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receives the premium now, and yet would make the master the insurer.
The great employers of labour will understand the change in the law and guard against it. The mischief and wrong will be in the case of men who, not knowing of the change, will go on paying the wages which include the compensation for risk, the premium of insurance, and yet find they have to pay compensation when the risk happens, and that they are insurers though they have not received the premium.
What good will the new law do? None to the workman, except in such cases as I have last mentioned. Cases of surprise and injustice. For where it is known it will be guarded against. And even if the law were made obligatory, in spite of bargains to the contrary, it would not profit the servant. Because it is certain there is a natural rate of wages, one fixed by what neither master nor man can control, and that if they are practically added to one way, they will be taken from in another. If a manufacturer's wages now are £10,000 in the year, and he is made to pay compensation to the amount of £1,000 a-year, his wages will fall to £9,000. He cannot charge more for his produce because he has to pay more, and if he could, his sales would diminish and injury be done to the workman in loss of work.
What good then will the change do? The only thing I have ever heard suggested is, that it will make the master more careful in the choice of his
