recovery only where the workman or his representatives could establish negligence on the part of the employer, and denied relief if his own negligence in any way contributed to the injury or if the injury was due to the negligence of a fellow servant or a stranger, and also compelled the worker to assume the risks incident to a dangerous employment. For injuries due to accidents alone there could be no recovery, since a legal wrong could be imputed to no one. The altered situation, growing out of the immense changes made in industrial conditions, brought a realization of the great injustice worked by established rules of law. Irrespective of the negligence of the employer or a fellow servant or a stranger, and irrespective of the risks incident to dangerous occupations, it was recognized as grossly unjust that the victim alone should be allowed to bear the entire consequences and all the burden of an industrial accident or injury. It was seen that the employment itself, if not the cause of the injury, furnished at least the occasion or the condition without which it could not have occurred. The principle was then formulated and accepted that the financial loss occasioned by injuries received in the course of employment was a proper charge against the industry itself, at least where the injury was not plainly due to the negligence or misconduct of the person injured. A means was thus provided whereby the burden in such cases could be shifted in a measure from a single victim and distributed among many persons.

This principle was adopted and applied by the Federal Government in the act of May 30, 1908, "granting to certain employees of the United States the right to receive from it compensation for injuries sustained in the course of their employment." Although this act is of limited application and provides but a limited measure of relief, its benefits have been many and real. It applies only to injuries received by artisans or laborers employed in the manufacturing establishments, arsenals, or navy yards of the United States, or in river and harbor or fortification work, or in hazardous employment in the Reclamation Service and under the Isthmian Canal Commission, under the Bureau of Mines and in the Forestry and Lighthouse Services. But any such workman, injured in the course of his employment, is entitled to receive for one year thereafter, unless sooner able to resume work, the same pay as if he continued to be employed, except where the injury was due to his own negligence or misconduct. If the injury should result in death during the year, the compensation allowed is payable to the widow or children or dependent parent..

An idea of the benefits derived under the compensation act may be obtained from a consideration of a few figures. The act has been in operation since August 1, 1908. Between that date and December 1, 1911, compensation was paid in 5,564 cases of injury, in 165 of which the injury resulted in death. On account of these fatal injuries $112,879.02 has been paid to surviving dependents. On account of the nonfatal injuries $704,814.60 has been paid to the injured persons themselves.

H. Wages and Prices, 1870-19011

The changes in wages and prices between 1870 and 1901 resulted in a decline in prices and a rise of wages, so that the net result was distinctly favorable to the wage receivers. Since that time, however, there has been a net decline in wages.

In considering the changes which have occurred in recent years in the earnings of labor there are two factors to be taken into account, namely, money wages and cost of living.

The accompanying table and chart are designed to show the movements of wages. The compilations of the Department of Labor for the years 1870 to 1898 include 25 occupations, representing building trades, machine trades, and the higher grades of railroad employees, together with street laborers and teamsters. Another compilation of the Department of Labor, covering the years 1891-1900, includes 192 occupations. Each of these series of wage statistics has been compiled in the accompanying table, and has been graphically presented in the accompanying chart, by taking the average wages of the year 1891 as a standard, equivalent to 100, and then computing the wages of other years as percentages of this standard year. By this method it can be seen that wages in the 25 selected occupations touched the lowest point in 1876, when they stood at 85.5 per cent of the figure for 1891, and that from that time until 1893 there was a steady increase, followed by a decline, until 1898, when they stood at 95.62 per cent of the figure for 1891. At the same time, the wages of the 192 occupations for the years 1891 to 1898 show a close parallel with those of the 25 selected occupations, and from 1898 to 1900 they rose 4.6 per cent. . . .

At the same time the decrease in the cost of many of the commodities most used by the working classes is a factor which has tended to make their actual, as distinguished from money wages, greater. .

1 Final Report of the Industrial Commission. (Washington, 1902), XIX, 730-734, passim.

(Aldrich Report, Senate Rep., 52d Cong., 2d sess., Pt. I, p. 100.)

