Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 61.djvu/127

Rh his attaining the age of self-support and becoming useful, but by reason of the fact that his maintenance is costing more and more. It would mean that the individual is most valuable at the moment before he becomes self-sustaining, and thereafter loses value until he has paid back to society the cost of his maintenance during dependent years. The time arrives when the account is balanced, and he is of no value whatsoever, even though he might be at the prime of his productive powers. On the other hand, the generally accepted meaning of value has little relation to the cost of production; it depends upon final utility. The value of a commodity depends upon its use, or its productive ability in a community, and, as we are dealing with life as a commodity, in truth, an article, these well-established economic principles must apply, even as truly as in the case of commercial products, in the market of New York. The more logical view, therefore, must be that the commercial value of a life must be measured by its general usefulness, its power of production, and the monetary returns which it makes to society.

Numerous suits for damages, in courts of law, for the wrongful deaths of individuals constitute the commonest, the most fruitful and almost the only trustworthy references available in which life values are dealt with. It has been necessary for judicial authority to consider the question to a minute degree, and if the basis of computation is applicable to the conditions found in the general social universe, it ought to provide a trustworthy source of information upon the subject.

It will be seen at once that in suits at law for compensation for death, the loss is computed from the standpoint of the surviving relatives who bring the suit; a widow prays for compensation for the loss of her means of support; or a bereaved family petitions for damages occasioned by the loss of services of a mother. The question therefore to be determined is: Does the loss to the surviving relatives represent, in any degree, the loss to society? Let us examine into the conditions governing judicial, procedure in cases of this kind.

The principle generally adhered to in estimates of life values is well defined by the English court procedure, and this has been followed in spirit if not in letter by the majority of the states of our union. It is, in effect, as follows: "The jury may give such damages as they shall deem a fair and just compensation with reference to the pecuniary injury resulting from such death." In nearly every state, therefore, pecuniary loss is made the basis of damages, and exemplary or punitive damages are not permitted. This means that the damages allowed in such cases represent what are believed by such courts to be actual loss, without any suspicion of punishment for the party responsible for the destruction. Such punishment assumes a charge for premeditation or criminal negligence, and is dealt with by other methods than by civil