insurancp: against thk accidents of AGRTcri/rnRAi. i,abour ig 



§ I. ThU LAW NOW IN FORCE 

 AS TO ACCIDENTS ATTENDANT ON EMPLOYMENT. 



The problem of insurance against the accidents of agricultural labour 

 had, as has been said, already been faced and partly solved by the law we 

 have mentioned of 31 January 1904, No. 51, as to the accidents of industry, 

 which law constituted the first step taken in this sphere. Its application 

 is indeed limited to such agricultural labour as, by reason of its nature, of 

 its nature together with the fact that it requires the employment of more 

 than five workmen, or the circumstance that machinery is used to perform 

 it, involves serious danger. On this principle the law imposes the obliga- 

 tion of insuring agricultural labourers in the following circumstances : 



a) if more than five of them are employed on works of hydraulics, 

 on works involved by the systematization of avalanches and mountain- 

 basins, on woodcutting and clearing and the transport of timber to deposi- 

 tories on the banks of rivers and torrents or beside cart roads, and on float- 

 ing timber from these depositories on rivers and torrents (art. i, no. 2) ; 



b) if more than five of them are employed on the industrial work of 

 olive-presses, cellars, vintners' establishments and similar labour, in which 

 machinery not directly set in motion by the workman using it is employed 

 (art. I, no. 3) ; 



c) if any number of them work on macliines worked by mechanical 

 power or the motors of these, such machines having an agricultural use 

 (art. I, no 4) ; 



d) if they work for the anti-hail guns or other anti-hail apparatus 

 (art. I, no. 5). 



It is seen therefore that the majority of agricultural labourers have hi- 

 therto remained outside the law's gurdianship. The fact that the use of 

 agricultural machinery is still comparatively limited, and the circumstance 

 that in the open-air work, which is that usually necessitated by agricul- 

 ture, the use of machinery not moved by mechanical power does not, by 

 the terms of the law, imply the compulsion to insure, have had the conse- 

 quence that while labourers employed on agriculture are much more nu- 

 merous than those employed on industry, far fewer of the former than of 

 the latter come within the law's sphere, so that " in regard to the mass of 

 workpeople to be safeguarded, the extension of the compulsion to insure 

 to work executed without using machinery is more imperative in the case 

 of agriculture than in that of manufacturing industry ". 



We should add that the theory, so often given out, that not only is 

 agriculture less dangerous than industry, but that the number of agricultural 

 is so inferior to the number of industrial accidents that to provide insurance 

 against the former is not a matter of urgency, is recognized today to be 

 unfounded. Apart from the continuous increase of machinery on farms, 

 which noticeably increases the number of accidents, many accidents aie 

 met with which aie due to the specific risks of agriculture. The govern- 



