Precautions taken in Belgium to combat Ankylostomiasis. Diplomatic and Consular Reports No. 656, Foreign Office, London, February, 1907. Prevention of Mine Explosions, Report and Recommendations, Bulletin No. 369, United States Geological Survey, Washington, 1908. Primer on Explosives for Coal Miners, by Munroe and Hall, Bulletin No. 423, United States Geological Survey, Washington, 1909. Proceedings of Meeting of Coal Operators of West Virginia and Other States, January 8, 1908, Washington. Production of Coal, by Edward W. Parker. Annual publication in Mineral Resources of the United States. Geological Survey, Washington, D. C. Quelques mots sur la Question des Poussières. Extrait des Annales des Mines de Belgique, tome XV. Brussels, 1910. Recent Mine Disasters, Causes and Remedies as far as Ascertained, by J. S. Cunningham, Johnstown, Pa. Address before the West Virginia Mining Association, October 7, 1908. Report of a Committee appointed by the Royal Commission on Mines to Inquire into the Causes of and means of Preventing Accidents from falls of Ground, Underground haulage, and in Shafts. Parliamentary Paper, Cd. 4821. London, 1909. Report of an Inquiry into the Ventilation of Coal Mines and the Methods of Examining for Fire damp. Parliamentary Paper, Cd. 4551. London, 1909. Report of Commission appointed to Investigate the Cause of Recent Disastrous Explosions in the Coal Mines of Southeastern Kansas. Topeka, 1905. Report of Hearings before Joint Select (Mine Investigating) Committee, West Virginia, 1907-8. Charleston, 1909. Report of the Anthracite Coal Strike Commission to the President of the United States. Washington, 1903. Report of the Departmental Committee on Bobbinite. Parliamentary Paper, Cd. 3423. London, 1907. Report of the Departmental Committee on the use of Electricity in Mines. Parliamentary Paper, Cd. 1916. London, 1904. Report of the Executive Committee of the West Virginia Mining Association, Charleston, W. Va., September 2, 1908 Report of the Royal Commission on the Ventilation and Sanitation of Mines, Western Australia. Perth, 1905. Report on Coal Mine Accidents at Grapevile Shaft, McDowell County, and Rush Run and Red Ash Mines, Fayette County, West Virginia, by James W. Paul, Chief Mine Inspector. Charleston, 1905. Report on Electricity in Mining, by T. C. Martin in Special Report of the Bureau of the Census on Mines and Quarries, 1902. Washington, 1905. Report on the Causes and Circumstances of the Accident which occurred on the 14th of November at Dalbeath Colliery, Fifeshire, by R. A. S. Redmayne. Parliamentary Paper, Cd. 4517. London, 1909. Report on the Health of Cornish Miners, by Haldane, Martin, and Thomas. Parliamentary Paper, Cd. 2091. London, 1904. Report upon Reinsurance of the Central Association for Dealing with Distress Caused by Mining Accidents. London, 1891. Second Report of the Royal Commission on Mines. Parliamentary Paper, Cd. 4820. London, 1909. Special Report on Mines and Quarries, 1902, Bureau of the Census. Washington, 1905. Special Report to the Governor of an Investigation by the Commissioner of Labor Statistics and Inspection of the Coal Mine Explosion at Rich Hill, Mo., March 29, 1888. Statistics of Coal, by R. C. Taylor, second edition. Philadelphia, 1855. Steel Mine Timbers, Data and Tables for the use of Mining Engineers, Carnegie Steel Company. Pittsburg, Pa., 1910. Steel Mine Timbers, Types of construction and examples of installation, Carnegie Steel Company, Pittsburg, Pa., 1908. The Office of Accidents in Mines and of Firedamp and the Testing Station. Department of Industry and Labor. Brussels, 1904. The Slav Invasion and the Mine Workers, a study in immigration, by F. J. Warne, Ph. D. Philadelphia, 1904. Transactions of the Federated Institution of Mining Engineers, Vol. XIV, part 3. London, March, 1898. Use of Winding Ropes, Safety Catches and Appliances in Mine Shafts, Report of a Commission appointed by the Lieut.-Governor of the Transvaal to inquire into. Pretoria, 1907. 62717°-No. 90—10—16 ARTICLES ON MINING ACCIDENTS, BY FREDERICK L. HOFFMAN. Fatal Accidents in Coal Mining. The Mineral Industry, Its Statistics, Technology, and Trade, Vol. VI, 1897. Fatal Accidents in Coal Mining in North America, 1898. Suggestions for Improved Coal Mining Accident Statistics. Fatal Accidents in Coal Mining in North America, 1899. Fatal Accidents in Coal Mining in North America, 1900. Engineering and Mining Engineering and Mining Engineering and Mining Engineering and Mining Engineering and Mining Fatal Accidents in Coal Mines in North America, 1901. Fatal Accidents in Coal Mines in North America, 1902. (Supplement, with special reference to particular occupations.) Engineering and Mining Journal, September 26, 1903. Fatal Accidents in Metal Mining in the