As the world grows older and wiser and civilization progresses, old ideas are being discarded one by one, and nowhere is this more noticeable than in the realms of business and industry. Principles of doing business, once held as cardinal, have in many cases later been recognized as immoral, not only from the human, but from the economic standpoint. The old trading doctrine of _caveat emptor_, or “let the buyer beware,” is no longer relied on by reputable merchants. They realize that the man who hopes to build up a sound, steady business must take upon his own shoulders the responsibility for what he sells both as a question of honesty and policy. Another principle which may be called “let the worker beware,” one which laid down the law that the industrial worker was supposed to be cognizant of whatever risks were involved in his employment and to assume these risks himself, is gradually being legislated out of existence, compensation laws of recent years taking the burden of the dangers of industrial employment off the shoulders of the worker and placing it where it rightly belongs, on the industry. But the United States Steel Corporation did not wait for the law-makers to force upon it the assumption of this liability. Cheerfully and voluntarily, it accepted for itself the onus of accidents in its plants before a single state of the Union had passed a Workmen’s Compensation Act. More, the compensation relief plan for injured workmen, adopted by the Corporation in 1910, has served as a model for a number of states in drawing up liability legislation, and is more liberal in some respects than the plans of most, if not all, states. Yet though the Steel Corporation, as evidenced by its action in putting its compensation plan in force, heartily approves of the theory of industrial liability legislation, the big company’s management is strenuously opposed to certain forms that state legislation sometimes takes. One of these is state insurance, the objection being that this takes away from the employer all incentive to adopting measures for accident prevention. For compensation, after all, is not a cure but a palliative. It does not strike at the root of the disease; and in the final analysis, the important thing is the prevention of accidents rather than payment for them after their occurrence.