ven there--still less in our
States--have we gone so far as the Continental countries.

Closely connected with this may be mentioned that vast domain of
law which is known as employers' liability. Under the old strict
common-law rule, a servant or employee could never recover damages for
any injury caused in whole or in part by his own negligence, by the
negligence of a fellow servant or even by defective machinery, unless
he was able to prove beyond peradventure that this existed known to
the employer and was the sole and direct cause of the accident. As is
matter of common knowledge, the tendency of all modern legislation,
particularly the English and our own, has been to chip one corner
after another off these principles. The fellow-servant rule has been
very generally abolished by statute, or in many States fellow servants
have been defined and divided into classes so that the master is not
relieved of liability when the injury to the servant is caused by
the negligence of a servant not in actual fact his fellow, _i.e._,
employed with him in his own particular work. In like manner the
exemption for contributory negligence has been pared down and the
liability for dangerous or defective appliances increased, practically
to the point that the master becomes the insurer of his machinery in
this particular. The recent English statute goes to the length of
putting the liability on the employer or on an employment fund in all
cases.

The writer is strongly of opinion that this radical reform is, so far
as constitutional, the end to be aimed at. The immense expense and
waste caused by present litigation, the complete uncertainty both
as to liability and as to the amount of damages, the general fraud,
oppression, and deceit that the present system leads to, and finally
its hideous waste and extravagance, are all reasons for doing away
with it entirely. He believes that for the employer's own benefit
if there were a statute with a definite scale of damages, providing
definitely, and as part of the employment contract if necessary,
with a certain small deduction from the wages, that there should be
insurance, that the master should be actually liable on a fixed scale
for all injuries suffered while in his employment not in disobedience
to his orders or solely and grossly negligent, it would be far better
both for employer and employee. To-day it is possible that in many
cases the employee gets no damages or is cheated out o