pplication, and made it
possible for the employee to obtain compensation for accidental injury
in the great majority of cases.

In 1893 a bill was introduced in Parliament by the ministry of the
time to abolish all deductions from the responsibility of employers,
except that of contributory negligence on the part of workmen, but it
was not passed. In 1897, however, the "Workmen's Compensation Act" was
passed, changing the basis of the law entirely. By this Act it was
provided that in case of accident to a workman causing death or
incapacitating him for a period of more than two weeks, compensation
in proportion to the wages he formerly earned should be paid by the
employer as a matter of course, unless "serious and wilful misconduct"
on the part of the workman could be shown to have existed. The
liability of employers becomes, therefore, a matter of insurance of
workmen against accidents arising out of their employment, imposed by
the law upon employers. It is no longer damages for negligence, but a
form of compulsory insurance. In other words, since 1897 a legal, if
only an implied part of the contract between employer and employee in
all forms of modern industry in which accidents are likely to occur is
that the employer insures the employee against the dangers of his
work.

*72. Preservation of Remaining Open Lands.*--Turning from the field of
manufacturing labor to that of agriculture and landholding it will be
found that there has been some legislation for the protection of the
agricultural laborer analogous to the factory laws. The Royal
Commission of 1840-1844 on trades then unprotected by law included a
report on the condition of rural child labor, but no law followed
until 1873, when the "Agricultural Children's Act" was passed, but
proved to be ineffective. The evils of "agricultural gangs," which
were bodies of poor laborers, mostly children, engaged by a contractor
and taken from place to place to be hired out to farmers, were
reported on by a commission in 1862, and partly overcome by the
"Agricultural Gangs Act" of 1867. There is, however, but little
systematic government oversight of the farm-laboring class.

Government regulation in the field of landholding has taken a somewhat
different form. The movement of enclosing which had been in progress
from the middle of the eighteenth century was brought to an end, and a
reversal of tendency took place, by which the use and occupation of
the land was mor