Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/600

 584 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

3 5-7 P er cent, is collected from the day-wages. The payments in cases of illness range from 50 to 66% per cent, of the wages. In cases of death, thirty-fold to forty-fold wages are paid. In cases of illness the payments are continued for from thirteen to fifty-two weeks.

The general invalid and old-age state pension of Wurttemberg insures the railway employees.

Men who have been transportation employees for twenty-five years con- secutively, and have rendered good service, receive 50 marks. In 1903-4 fifty-six men received this special payment.

Men employed for three years consecutively have the right to three days off, in the year, with full pay. Those who have seen ten years' service have five days off. " Wohlfahrtseinrichtungen der koniglich wiirttembergischen Verkehrs- anstalten," Archiv ftir Eisenbahnwesen, September-October, 1905. H. W.

Workingmen's Insurance and Industrial Solidarity. The cause of work- ingmen's insurance is receiving more favorable attention with each passing year, and its obligation upon the consumer of labor is being more fully recognized ; for it will introduce a larger reciprocity of interests, a greater solidarity, into industry.

Sismondi, a hundred years ago, declared that the laborer has a right to the protection of his employer ; that there exists a natural solidarity between them a bond which ought to assure the laborer and his family of the necessaries of life ; yet in his day the employer had but little regard for the health and safety of his employees ; when they were old or disabled, he cast them upon the state, as public charges.

One of the greatest evils resulting from this irresponsibility, and the effect of which falls for the most part upon the laborer, is the " fever of incoherent pro- duction," subject to immediate demands for the product. The laborer is over- worked for a time, and then thrown entirely out of work. The primary object of an insurance law is more than compensation for it is prevention of the risk against which one is insured.

The real call for obligatory workingmen's insurance does not come from the protestations of a public conscience against legislation which permits cast-off laborers to be thrown on public or private charge, but from the affirmation that the salary paid ought not only to sustain life, but to include also; necessary pro- vision against risks which menace the life and capacity of the laborer. With Sismondi, " every enterprise in the service of which accidents are liable ought to support the consequences of accident."

" Professional responsibility " is no longer an exceptional, but an ordinary, term. It expresses a duty which the most careful employers of labor admit to be due to their workmen. The schedule of indemnities in the law of 1898, a law " forfaitaire et transactionnelle," leaves much to be desired along this line in France, and has prevented proper action. England and Belgium have shown that such insurance laws are possible.

The great problem in such insurance is whether the workman shall be com- pelled to contribute to the fund, and, if so, to what extent. This must depend on his income, and on the number of persons dependent on him for support. Any plan of procedure must be more than a, legal agreement, if it is to contribute to industrial solidarity. It must have a moral basis, and a spirit and vitality which recognize the rights of both classes. Such an arrangement has been, in Germany, the means of creating a really social spirit and a rapid development in systems of production.

A proposed law in France would have local mutual societies and a larger cen- tral company. The former would care for all cases of need lasting less than thirty days, and would be administered by a committee consisting of three laborers and three employers, and a president elected by the six. The central company would take charge of cases of more than thirty days and of rents. It would be administered by employers alone. Raoul Jay, " L'assurance ouvriere et la solidarity dans 1'indostrie," Revue politique et parlementaire, September, 1905.

D. E. T.