Martha Van Rensselaer, chief of the Department of Home Economics of Cornell University, who told wittily of the difficulty of securing women’s interest in household affairs, they frequently failing to recognize as do their husbands their own importance in our economic institutions. The last paper was by Amos R. E. Pinchot, a lawyer of New York, who pointed out the relationship which exists between overcapitalization and the cost of living and the necessity for regulating monopolies. COMPENSATION LAWS IN TWENTY STATES The 1913 legislative session has so far raised the number of state compensation acts in the United States to almost a score. West Virginia was the first this year to pass such a law, which was signed by the governor on Washington’s Birthday, though it will not go into effect until October. It creates a pseudo-elective insurance fund contributed by employers and employes, to be administered by a Public Service Commission created at the same time, all administrative expenses to be met by the state and not out of the fund. The commission shall each year determine the premium rates of the twenty-three classifications into which the law divides the industries of the state. Election to pay to the fund, on the part of employer and employe—10 per cent only is to be paid by the latter—does away with the right to go to law. Medical benefit under the law shall not exceed $150, and funeral expenses shall not exceed $75. The money benefits, which do not begin till one week has elapsed, are 50 per cent of wages or wage loss for disability. In case of death the benefits in some cases are 50 per cent of wages and in others a sum of $20 a month for one dependent and $5 additional for each additional dependent with a maximum of $35 is reached. Non-resident aliens are in express terms included as beneficiaries. In Oregon a law establishing a state accident insurance fund was passed shortly after that of West Virginia. This is to be administered by a commission of three whose salaries are to be paid out of the fund. The fund is made up of contributions by employers and employes—in hazardous occupations the former furnish twice as much as the latter in amount—to which the state adds an initial contribution of $50,000 and one seventh of the total amount each year thereafter. This act like that of West Virginia is pseudo-elective, election being presumed on both sides in default of written rejection. In case of accidents due to failure to provide proper safeguards, however, this election can be waived and the workman can then sue under a liability law with the customary defenses removed. Benefits which begin immediately are more generous than under the West Virginia law. In case of death one surviving dependent is to receive $30 a month, with $6 for each additional dependent up to $50; parents of a minor workman to receive $25 a month until he would have reached his majority.