since in most cases he is in fact financially irresponsible and could not respond to a judgment, the result of the application of this rule is that the persons injured are not compensated at all. This is directly contrary to the rule which applies when the injury is to one not an employe; in that case the employer, under the general doctrine of principal and agent, is held liable.

The principle stated above is known in practice as the "fellow servant" rule. It has been carried so far by some courts that it is difficult to see how a corporation employer could be held responsible at all, no matter what officer or other employe was negligent. Even