Where the workman is injured, but not killed, his weekly pay ment during total incapacity is a sum equal to 5o% of his aver age weekly earnings but not exceeding 3os. So that compensation may not be wholly inadequate for the necessaries of life, provi sion is made by which workmen earning less than 5os. a week re ceive compensation in excess of 5o% of earnings. Thus a work man whose earnings were 3os. a week would receive as compensa tion for total incapacity 20S. a week, and a workman earning only 20S. a week would get compensation amounting to as much as 75% of his weekly earnings. If the injury leaves him not totally but only partially incapacitated, so that a certain degree of work ing capacity exists, his compensation will be on a scale designed to give him one-half the difference between his earnings before and after the accident, special consideration being shown to workmen on the lower scales of wages.
Special provision is made for the case of minors who may meet with injury at their work when receiving only a low rate of wages, which rate, however, would normally be substantially in creased when they become fully skilled workmen. Seeing that compensation is based on the wage rate during the time immedi ately preceding the accident, it would manifestly be unjust that compensation based on an apprentice's wages should continue without possibility of increase after the time when, but for the accident, he would be qualified for an adult workman's wages.
Compensation may be reviewed, and diminished or increased, according as the workman's condition gets better or worse. Most commonly such a review takes place when the workman, hitherto totally incapacitated, recovers part but not the whole of his earning capacity.
The authors of the original Act expected that disputed cases would in general be settled by private arbitration without resort to the courts. In fact, however, workmen's compensation cases are, with very few exceptions, dealt with by the county courts.
An intermediate position is occupied by the Australian States (with the exception of Queensland) and is common in the United States of America. There State intervention in workmen's com pensation matters is directed to the compulsory insurance of workmen's compensation risk coupled, in the case of Victoria and New South Wales and sometimes in the United States, with the setting up of a State accident insurance office with which, however, private insurance enterprise is allowed to compete. In New Zea land, without the incentive of compulsory insurance, the accident branch of the Government insurance department provides an al ternative to private insurance companies.
trial accidents is one part of a code of social insurance of which sickness insurance, and invalidity, old age pensions, and widows' and orphans' pensions insurance are other branches. In Great Brit ain the latter forms of social insurance are contained in separate statutes and are administered by a distinct department.
The existing German law relating to accident insurance is con tained in Part iii. of the Social Insurance Code of 1911 as re vised in 1924, but its origin goes back to the period 1883 to 1889 when, by the triple scheme of social insurance then established in Germany, it became compulsory not only to insure, but to be a member of an association with liability to support a particular fund. Germany was indeed the first country to admit this liability.
Germany imposes the liability not on individual employers but on groups of employers organized in mutual trade associations. The industries broadly include the manufacturing and mining in dustries, the building trades, commercial undertakings and trans port. Agriculture and navigation by sea constitute separate parts of the code. The financial liabilities of each association are de termined annually and the levy on members necessary to cover compensation, reserves and administration expenses is based on the wage roll, modified by the risk as manifested by the accident rates for the particular industry or occupation. Compensation is paid through the post office. The workers contribute in some de gree in that in respect of accidents causing temporary incapacity for work for a period not longer than 13 weeks, the case is dealt with by the sickness insurance organization and benefit paid by the sickness insurance fund to which employers and employed con tribute in proportions of one-third and two-thirds. Only from the 14th week does the accident insurance organization take over the case. Compensation for industrial accidents provides an incentive to employers to avoid conditions likely to result in accidents and illness. The German code requires the employers' accident associa tions to issue regulations concerning the arrangements for the pre vention of accidents and the rules of conduct to be observed by the workers. (C. M. KN.) In comparison with Europe, workmen's compensation came late in the United States. To be sure, the common law rules of em ployers' liability had scarcely been laid down by the courts before attempts to modify them by legislation began in certain American States. The first such statute was passed in Georgia in 1855, and by 1910 practically every State had passed some sort of employers' liability statute. But these laws as interpreted by the courts merely mitigated the harshness of the common law rules, fre quently in some rather minor respect. Moreover, many of them applied only to railway accidents in which the fellow servant rule operated with especial cruelty. In general the essential liability basis of the worker's right to recover remained unchanged. The first act substituting compensation for liability as its basic princi ple was enacted in Maryland in 1902 ; another (limited to coal mining) in Montana in 1909. Both these acts were held unconsti tutional by State courts. The first permanent compensation law was passed by Congress in 1908, but it covered only certain classes of Government employees.