ACCIDENT INSURANCE. Some industrial concerns in Nebraska carry blanket accident policies on all their employes, for their own protection. Hundreds of individual workers carry and pay for policies of their own, where the employment is not barred by the accident insurance companies. Yet there is room for very serious consideration by the Legislature of the advisability of enacting some law-so far as the state constitution may permit-looking to the protection of thousands of workers who depend on their earnings from day to day, and who, in case of accident, become public charges, to a greater or less degree. In this connection, the German system furnishes a simple and apparently readily applicable model. Writing of this system, Mr. William Hard, after a thorough study of the subject, says: "The idea that the German associations for insuring workingmen are managed by bureaucrats sitting in heavily upholstered and red tape embroidered offices in Berlin is entirely wrong. All that the government does under the German system is this (and here is the gist of the whole compulsory insurance idea): "The government takes each industry and each trade in the empire and says to the people who own it: You must form an accident insurance association which will include all the employers in your industry and trade; you must pay compensation to your injured workmen according to a fixed scale. We won't stop to try to divide the blame for accidents between you and your workmen. We will assume for practical purposes that you weren't trying to commit murder and that they weren't trying to commit suicide. We will assume that accidents are accidents, and we will make each trade bear the burden of its own accidents. We will make each trade add the cost of its burned out eye-sockets to the cost of its burned out coal grates in computing the market price of its product. So you must form your accident insurance association in your industry and in your trade, and you must pay your injured workmen the compensation fixed by law. "But that's where we stop. Everything else rests with you. Go ahead and elect your own officers and fix your own details to suit yourselves. Invent your own safety devices. Adopt your own shop rules. Employ your own factory inspectors. Engage your own doctors. Build your own hospitals. Do all, or none, of these things, as you please. Profit by your own wisdom and your own humanity in preventing accidents and incurring their consequences. Lose money by your own inefficiency and your own cruelty in letting accidents happen and neglecting injured workmen. All that we insist upon is that your trade shall carry its own load of the wounded and slain. This is not paternalism. It is trade responsibility. It is trade self government." While it may seem like a drastic step to contemplate in Nebraska legislation of this character, it is not really so. It is simply twentieth century humanitarianism in practice. It is elemental self-protection, in the light of the cost to cities, counties and organizations of private parties incurred in caring for, possibly permanently, badly injured workers, and in many cases those dependent on them. Reasonable insurance would also avoid many lawsuits and heavy mulcting of employers. Since the above was written, the following dispatch has been printed through the country pretty generally under a Madison (Wis.) date: "An attempt will be made at the coming session of the legislature to pass some law providing for state insurance giving workingmen not only sick benefits but also old age annuities. A report covering such a system has already been prepared by State Labor Commissioner Beck, who finds much to recommend it. Efforts are being made to enlist the sympathy of Governor Davidson in behalf of the plan and he has been hearing arguments in its favor for some time. It is probable that a state commission will be asked for, to look into the system more thoroughly, with the view of adopting a plan similar to that in vogue in Germany. Mr. Beck has found that the premiums now demanded for insurance of the kind desired is too high and could be reasonably reduced without running the risk of depreciating the security offered." |