per ton it does not pay. If the average cost per death were raised from $2500 to $10,000 much would become practical which is now deemed visionary.

Something less than full compensation for temporary injuries is justified on social grounds. Human nature being what it is, much malingering would doubtless result from any attempt to pay full wages during disability. Probably two-thirds of actual wageloss—the nominal percentage specified in many compensation acts -is not unreasonable. So, too, a moderate waiting period is justifiable on grounds of administrative cost. But there is no economic justification for a maximum rate or a maximum amount less than two-thirds of actual wage-loss, nor for a waiting period of more than one week, nor for the exclusion of occupational disease. Still less is there any warrant in economics or equity for cutting off compensation before disability has ceased or dependency terminated. Least of all can the community afford to deny full therapeutic aid to the victims of industrial injury.

The excuse advanced for a scale of benefits confessedly inadequate that industry cannot bear the burden-is founded on misapprehension. Compensation equal to two-thirds of total wage-loss plus full therapeutic care for all industrial injuries would certainly not cost more than ten cents the ton of bituminous coal nor add more than one cent to the cost of a ten dollar pair of shoes. For most manufactured commodities full compensation would not exceed one-half of one per cent of manufacturer's price. Even in building construction the most liberal scale of benefits ever proposed would scarcely equal two per cent of contractor's price certainly much less than the architect's fees. If adequate compensation would be a burden scarcely felt by consumers, still less would it place employers at a competitive disadvantage. Other items of entrepreneur's costs bulk so much larger and are so extremely variable that it may be doubted whether the cost of compensating work injuries ever influenced the location of a business enterprise or the decision of an entrepreneur to expand or restrict the scale of his operations. The meagre and widely varying benefits provided by American compensation laws are traceable to a very different consideration: the relative pull exercised by organized labor, disinterested reformers, and employers' associations.

For the administration of their Workmen's Compensation Acts most states have created special boards or commissions charged

with the supervision of claim settlements, the adjudication of disputed claims, and the duty of seeing to it that employers provide insurance or other security for the payment of future installments of compensation when and as accrued. In comparison with our law courts these commissions are models of promptness and efficiency. The number of disputed claims is small, appeals are few, and the statutes, on the whole, are liberally construed. Probably no branch of administration in this country is better conducted.

There remain, however, grave shortcomings. The commissioners are political appointees, frequently changed, drawn in large part from the lower grades of practising attorneys and imbued with an incurable predilection for common-law procedure. The technical and clerical staffs are commonly also political and always inadequate. The result is great laxity in the supervision of settlements by agreement, with much needless technicality and avoidable delay in adjudication. There are no statistics of claim settlement, but such test studies as have been made serve to show that first payments in fatal cases are unreasonably delayed and that, in case of temporary disability, the victim commonly receives nothing at all until his disability has ceased and the most urgent need has passed. Private insurance companies, state insurance funds, and non-insured employers appear to be equally and all but universally remiss in this respect. The point deserves strong emphasis, for to give relief when relief is needed is the very essence of the compensation scheme.

Short changing-the settlement of claims for less than the statute provides-is especially prevalent in those states which have retained court administration. Under commission administration there are few such complaints except in respect to those cases of permanent disability not covered by specific indemnity schedules. Compensation for indubitable permanent total disability may, in most states, be suspended for weeks or months on the mere allegation of the employer or insurance carrier that the claimant is able to do "light work," and the hapless victim is then put to the trouble, delay, and expense of proving that he is still disabled. In cases of partial disability, many commissions hold

Some very illuminating test studies have been made by the Industrial Accident Board of Illinois and by the Compensation Bureau of Pennsylvania. See also Carl Hookstadt in (U. Š.) Monthly Labor Review, November, 1920. The average interval between accident and first payment exceeds the average duration of disability, alike in Illinois, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

the curious view that the claimant must procure employment and establish a difference between his present and former wage rate before compensation can be fixed. If employment is slack no loss of earnings can be proved and no compensation is paid. If the handicapped worker finds employment, it is usually casual and at varying rates of pay. His compensation, consequently, varies from job to job and may range in a single year from fifty cents to twelve dollars a week, with frequent suspensions." Such anomalies are due in part to faulty procedure, to over-insistence upon the technicalities of legal "proof," and to a too-restricted definition of "loss of earnings" in the statutes. Still more serious is the lack of adequate facilities for impartial, first-hand investigation. The doctrine of self-help still has a strong hold upon legislatures and administrators. The commissions do not go out to find the facts: they wait for the claimant to present a petition and produce evidence. All of which means that the claimant must hire an attorney and procure medical testimony at his own charges.

