ms, and by about half a
dozen states, including Kansas, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and New York,
all of which have passed Workmen's Compensation Acts. Such an act,
shifting the responsibility for the risks which are incident to the
trade in organized industry from the individual to the organization, the
New York Court of Appeals declares no state in the Union has authority
to enact, because the Constitution of the United States forbids its
enactment. The Court recognizes the need for a change in the Law. "We
desire," says the Court, "to present no purely technical or
hypercritical obstacles to any plan for the beneficent reformation of a
branch of our jurisprudence in which, it may be conceded, reform is a
consummation devoutly to be wished." It presents forcibly,
appreciatively, and apparently with entire approbation, the arguments
which have brought about this reform in other lands: "There can be no
doubt as to the theory of this law. It is based upon the proposition
that the inherent risks of an employment should, in justice, be placed
upon the shoulders of the employer, who can protect himself against loss
by insurance, and by such an addition to the price of his wares as to
cast the burden ultimately upon the consumer; that indemnity to an
injured employee should be as much a charge upon the business as the
cost of replacing or repairing disabled or defective machinery,
appliances, or tools; that under our present system the loss falls
immediately upon the employee, who is almost invariably unable to bear
it, and ultimately upon the community, which is taxed for the support of
the indigent; and that our present system is uncertain, unscientific,
and wasteful, and fosters a spirit of antagonism between employer and
employee which it is for the interest of the state to remedy."

To these considerations the Court suggests no reply, and upon them it
offers no criticism. On the contrary, it in terms concedes "the strength
of this appeal to recognized and widely prevalent sentiment." It
declares that "no word of praise could overstate the industry and
Intelligence of the Commission" which prepared the New York law, and it
apparently agrees with the conclusion of the Commission, based on "a
most voluminous array of statistical tables, extracts from the works of
philosophical writers, and the industrial laws of many countries"--the
conclusion that "our own system of dealing with industrial accidents is
economically, morall