or to avoid ordinary cares or some unusual trouble." Since there are already laws making non-support a criminal offense in forty-four of the fifty states and territories, it will probably prove comparatively an easy matter to bring about such modifications as will make these laws practically uniform. With extradition and hard labor following conviction one cause for divorce will have become measurably abated, and one form of cruelty to wives and children and imposition on the state will be to some extent removed.

It has been well said that no people have ever been made by legislation. Certainly we cannot urge this thought too often in all our communities. No one can read the address of the President of the American Bar Association, when at the close of the year he has reviewed the laws enacted at the sessions of the various legislatures, without being impressed with the fact that Americans have yet to learn that the multiplication of laws on all subjects is a hindrance rather than an aid to public morality. Able and philosophie thinkers both at home and abroad have uttered their warnnigs, but still the bad practice continues. Gradually, it is to be hoped, the truth will be borne in on the masses of our people that the government is not an entity so separate and distinct from themselves that it can relieve them from the duty of self-control and the observance of the rules of morality that are "eternal verities." It is with full recognition of these facts that the lawyers who are asking for uniform legislation come before their respective law-making bodies. The measures recommended by them are the outcome of years of thought and study and their various provisions have been drawn by experts of acknowledged ability and reputation. Favorable action will tend to strengthen our political constitutions, will aid business, and in the sphere of domestic relation will raise the standard of morality and the happiness of private life.

Employer's Liability and the Compensation Laws

and the Difference Between Them

By HON. JAMES R. GARFIELD, OF CLEVELAND

Mr. President, Members of the Association, and Ladies:

I have chosen as my subject for discussion the question of the employer's liability and the compensation laws and the difference between them. I shall attempt to show you why I believe that the employer's liability acts and the different decisions that have arisen under those laws are not in harmony with modern day industrial needs; and the reasons why I think we should consider carefully a radical change from present conditions.

Our industrial growth during this last twenty-five years has been most marvelous. We have changed very rapidly from a very small industrial life to a very complex industrial life, and in this change there have been established entirely new relations between employer and employe, and the relations that both bear to the public. Instead of having the old, simple relations of master and servant, which were readily understood and easily worked out, when the master employed but few employes and where they all worked under practically similar conditions, we have now conditions where the employer is far removed from the workingman, and where the workingmen are engaged in a great diversity of manual work. In this change we have, in one way, tremendously increased the efficiency of our industrial life. We have increased enormously the demands that are made upon both capital and labor. We are demanding constantly greater speed, a greater number of trains, more hours of service, better methods of handling both the transportation of men and of freight. In every one of the great industries, beginning with mining and ending with the most minute manufacturing industries, the

same progress is noted. Instead of these things being done by hand we now use machinery. The individual is no longer called upon to act as formerly, but he is made a part of a great machine. In the doing of all this, while we have succeeded tremendously in improving our machinery, the dead part of it, we have neglected the human side of industry. We have not kept pace in what we have done for the man with what we have done for the machine.

As one of the results of this new industrial condition, we have increased tremendously the number of accidents. When one considers statistics of accidents in industry, it is really appalling. On the railroads alone, we have exact statistics, and the men that are killed and injured are almost 70,000 a year. It is estimated in the statistics we have at hand, that nearly 500,000 men and women are killed or injured every year. Of course the greater number are injured. The injury sometimes is as bad as death itself, because the earning power of the individual is either so seriously affected that he can no longer care for his family, or he may be totally injured and hence thrown upon the community as one of the dependent classes.

It is this phase of industrial life that brings about the discussion of the law of negligence, and has led us to adopt remedial measures.

Now, first, as to the social side of this question. If we are to consider accidents simply from the legal standpoint, we will miss the vital part of the question. We must look at it primarily from the social standpoint, and determine whether with the present conditions, with the law and court decisions as they are, are right.

It is needless for me to cite individual cases to a body of men who are day by day dealing with them. It is easy for you and for me, when an individual case is presented, to say the law will probably prevent a recovery, or, probably permit a recovery. But we do not appreciate the other side of the If the court holds that there may be no recovery, it

case.

does not take into account the misery that may come to the man that is injured, or the family who are left dependent. We must recognize that in dealing with the social condition, the law fails to understand and fails to take into account the result of injury that falls upon those who are least able to bear it. A defense honestly and fairly pleaded relieves the defendant, but what becomes of the plaintiff; what becomes of the family of the man who is dead? The accident has deprived them of the earning power of the man who is supporting that family. Now, the problem before us from a social point of view, is whether the workman and those dependent upon him, shall be made to bear the burden of injury from accident, or whether the burden shall be distributed throughout and over the entire industry. The answer to this question will determine what course of action any state should follow, and I cannot for a moment believe, that sane, reasonable students of existing conditions in the great working centers, can say that the burden must be left as it is now, to be borne by the individual rather than by the industry.

Let us take for a moment the legal point of view. We all of us understand very clearly how the law of negligence has been the outgrowth of new and changed conditions. We know how the defenses which we now recognize as valid, have been increased or diminished in accordance with the ideas of the court when enforcing any particular statute. We know how the doctrines of contributory negligence, of assumed risk, of fellow servant, all of those have crept in to meet some condition that was wrong, some condition that the court felt was unjust. As the result of increasing accident-of the greater numbers of people injured, and those dependent upon them in every jurisdiction, our dockets are clogged with cases of personal injury. In almost every jurisdiction, the personal injury docket is not only great in itself, but because of the time occupied in the trial of those cases, many other cases of great importance are necessarily postponed. There has also been another phase from the lawyer's point of view that needs con

sideration. Unfortunately, our profession has not been free from those who are not of the highest character. There are men in our profession today who are more anxious for their own gain than for the good of their client; those who are merely engaged in making money out of the misfortunes of those who have been injured; lawyers who seek to foment litigation rather than to settle litigation; lawyers who take advantage of the injuries of their fellow-men for the purpose of gaining large rewards wholly incommensurate with the value of the services rendered.

Then, again, from the legal point of view, we find that because of these conditions and because of the interpretation of the law of negligence, that there has been much criticism by laymen of the actions of the court. All a layman knows is that an injury has been inflicted, that some one is suffering, and he says, why should not that suffering be paid for? He does not understand the doctrines of the law of negligence and when he faces a trial in court, or he hears of the decisions of the courts and finds that one of these doctrines has been successfully pleaded in defense, he is immediately in rebellion against the court.

On the other hand, we must also recognize that some of our courts, some of our judges, unfortunately, are not in sympathy with the conditions that exist in the workingman's life. When I say not in sympathy, I do not mean that wilfully there is a lack of sympathy, but that from the very fact of their isolated position and perhaps their training or associations, they fail to understand the conditions of industry and everyday life.

You and I, sitting either in our offices or on the bench, can very readily determine what men ought to do or ought not to do under any given circumstances. We become involved in a web of sophistical learning as to the relative rights and duties of master and servant if we are unable to place ourselves in the position of the engineer who is driving his engine at sixty miles an hour; the man at the furnace who faces hour after