difficulties of the past and the present, and in pointing out the problems yet be to solved, I feel sure he will agree with me that neither are these problems new nor have they been overlooked by railway students. I feel also sure that both he and Mr. McPherson will agree that the Transportation Act of 1920, with all its compromise features and all its other faults and imperfections, was a distinct step forward toward an orderly solution of the railway problem, and that, so far as it does apply economic principles to a situation that badly needed them, the act has already proved itself a constructive piece of legislation.

TION IN THE UNITED STATES

By E. H. DOWNEY

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

The principle that the pecuniary loss incident to bodily injuries sustained in the course of employment should be borne by the industry, which is to say by the community at large-this principle is now so universally accepted that "to assert the contrary is to set the face against the enlightened opinion of mankind.” The responsibility of industry for work injuries is asserted in the statute law of all industrial nations. The merits of this juridical doctrine are no longer a subject of dispute. Present-day debate turns only upon the scope and scale of industrial responsibility and upon administrative details.

But it is one thing to assert a legal principle, another to give it practical effect. The present status of Workmen's Compensation in the United States is to be ascertained, not by a count of statutes, but by a comparison of the benefits provided with the pecuniary losses which those benefits purport to cover. A useful review of American compensation laws at the present day will deal primarily with the question of adequacy, of consonance with the principle which these laws profess to embody.

Territorially the American compensation system is nearly universal. Only the District of Columbia and six southern states' still maintain the common law of unhallowed memory. Industrially the system is less comprehensive. Most of the states exclude agriculture and domestic service, many exempt establishments which regularly employ fewer than four, five, or even ten persons; some few exclude a particular extra-hazardous industry, such as mining or logging. Railway and marine workers engaged in interstate or foreign commerce are, in the absence of congressional legislation, excluded as being without the jurisdiction of the several states. Summing up all these exclusions it is perhaps within the mark to say that the American compensation system covers from two-thirds to three-fourths of the total number of wage workers. Even within these territorial and industrial limits the laws are further restricted by the very general exclusion of 'Missouri is the only state of much industrial importance without a compensation act. The others are Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, and South Carolina.

'Only a very laborious calculation from the census data for each state would give an approximate estimate of the actual proportion of wage workers embraced by the several compensation laws.

occupational diseases. In respect to scope, then, much new legislation is needed to extend the principle of compensation to all work injuries.

With respect to scale of benefits the showing is much less satisfactory. The primary purposes of a compensation act are three: to encourage the prevention of work injuries as much as possible by affording a direct incentive to such prevention, to restore the earning capacity of those injured workmen who are capable of rehabilitation; and to shift the pecuniary cost of work injuries from the immediate victims and their dependents to the community at large. Economic relief to the sufferers is not merely the most urgent of these objects, but is the key to both the others. Adequate compensation for fatal and permanent injuries will do more than all other legislation to promote industrial safety and to encourage genuine rehabilitation. Yet it is precisely in respect to these serious injuries that American compensation acts are most deficient.

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Pensions to dependents in case of death are usually a small fraction of the breadwinner's earnings-from 10 to 50 per cent -payable for a limited term. In many states the total death benefit is $3000 or $4000, payable in weekly installments over a period of six, eight, or ten years, and is the same to a childless widow as to a larger family. In other states the widow receives a small pension-$5 to $10 weekly-and has an additional allowance for each child under a specified age. Five states continue the widow's pension during widowhood, in other states her allowance terminates in the sixth, eighth, or tenth year, irrespective of age or earning capacity. By a singular perversion of common sense, the allowance to an orphaned child is everywhere less than the pension to an able-bodied widow. Payments to or on account of a child cease at the age of sixteen in many states, at eighteen in the most progressive jurisdictions, and at fourteen in some of the former slave-holding states. In still other states—a majority of all indeed-payments cease at the end of a fixed term, irrespective of the number, ages, or economic status of the children. In no state is the rate or the total amount of compensation at all sufficient either to replace the lost earnings of the deceased breadwinner or to provide reasonable maintenance and education for the widow and children.

"This statement refers to the actual, which is invariably less than the nominal, percentage of wages.

