1 9o
THE GREEN BAG
in employers' liability insurance compan of the rule as to assumption of risk became ies tends to make the relations of employer more in evidence as the use of safety appli and employee no more easy. It becomes ances became more general and the number the business of the insurance company to of accidents traceable to the employers make the settlement and to make it negligence fewer; so that, after an unsuccess cheaply; and naturally enough the first ful attempt by Mr. Asquith, in 1893,10 do object of the successful adjuster is to get a away with the " common employment " rule release before a lawyer can catch the claim and the implied contract of assumption of ant. The bedside settlement is generally the risk, the time became ripe for the introduc cheapest. Moreover, it is the insurance com tion of Mr. Chamberlain's Workmen's Com pany that insists upon the dismissal of any pensation Act, destined not only to wipe man who brings suit; the moral obligation away the doctrines of common employment and volenti non fit injuria, but also the law which an employer would naturally recog nize to employ a man hurt in his service, is of contributory negligence. The gist of the thus at the outset thrown by the board. law was to provide unfailing and universal These conditions are familiar enough to compensation for workingmen's injuries. So radical and apparently socialistic a every lawyer and need only to be alluded to movement was sure to meet with vigorous to be recognized. A quarter of a century has passed since opposition. Mr. Asquith 's bill had failed, insurance of working men by employers was not because of the efforts of defenders of the made compulsory in Germany. Since then fellow servant doctrine, but on account of a a most complicated system of insurance, not section inserted by the House of Lords, per by single employers, but by whole trades, mitting a workman to "contract himself has been evolved. The schedules of graded out" of his rights of action against his em ployer. For thirteen years, the common payments are brought to an almost incon ceivably minute exactness. The machinery employment doctrine has been virtually for carrying out the detail occupies an without support in England. The Cham enormous force of clerks in an important berlain Act, therefore, met opposition not government department. Belgium, France, from the orthodoxy of the Inns of Court, but Austria, Norway, Spain, and in short, al from manufacturers and mine owners, who most all continental countries have adopted argued that any system which increased the systems based upon the same theory and cost of production must result in the death worked out in much the same way. For of industries protected by no natural or us, however, the idea in this form smacks artificial monopoly. The step did appear to perhaps too much of paternalism, besides involve serious loss to employers, since it being open to insurmountable constitutional could not be disputed that the cost of pro duction was to be increased. But the objections. In England, however, where the problems Chamberlain Act passed in 1897. has were, like ours, those of an industrial com been in operation for nearly nine years, munity living under the common law, the and British industries appear still to be in continental result was reached, but by a a flourishing condition. So far as I am aware, no attempt has been made to restrict different process. In 1880 the first employers' liability act was the operation of the Compensation Act since passed. The most important provision of its passage. On the other hand, its scope this law was the extension of the class of vice has several times been extended to trades principals, but the relief appears to have been not originally included. The Compensation Act now applies to slight and unsatisfactory. What remained •of the old doctrine and the unimpaired vigor nearly all industries and to nearly all injuries