After the award is rendered, little effort is made to see that its terms are carried out. Compensation payments for death and permanent disability run over long terms, even to life pensions. Payments during a given year on account of current injuries are but a fraction of the ultimate payments and this fraction is the smaller in proportion as the scale of benefits approaches adequacy. Yet, in most states, any employer-corporation, individual, or copartnership who can make a fair showing of paper assets is lightly permitted to assume these long-continuing obligations. Insurance companies are somewhat better supervised but the standard of solvency is low, compensation reserves are not segregated from other liabilities, and the false etiquette of interstate comity hampers the few insurance departments which might otherwise enforce a higher standard.

The paucity of statistical records is perhaps a small matter in comparison with prompt and full payment of claims or the ultimate security of future installments, yet intelligible statistics would go far to correct the evils of lax administration and inadequate benefits by sheer education of public opinion. Statistics also are indispensable to effective accident prevention and to the 10 Again there is no statistical record and the statements in the text are based upon personal observation in several states. See, however, the Connor Reports to the Governor of New York, 1919.

best results in the rehabilitation of injured workmen. The primary requirements are well known: a clear presentation of work injuries by industry, occupation, cause, severity, wage loss and compensation cost, and analyses of claim settlements with respect to promptness, cost of litigation, grounds upon which compensation was refused or suspended, measures taken to counteract the inevitable efforts of employers and insurance carriers to evade their statutory obligations. Standard schemes of classification and tabulation designed to present these and kindered facts have been prepared galore." Therein, however, a deal of pains has gone for naught. Most of the administrative boards do publish some sort of annual or biennial report but no two are on the same basis, few, if any, give a satisfactory analysis either of work injuries or of claim settlement, and no one has attempted to digest and correlate the reports of the several states. It is impossible at this late date to obtain any accurate estimate of the annual number of fatal accidents in American industries or to make more than a rough conjecture as to the number and severity distribution of non-fatal work injuries. Any attempt to compare accident severity rates of different industries, different states, or different years is altogether futile. The most disheartening feature of the case is the total want of intelligent interest in such information.

If this survey of Workmen's Compensation in the United States is mainly a recital of shortcomings, the reason is that attention to defects conduces to improvement more than a song of praise. Ours was the last of the industrial nations to attack the problem of work injuries. A decade since, the immediate desideratum was to obtain some relief from the iniquities of the common law. Today the problem is to broaden the scope of our compensation acts, increase the benefits, and improve the administration. To one who has been associated with compensation as student or administrator for more than a dozen years, the progress already made augurs well for the future. Benefits are still miserably inadequate but they are being slowly increased by successive amendments to existing laws. Even in administration there is some evidence of improvement, at least in the more progressive states. A decade hence, we may reasonably hope, American industry will bear, if not the whole, at least the major part of the pecuniary cost of work injuries.

"See successive reports of the Committee on Statistics of the International Association of Industrial Accident Boards and Commissions.

INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENT AND COMPENSATION

STATISTICS

BY CHARLES H. VERRILL

United States Employees' Compensation Commission The subject of accidents to workers in the industries of the United States is one involving many interests other than those of the employer and the employee, and possessing an economic importance which would scarcely be realized by those who have not given the matter special attention.

Upon a conservative estimate the economic or wage loss to workers from the industrial accidents of a year is in excess of $400,000,000, probably less than one-fourth of which is made good by compensation benefits.

Employers pay out in compensation and liability insurance premiums and in direct payments probably in excess of $150,000,000 a year. The economic loss from labor turnover and time lost from productive labor impose upon the employer a huge loss in production.

The community, aside from the employers and workmen, must suffer from the injured workers' wage loss. With inadequate compensation and with savings exhausted, the injured employee not infrequently must receive help from relatives, friends, church, fraternal organization, or charity. The loss in purchasing power is also an important item.

Statistics of accidents and compensation should be so organized as to assist every interest concerned in this great problem. The enormous waste of these accidents must be reduced so far as humanly possible.

The hazards of dangerous machinery, dangerous operations, unsafe practices, dangerous places of work, and injurious materials must be disclosed so that they may be eliminated or the hazard diminished.

The happy mean of compensation benefits must be found which will come as near as possible to assuming the burden actually due to industrial accidents without encouraging the unnecessary prolonging of reliance upon compensation benefits. Disabilities must be studied in relation to the adequacy of medical service, and serious permanent disabilities with special reference to actual economic consequences, concerning which we know little.