f them, or they
are wasted in litigation expense (the Indiana Bar Association reported
this year that only about thirty per cent. of the damages actually
recovered of the employer reaches the party injured); while on the
other hand the master can never know for how much he is going to be
liable, and in the rare cases which get to a jury they are apt to find
an excessive verdict. It is the custom with most gentlemen to pay a
reasonable allowance to any servant injured while in their employ,
unless directly disobedient of orders. There is no practical reason
why this moral obligation should not be embodied in a statute and
extended to everybody. The scale of damages should of course be put so
low as not to encourage persons to expose themselves, still less their
own children, to injury in the hope of getting monetary compensation.
But although in India we are told the natives throw themselves under
the wheels of automobiles, it is not probable that in American
civilization there would be serious abuse of the law in this
particular. Five thousand dollars, for instance, for loss of life or
limb or eye, with a scale going down, as does the German law, to a
mere compensation for time lost and medical attendance in ordinary
injuries, would be sufficient in equity and would surely not encourage
persons voluntarily to maim themselves.

The next great line of legislation concerns the mode of payment of
wages. The _amount_, as has been said, is never regulated; but it has
been customary for nearly a century for the law to require payment
in cash, or at least that it be not compulsorily made in goods or
supplies, or still worse in store orders. This line of legislation is
commonly known as the anti-truck laws and exists in most States, but
has been strenuously opposed in the South and Southwest as interfering
with the liberty of contract, so that in those more conservative
States the courts have very often nullified such legislation. It may
be summarized as follows:

(1) Weekly or time payment laws. These exist in more than half the
States, and are always constitutional as to corporations, but are
possibly unconstitutional in all States except Massachusetts when
applied to private employers.

(2) Cash-payment laws, requiring payments to be made in actual money.
These statutes are commonly combined with those last mentioned and are
subject to the same constitutional objections. As a part of them,
or in connection with them, we w