United States. Engineering and Mining Journal, January 14 and January 21, 1904. Fatal Accidents in Coal Mining in 1903. (With reference to falls of coal and roof.) Engineering and Mining Journal, December 22, 1904. Fatal Accidents in Coal Mining in 1904. Engineering and Mining Journal, December 2, 1905. Fatal Accidents in Coal Mining in 1905. (With special reference to the use of coalcutting machines.) Engineering and Mining Journal, December 22, 1906. Fatal Accidents in Coal Mines, 1906. (With special reference to discipline in mines and the connection between barometric pressure and mine explosions.) Engineering and Mining Journal, January 4, 1908. Fatal Accidents in Coal Mines of America, 1907. (With statistics covering a ten year period for the principal coal-mining countries.) Engineering and Mining Journal, December 19, 1908. Fatal Accidents in Coal Mines of North America, 1908. (With special reference to employers' liability and the effect of the British Workmen's Compensation Act.) Engineering and Mining Journal, December 25, 1909. Fatal Accidents in American Metal Mines. (With comparison with international statistics.) Engineering and Mining Journal, March 5, 1910. The Mortality and Morbidity of Miners. Engineering and Mining Journal, June 25 and July 2, 1910. Coal Mining Fatalities in Belgium. Engineering and Mining Journal, September 10, 1910. German Miners' Insurance and Annuity Funds. Engineering and Mining Journal, October 29, November 5, November 12, and November 19, 1910. RECENT ACTION RELATING TO EMPLOYERS' LIABILITY AND WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION. BY LINDLEY D. CLARK, A. M., LL. M. NATURE OF LIABILITY AND COMPENSATION SYSTEMS. The past few years have been marked by a rapid increase of interest in the question of the adjustment and distribution of the burden of the results of industrial accidents, the doctrine of compensation as distinguished from that of liability coming for the first time in the United States to any widespread support. Where the idea of employers' liability controls, the employee is given a right of action against the employer in cases where injury from accident results. as a consequence of the negligence of the employer or of some one charged with the performance of his nondelegable duties; with this, however, the rule must be considered that where the injured employee contributed by his own negligence to cause the accident, such contributory negligence bars recovery. Ordinary risks, not due to the employer's negligence, but incidental to the employment, are held to be assumed by the employee, and for injuries resulting therefrom no recovery of damages can be had; these risks include the acts, negligent or otherwise, of ordinarily carefully selected and ordinarily skillful and competent fellow-workmen. It is obvious that the only right allowed to an injured employee under this doctrine is the right to sue, which experience has shown to involve uncertainty, delay, expense, and the ultimate acquisition by the workman of only a fraction of the money actually expended by the employer in the way of defense and of payments on judgments. The idea of compensation is that of an award of a fixed sum for injuries for which the employment is responsible, without the necessity of litigation or the endeavor to determine the question of fault. It is frequently provided, however, that where an employer is apparently grossly negligent, damages will be recoverable, and if the employee is willfully or grossly negligent he shall take nothing either by way of compensation or otherwise. The common-law doctrine of employers' liability has been dominant in the United States to the present time, though modified in many particulars by statutes, both state and federal. (a) In most other industrial countries the idea of compensation has superseded that of liability, Germany having led the way in 1884, followed by Austria in • See Bulletin No. 74, pp. 1 to 120. 1889. Great Britain placed a compensation law of limited application on her statute books in 1897, giving the right of compensation thereunder as alternative to the right to sue under either the common law or the liability act of 1880. The British act last mentioned has furnished the pattern for statutes in several States of the Union, laws of this general type and varying scope having been enacted in five States in the single year 1909. One State (Colorado) has abrogated entirely the defense of fellow-service, while in a number of jurisdictions this defense is not allowed in the case of accidents on railroads. The other defenses named, i. e., of assumed risks and contributory negligence, are also modified or abolished under certain conditions in a number of States. In all these cases, however, the underlying