For total disability the compensation is nominally 50, 60, 65, or 66% per cent of wages. The actual percentage of wage is, however, very much less than the statutes seem to promise, for the weekly payments are everywhere subject to fixed maxima: $12, $15, or $20. In Pennsylvania, e. g., where the nominal rate is 60 per cent of earnings, the actual rate is from 25 per cent in highpaid to 50 per cent in low-paid occupations, the general average in 1920 being 40 per cent of weekly earnings. The proportion of compensation to wage loss is still less than the ratio of weekly compensation to weekly wage. The "waiting period" seriously reduces the compensation for temporary disability while time limits have a yet more serious effect in the case of permanent disability. The waiting period, during which no compensation is payable, is most often one week, in a number of states ten days. or two weeks, in a few jurisdictions less than one week. Under a two week waiting period with a maximum of $15 weekly, a skilled workman receives a total compensation of $30 for a month's disability against a wage loss of at least $150. Upon an average of all temporary disabilities under the Pennsylvania Law, e. g., compensation does not exceed 25 per cent of wage loss.' Even this low ratio takes no account of disabilities of less than ten days' duration.

Compensation for permanent disability is subject to the limits already mentioned as to weekly rate, and usually also to a still less justifiable limit in point of time. Only twelve states provide life pensions even for permanent total disability. In most states the utterly helpless victim of a work injury who has the misfortune to survive for ten years is then relegated to the almshouse. Still more curious are the schedules of specific indemnity for enumerated permanent injuries-schedules expressed, not in percentages of wages or of earning capacity, but in weeks of compensation. Our legislatures have solemnly enacted, if not precisely

'It is 66 2-3% in all states, 65% in 5 states, 60% in 10 states, 50% in 15 states.

"Ten dollars in 3 states, $11 in one, $12 in 12, $12 to $15 in 12, $20 or more in 6.

'One week in 25 states, ten days in 7, two weeks in 8, less than one week in 3. 'See Statistical Analysis issued by the Pennsylvania Compensation Rating Bureau (annual). Other statements as to Pennsylvania experience are based on unpublished records and upon the writer's personal knowledge.

California, Colorado, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, Utah, Washington and West Virginia. Wisconsin has a variable period depending upon the age of the injured. It is noteworthy that only two industrially important states provide life pensions.

that a lost hand shall grow again in 150 weeks, at least that compensation therefor shall terminate at the end of that time. Such provisos disregard the essential feature of Workmen's Compensation: that there shall be a direct relationship between indemnity and wage loss.

Still less excusable is the well-nigh universal failure to provide adequate medical, surgical, and hospital care, to say nothing of such re-training as might benefit the crippled worker. On every social ground it is highly expedient that those who are incapacitated by accident or disease should be restored as speedily and completely as may be to industrial usefulness. Yet most states require medical care only for thirty, sixty, or ninety days after the injury, and only within a low monetary limit-$100 or $200. Whatsoever is more than this cometh of charity, or from the shrewd calculation that it may be cheaper to operate than to pay compensation for a permanent disability. Even this last incentive is less effective than it ought to be, because of the limited compensation for permanent injuries. Little wonder that no systematic effort has anywhere been made to rehabilitate industrial cripples. Employers have no incentive so to do.

Taken on the whole, compensation in the Uinted States probably does not exceed one-fourth of the pecuniary cost of those injuries which the compensation laws profess to cover. Having regard to the excluded classes of wage workers and the excluded categories of injury, it is well within the facts to say that four-fifths of the direct economic loss incident to work injuries still falls upon the individual victims and their families. We have given much lip service to the principle of industrial responsibility but our practice has fallen far short of our professions.

By the same token, prevention is much short of what would be attained under an adequate scale of benefits. In Pennsylvania alone there have been sixteen thousand deaths and more than one million disabling injuries by industrial accident within the space of six years. That a vast number of these accidents were preventable is known to every engineer. But effective safety engineering costs much money. Coal mine entries must be widened, electric voltages reduced, mine cars equipped with brakes, road bed and rolling stock improved, more and better timber set, more inspections made, stricter discipline enforced. To reduce the fatality rate from three to two per million tons of coal is perfectly feasible, but when the saving represents only one-quarter cent