The Survey, Volume 30, Number 2, Apr 12, 1913Various
History
The Survey, Volume 30, Number 2, Apr 12, 1913
Various
Charities -- Periodicals; Social problems -- Periodicals; United States -- Social conditions -- Periodicals
Something of the same purport may be said of the social evil now so
freely discussed in the press and forming so large a part of the
subjects written about in your issue of March 8. “Frankness” and
“freedom” are excellent, but some things are too fine to be tarnished by
careless use, and modesty is one of them.
Where we are getting to in this new movement to tear away the veil that
has screened the family life of America can be seen in some of the new
fiction. For instance, in Arnold Bennett’s Carlotta the hectic heroine
thinks that truth demands that one should follow the dictates of animal
instinct!
The logical result will be that morality, either ethical or religious,
will be sent to the waste basket.
JOSEPH D. HOLMES.
New York.
WORKMEN’S COMPENSATION
TO THE EDITOR:
In the March 8 issue of THE SURVEY there appeared an article by Paul
Kennaday, entitled Big Business and Workmen’s Compensation. This article
is full of inaccurate statements and should never, in justice to your
readers, have been printed.
On page 809, in the first column, it is stated: “Seized upon with
alacrity by reformers, fought at first at every step by the casualty
insurance companies and employers, ‘elective’ acts are now cherished
like a prodigal son,” etc. This statement is unqualifiedly untrue.
Employers generally have been notoriously in favor of elective
compensation laws. Of course, they have been far from unanimous, and
their expert advisers have generally been in favor of compulsory laws,
but anyone familiar with the attitude of employers in the movement for
compensation can bear witness to the fact that the majority of employers
have throughout entertained a preference for elective laws. On the other
hand, the casualty insurance companies have not fought such laws, nor
have they generally specifically favored them. There has been as much
difference of opinion among the insurance men on this question as there
has been among all other classes of people. But in general the
representatives of the casualty insurance companies have favored any
kind of a law which would substitute the liability for compensation in
place of the liability for negligence.
Of course, the casualty insurance companies have objected to such
elective compensation laws as the Ohio Act of 1911, for the reason that
that act gave the state insurance office a monopoly of the compensation
insurance. That left the casualty companies to deal with the old
negligence liability with all its abuses and consequent unpopularity,
while it gave them no opportunity to demonstrate their ability to
administer compensation insurance better than the State Office and
without the abuses incident to negligence insurance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
The Survey, Volume 30, Number 2, Apr 12, 1913 — John Shaqi
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