idea of liability is not changed. FEDERAL EMPLOYERS' LIABILITY LAW. Federal legislation on the subject of employers' liability has been restricted to employees of common carriers, and necessarily to such of these as are engaged in interstate commerce, though two liability bills, one restricted to the Isthmian Canal and one applying to all laborers, mechanics, and other civilian employees of the United States Government, were introduced into Congress during the recent regular session. It was owing to failure to restrict the provisions of the statute of 1906 to interstate operations that that act was declared unconstitutional, except in the District of Columbia and the Territories, as to which the powers of Congress are plenary. (") The liability law of April 22, 1908 (35 Stat., 65), was adopted with a view to correcting the defects of the earlier law, but was promptly declared unconstitutional by the supreme Court of Connecticut () on the ground that it involved the administration of the law in state courts beyond either the intention or the power of Congress, and because its provisions affected matters beyond the scope of interstate commerce, and therefore also without the power of Congress. The result of this ruling was in any case a denial of the right of the state courts to administer the law, which view would be controlling on the subordinate courts of Connecticut. An appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States was taken in the Mondou case, the question of the constitutionality as well as of the application of the law being raised. This appeal has not yet been acted upon. Another decision that, if sustained, would prove destructive to the value of this act was one in a federal court to the effect that actions under the law could be brought only in the district of which the de a Employers' Liability Cases, 207 U. S., 463, 28 Sup. Ct., 141; El Paso & Northeastern R. Co. r. Gutierrez, 215 U. S., 87, 30 Sup. Ct., 21. Hoxie v. New York, etc., R. R. Co., 82 Conn., 352, 73 Atl., 754. No. 86, pp. 322-328.) Mondou v. Same, 82 Conn., 373, 73 Atl., 762. (See Bull. fendant company was an inhabitant. (") In the case in question this ruling would require the plaintiff, a brakeman injured in New Mexico, to bring his suit in the city of Topeka, Kans., of which the defendant corporation was an inhabitant. A third decision pointed out the limitations of the law in so far as death claims are concerned, ruling that it gave no survival of the employee's personal right to recover damages were the injury was fatal. (') The points raised in these decisions were made the subject of a variety of bills in Congress, whose object it was to cure the defects disclosed by them, though it was brought out in the debates and reports in connection with the proposed amendments that not all the points against the law were considered as well taken. Amendments were adopted giving to state and federal courts concurrent jurisdiction in all cases arising under the act, and allowing actions to be brought in the place where the injury occurred or in any place in which the defendant company was doing business at the time of the commencement of the action. Cases brought in state courts of competent jurisdiction can not be removed to a federal court. A section was added providing that the right of action of an injured person should, in case of death, survive to the personal representative for the benefit of dependents. The act as amended is reproduced below. (°) The question of survival may still be open in some cases, however, in view of the construction placed upon a similar statute (") by the supreme court of Montana. () In the case cited this court held that where death was instantaneous no right of action accrued, hence none could survive, though a less rigid construction of the Federal law seems possible, at least in view of the very clearly expressed intention of Congress in debate to provide for the accrual of a right to sue for the personal injuries of the employee as well as for the loss suffered by the dependents by reason of the death of the wage-earner, as set forth in the first section of the act. (1) STATUTES PROVIDING INSURANCE. The first absolute departure in the United States from the doctrine of liability and proved fault was the cooperative insurance law of Maryland, passed in 1902, and applicable only to mining, quarrying, "Cound v. Atchison, T. & S. F. R. Co., 173 Fed. 527. Fulgham v. Midland Valley R. R. Co., 167 Fed. 660. (See also Walsh v. New York, etc., R. Co., 173 Fed., 494.) See pp. 707 and 708. & Mont., Acts, 1905, ch. 1, sec. 2. Dillon v. Great Northern R. R. Co., 38 Mont., 485, 100 Pac. 960. 1 Duke v. St. Louis & S. F. R. R. Co., 172 Fed. 684; Watson v. St. Louis, I. M. & S. R. R. Co., 169 Fed. 942. |