772 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
undertaken in our present industrial system by insurance enter- prises commercialized applications of the social principle. The extensive application of the insurance principle by European governments, to -provide for sickness, accident, old age, and other forms of invalidity, suggests the extension of the principle to meet the new evil. Certain experiments, five in all, have been inaugurated in Germany, Switzerland, and Italy, but time alone will give the experience upon which to found such a general system. Most of these attempts have either been instituted by the state or assisted by it. Two of the plans are compulsory, the remainder voluntary. In America any like application of the insurance principle must be upon the commercial basis.
It is argued by those who are opposed to the present tend- ency toward collective action that individual initiative will undertake all enterprises essential to social welfare and progress, and carry them on more advantageously both for the indi- vidual and the group. But there are certain burdens that can be borne and certain activities that can be maintained only by the group collectively. It has seemed that these could not be left to individual enterprise. Yet while such burdens must be borne collectively, the individualist has argued that the collec- tive action should be initiated and voluntarily carried on by individuals. The most prominent of such forms of voluntary cooperation upon a purely individualistic basis are the various forms of insurance companies. It has seemed that non-employ- ment was a ' form of disability that could not be relieved by an extension of this principle carried out by individual initiative, and that individual enterprise could never undertake to guaran- tee against it. This latter at least is not the case, for with the current year a private enterprise for insuring against non- employment was launched in Chicago. It is backed both by capital and by managerial ability. We offer no judgment upon the sufficiency of either factor. In many ways the advantages offered by this plan are more promising than those given by the collective undertakings of European localities, though they are inferior in other respects.