Taking into account these observations, it must be concluded that the daily rate of wages is not a safe measure of the changing conditions of labor, and that in a discussion of the progress of the working population account must be taken of the amount of annual employment, depending on general conditions of prosperity and depression, the life earnings of the worker, depending upon the increasing intensity of exertion and overwork, and the increased necessary expenses of city life.

I. Higher Cost of Living, 19101

Wages may be nominally high, that is, the laborer may receive a larger number of dollars than formerly, but if the prices of the commodities for which he spends his money have also advanced, his real wages may have remained stationary or even declined. Hence it is very important in every investigation of wages to establish also the movement of prices.

The advance in prices has been world-wide, although the products of the farm and food products have advanced much more rapidly than have manufactured articles. This is probably due to two causes; first, the prices of farm products and of food are more sensitive than manufactured commodities and would therefore respond more quickly to causes producing higher prices; and, second, a study of the course of prices of such farm products and food as are produced in the United States indicates that the demand has outgrown the production of such commodities, and that the production of manufactured articles and of articles usually imported into the United States have outgrown our production of farm products and domestic food supplies. This condition has no doubt been brought about to a considerable extent by the withdrawal from the farms of large numbers of persons who have entered industrial pursuits and become food consumers rather than food producers, and to the rapidly increased cost of production of farm products. . . .

Retail prices in the United States in the spring of 1910 were for many articles at the highest point reached for many years. As compared with the spring of 1900 prices for bacon were more than 70 per cent higher, ham was 33 per cent higher, flour was about 50 per cent higher, butter about 45 per cent higher, sugar 12 per cent higher, and eggs 100 per cent higher. Some few articles, such as coffee and tea, were about the same price as in 1900, but practically no articles of food were lower than in 1900.

1 Investigation Relative to Wages and Prices of Commodities. 61st Cong., 3d sess., Sen. Doc. No. 847 (Washington, 1911), I, 10, 37, 52.

Wages have not advanced as rapidly as have prices and practically all labor difficulties which have been the subject of mediation in the United States during the past two or three years have had as their basis the advanced cost of living. In the United States wages have advanced much more rapidly than they have in European countries, in fact in some European countries practically no advance has been made during the ten years under consideration.

Wages in the United States advanced in about the same degree as did prices until 1907. Owing to the industrial depression of 1908, following the financial panic of the fall of 1907, wages dropped considerably and in 1909 hardly more than regained the high point reached in 1907.

Wages at the present time are not on as high a level as are food prices. Salaries have advanced but very little during the past ten years.

Hours of labor in practically all wage occupations have been reduced. The United States Bureau of Labor compilation of wages and hours of labor in the principal manufacturing industries has not been continued later than 1907. In 1907, wages were 22.1 per cent above 1900. Hours of labor per week during the same period were reduced 3.7 per cent. The decline in hours of course affected the weekly earnings of employees for the reason that the large majority of wage earners are employed either on the piece basis or at an hourly rate. From 1900 to 1907 full time weekly earnings advanced 17.6 per cent, while wholesale prices of commodities advanced 17.2 per cent, or in almost exactly the same proportion.

J. A Nation at Work, 18801

It has generally been remarked that in the United States there is practically no leisure class; ninety-three per cent of the men in the productive age periods from 16 to 60 are at work and the rest are presumably preparing for work. Apparently the women show a larger proportion not engaged in gainful occupations, but if we allot one woman as housekeeper to each of the 10,000,000 families in the country in 1880, the proportion of the unoccupied among the women is about the same as for the men. Since 1880 the proportion of the population over ten years of age engaged in gainful occupations has increased.

The following table makes comparison between the number of inhabitants of either sex in each of the periods of life, taken for the purposes of these tables, and the corresponding number of persons returned as pursuing gainful occupations:

1 Statistics of the Population of the United States at the Tenth Census. (Washington, 1883), I, 704.