810 THE INDUSTRIAL GROUP 



ance. This can be provided by government or by private individ- 

 uals. In the United States great private corporations are doing 

 something in this direction. There are obvious limitations to what 

 can be accomplished by private effort. A great proportion of the 

 wage-earners must always be employed by private individuals or by 

 firms and corporations not sufficiently powerful and stable to furnish 

 satisfactory insurance. Apart from this, there arises the question, 

 To what extent may a really desirable freedom of movement be 

 impeded if employment and insurance are furnished by the same 

 persons? 



I think it is now generally conceded that the risks of industry 

 should be borne as a part of the cost of production, and this must be 

 secured by general measures. England has, perhaps, gone as far as 

 possible through employers' liability. The investigations of the 

 Industrial Commission of the United States show that, to a very 

 great extent, the blame for accidents cannot be laid either on the 

 employer or on the employee, as accidents are a natural outcome of 

 production. In many cases there is blame, especially when the best 

 safety appliances are not provided, but the establishment of blame 

 does not bring with it a remedy for the economic incapacity of the 

 individual wage-earner. Much governmental activity in the way of 

 supervision is required to make the industry bear the burden of the 

 accidents and contingencies which befall the workers and to make 

 indemnity certain. 



The question of pensions is closely connected with that of insur- 

 ance. When old age is reached we have also reached an appropriate 

 period of rest. Competition has done its work and society has no 

 further economic services to expect from the individual. The 

 problem is to provide for those who have reached old age without 

 weakening the springs of right economic activity in others. 



Returning once more to competition, the trite phrase, a high 

 ethical level of competition, suggests a large number of problems and 

 appropriate methods for their solution. Society determines what we 

 may call the rules of the game and does so in accordance with its 

 ideals, which gradually become clearer as social self -consciousness 

 becomes more pronounced. When we determine that no child under 

 fourteen shall be employed in a manufacturing establishment we do 

 not lessen competition, but we simply determine one of its conditions. 

 We make one of the rules of the game. That is what we do in all 

 our labor laws, in our pure-food laws, etc. 



This suggests in the United States the subject of interstate com- 

 petition and, for the world as a whole, the subject of international 

 competition and its bearing upon the general level of competition. 

 Just as we cannot in local matters rely upon voluntary effort, because 

 we have the problem of the twentieth man who, through the force of 



