n conflict alike with the progress of civilization,
the spirit of democracy, the principles of social justice, and the
analogies and tendencies of law. And we believe that this unconscious
attempt to fasten upon the workingman an unjust and intolerable burden
from which all other civilized nations, with one exception, have
relieved him, will ultimately prove as futile as was the conscious and
deliberate attempt of the United States Supreme Court, under the lead of
Chief Justice Taney, to halt the movement for the emancipation of the
slaves.

In the earlier stages of industrial development, when industry was
unorganized, machinery hardly existed, and labor was an individual
handicraft, the courts naturally assumed that accidents occurring to a
workman were probably due to his own negligence.

If he were mowing in a field and cut himself with his scythe, if he
were digging a ditch and sprained his ankle, if he were cutting down a
tree and it fell upon him and broke his leg, he could recover from his
employer only on proof that his employer was at fault. Nor could he
recover if the accident were due to the carelessness of a fellow
workman. There was always a natural presumption that he could better
guard against such carelessness than could the probably absent employer.
If he were turning a grindstone and his awkward fellow workman so held
the scythe as to cut him, if he were in the forest and his fellow
workman gave no notice of the falling tree, it was natural to presume
that the carelessness was shared between the two, and the law would
neither attribute blame to the employer nor levy the damage upon him
when he was not blameworthy.

But the organization of labor and the creation of elaborate machinery
has destroyed this presumption of the common sense, and therefore in all
civilized countries has destroyed this presumption of law. When a
railway train runs off the track because of a misplaced switch or a
defective rail, there is no presumption that the engineer was careless
or could have guarded against the carelessness of the switch tender or
of the manufacturer of the rail. When a fire breaks out in a room where
scores of shirt-waist makers are confined at their work and a hundred
and forty of them are burned to death, there is no presumption that the
impossibility of their escape through narrow passageways and a locked
door was due to their carelessness, or that they were to blame because
the tables at which they