e way _his employer was negligent_.
He cannot get something simply because he has been injured. The law in
no country has ever said that he could. In all cases he must show that
his employer failed in his duty in some way toward him to lay the
foundation of an action against him. This is the first principle to
keep clearly in mind.

Again, it is said that an employe cannot recover if the injury has
happened to him in consequence of the negligence of a fellow-servant.
By this is meant a person engaged in the same common employment. It is
not always easy to determine whether two persons employed by the same
company are fellow-servants, as we shall soon see, but the principle
of law is plain enough that in all cases where they are thus acting
as fellow-servants they cannot recover for any injury. The law says
this is one of the risks that a person takes when he enters the
service of another. Suppose a person is at work mining coal and is
injured by another person working by his side through his negligence.
However severely injured he may be he cannot get anything, because the
person through whose negligence he has been injured is a
fellow-workman.

But many employes may have the same common employer and yet not be
fellow-servants. For example, a brakeman would be a fellow-servant
with the conductor and engineer and other persons running on the same
train or on other trains belonging to the same company, but he would
not be a fellow-servant working in the same line of employment with
those who are engaged in the repair-shop of the company.

This statement is quite sufficient to show the difficulty there is
sometimes in deciding whether a person is a fellow-servant or not. If
a person is injured through the negligence of another employed by the
same company who is not a fellow-servant, then he can recover if there
are no other difficulties in the way, otherwise he cannot. It does not
follow that fellow-servants are of the same grade or rank; the test is
whether they are acting in the same line of employment. The brakeman's
position is not so high as that of the engineer or conductor, yet all
three are acting in the same line of employment, and if any one of
them was injured by another in that part of the service the employer
would not be liable.

In a very large number of cases, therefore, employers are not liable
for accidents happening to their employes, because they are injured
through the negligence of other employe