SCIENCE 



FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 1887. 



In a communication made last year to the French Academy 

 of Medicine (Science, viii. p. 29), Dr. Worms gave the results of 

 his investigations concerning color-blindness among the personnel 

 of the Northern Railvvaj'. The figures which he gave showed so 

 small a percentage of color-blind employees as to warrant the con- 

 clusion that there is not much danger to be feared for railroad 

 travellers from these defects. More recently Dr. Worms has informed 

 Dr. Jeffries of Boston that this percentage was found among those . 

 employed after all had been examined on entering the service pre- 

 viously, — an explanation which gives an entirely different phase to 

 the matter. The statistics given by Dr. Worms, and to which we 

 have already referred, have been repeatedly quoted as an argument 

 by those who do not admit the prevalence of color-blindness among 

 railroad employees, and who therefore deem color-testing unneces- 

 sary. This use of the figures of Dr. Worms, which was justifiable in 

 view of the form in which they were originally given, should now be 

 abandoned in view of the later information received from him. 

 This subject of color-blindness among railroad employees is attract- 

 ing the attention of thoughtful men in all parts of the world. In 

 our own country, Massachusetts has a statute in relation to the 

 matter. This directs that no person shall be employed upon a 

 railroad in any capacity which requires him to distinguish form or 

 color signals unless he has been examined as to his sight by some 

 competent person employed and paid by the railroad company, and 

 has received a certificate. The phrase 'competent person' is a 

 very elastic one, and it is feared that the examiner is not in all 

 cases competent to make the tests. The Alabama legislature has 

 enacted a law which is pronounced to be the best yet devised to 

 overcome this evil. It provides for examinations conducted by ex- 

 perts, not according to rules of their own, but guided by standards 

 both of visual power and of color-sense which are fixed by law. 

 The railroad employees, under this law, are divided into two groups, 

 — one containing engineers, firemen, and brakemen, in whom a 

 high visual power and color-sense are demanded, and the other con- 

 taining gatemen, conductors, and others, to whom an inferior stand- 

 ard is applied. Connecticut at one time had a law upon this sub- 

 ject, but, after one year's trial, so many employees were found 

 deficient that in obedience to the demand of politicians it was 

 repealed. In one instance a board of experts found twenty-four 

 railroad employees to be color-blind. Their report of these facts 

 created such an outcry among their friends that another test was 

 demanded, with flags and lanterns and not with colored worsted as 

 in the former test. This resulted in proving that of the twenty- 

 four, twenty-one were wholly color-blind, and three color-blind in 

 part. Dr. Worms has recommended that exercises on the colors 

 should be carried out in the schools to reduce the percentage of 

 the color-blind. In commenting on this recommendation. Dr. 

 Jeffries says that no exercise with colors can change the congenital 

 color-blind,' who are four per cent of males everywhere. We hope 

 to see this subject agitated until the provisions which are now in force 

 in Alabama shall apply throughout the United States. It matters 

 little to a traveller that his life is secure in one State by reason of 

 stringent laws against color-blindness in railroad employees, if as 

 soon as he crosses the boundary line and passes into another State, 

 in which no such law exists, his life may be sacrificed by a color- 

 blind engineer who, mistaking the red light of danger for the white 

 light of safety, runs his train through an open drawbridge into the 

 river below. 



CO-OPERATION ON THE CONTINENT OF EUROPE. 



II. Germany. 

 The reply from Germany to Lord Roseberjr's circular letter (see 

 Science, No. 220, p. 395) is more systematic than that from France. 

 At the very outset the writer says that among the working-classes 

 of Germany co-operation has met with little favor : the well-to-do 

 classes, on the other hand, have applied its principles with consider- 

 able success in many directions. This reluctance on the part of the 

 working-people to co-operate is ascribed in a large measure to the 

 fact that as a class they are incapable of appreciating the value of 

 making provision for the future. They are not yet educated up to 

 the point of making industrial co-operation a real factor in the im- 

 provement of their condition. The tendency toward State socialism 

 in Germany is also an obstacle to co-operative development. Statis- 

 tics as to co-operation are not easily obtained in Germany. Both 

 the government and private societies are very reticent when asked 

 for information on commercial or industrial questions. The most 

 observant notice of co-operative movements, so far as they concern 

 the artisan and laboring-classes, is probably taken by the Central 

 Association for the Welfare of the Laboring-Classes, and its organ, 

 the Arbeiterfreund : while very valuable statistics are to be found 

 in the yearly report of the Central Union of German Co-operative 

 Societies, on all which the report from Germany is based. 



Associations belonging to this Central Union of German Co- 

 operative Societies are entitled ' Registered Associations,' and are 

 established under the Prussian law of March 27, 1867, and the 

 German law of July 9, 1868. These laws grant special privileges 

 to co-operative societies ; that is to say, associations not restricting 

 themselves to any fi.xed number of the members composing them, 

 and got up with a view of facilitating the obtaining of credit, the 

 earning of a livelihood, or prosecution of husbandry by their mem- 

 bers by means of joint management of their business. A great 

 number of associations have united themselves under the leadership 

 of a counsellor in the Central Union. 



Such enterprises are in Germany indissolubly connected with the 

 name of their great founder, Schulze-Delitzsch. The movement, 

 which he started and organized with extraordinary genius, is en- 

 tirely based on the principle of ' self-help.' " If a man cannot save 

 a few pence by denying himself a couple of glasses of beer a 

 week," said Schulze, " I can do nothing for him." The history of 

 Schulze's attempts are briefly as follows: In 1849 he founded at 

 Delitzsch, in Saxony, a ' sickness and death ' fund, which, for a 

 small monthly subscription, afforded help and medicine to the 

 poorer artisans and laborers in case of illness, continuous pecuniary 

 support in cases of incapacitation for work, and contribution 

 towards funeral expenses in cases of death. In 1850 Schulze started 

 a loan society, and, in re-organizing the same in 1 851, he introduced 

 the principle of unlimited liability, and completed his system, as far 

 as essentials were concerned, by forming capital for individual mem- 

 bers by the introduction of inalienable shares. The example thus 

 set was quickly followed, and many mutual help societies sprang up 

 in various parts of Germany. 



The principle of unlimited liability, on which Schulze most 

 strongly insisted as the keystone of his system, was also adopted by 

 Raiffeisen, who founded similar societies, chiefly in agricultural 

 districts. The double effect seems to have been to raise the credit 

 of co-operative societies, and to confine them to persons of small 

 means, persons of larger fortune being shy of risking their whole 

 property. 



As mentioned above, the societies on the Schulze-Delitzsch plan 

 have been regularly organized into an association, the principal ob- 

 jects of which were briefly described by him in the report of 1874 

 as being the following : " The General Union of the German In- 

 dustrial and Economical Co-operative Societies, founded on the 

 principle of self-help, the affairs of which are at present managed 



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