7179 
 
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GIFT 
 
 The Practical Results of 
 
 Workingmen's Insurance 
 
 in Germany 
 
 BY 
 
 DR. FERDINAND FRIEDENSBURG 
 
 PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE 
 IN THE 
 
 Imperial Insurance Office (Retired) of Germany 
 
 Translated from the German by 
 
 LOUIS H. GRAY, Ph.D, 
 
 Compliments of 
 
 The Workmen's Compensation Service 
 
 and Information Bureau 
 1 Liberty Street, New York City 
 
The Practical Results of 
 Workingmen's Insurance 
 in Germany 
 
 BY 
 
 DR. FERDINAND FRIEDENSBURG 
 
 PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE 
 
 IN THE 
 
 Imperial Insurance Office (Retired) of Germany 
 
 Translated from the German by 
 
 LOUIS H. GRAY, PH.D. 
 
 October, Nineteen Hundred Eleven 
 
NOTE 
 
 MUCH has been written in praise of Germany's system of com- 
 pensating workmen for accidents. The idea has generally been 
 given that the working of the system was well nigh faultless, and 
 that no evils had crept in to offset ever so slightly the benefits. 
 
 But, while wishing that Germany had indeed solved the prob- 
 lem, many have had a suspicion that larger claims were made for 
 the system than were warranted. That this suspicion was well- 
 founded is now proven by the publication by Dr. Ferdinand 
 Friedensburg, who recently retired from the post of President 
 of the Senate of the Imperial Insurance Office, after a service of 
 over twenty years, of an article bearing the title Die Praxis der 
 deutschen Arbeiterversicherung ("The Practical Results of Work- 
 ingmen's Insurance in Germany"), and who criticizes the system 
 severely in certain respects. 
 
 References to this article from The New York Times and The 
 Spectator (London) are presented herewith. 
 
 In offering these, it is not intended to take a position antago- 
 nistic to workmen's compensation for accidents. We are heartily 
 in favor of workmen's compensation. All that we mean to do is 
 to point out the necessity of care, in adopting a system of work- 
 men's compensation, that the workmen are not pauperized or 
 exposed to the temptation to make fraudulent claims. 
 
 THE WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION SERVICE 
 
 AND INFORMATION BUREAU. 
 October 19, 1911. 
 
 236774 
 
AUTHOR'S PREFACE 
 
 THE great demand for my monograph on "The Practical Re- 
 sults of Workingmen's Insurance in Germany," which first 
 appeared in the Zeitschrift fur Politik (Vol. IV, 1911, Parts 
 2-3), has led the publishers to issue a separate edition of it, thus 
 affording me a welcome opportunity to broaden and to deepen my 
 article in several places. This does not imply that I was obliged 
 to cancel or to modify any of my statements, but the numerous 
 criticisms with which I have been favored, both in printed, written, 
 and verbal form, have shown me that here and there I was not 
 sufficiently explicit, and was, accordingly, misunderstood; while 
 I myself have judged other passages to need improvement in the 
 new form which every work assumes in print, even for an experi- 
 enced author. A special advantage was that, now for the first 
 time, I could avail myself of the report, as comprehensive as it is 
 profound, published by the Imperial Insurance Office in the third 
 volume of its "Handbook" (the third edition of which has just ap- 
 peared) under the title Geschichte und Wirkungskreis des Reichs- 
 Versicherungsamts. I emphasize this fact with the greater pleas- 
 ure since it renders nugatory the allegation that my monograph 
 was written to attack or to weaken this most magnificent work. 
 On the contrary, I am happy to find that this report itself recog- 
 nizes that a large portion of my strictures are justified, and that 
 it acknowledges the existence of many of the abuses of which I 
 have complained. For this reason the points in which I agree 
 with the Office now receive a special stress. 
 
 Apart from this official report, I have not, I regret to say, 
 been able to glean much supplementary material from the criti- 
 cisms of my article which have thus far been published. As 
 to the foul invectives which have appeared in the Social Demo- 
 cratic , press, I can not lower myself so far as to consider them, 
 excepting as a welcome proof of the entire justice and the solid 
 foundation of my charges. 
 
REVIEW OF DR. FRIEDENSBURG'S BROCHURE IN 
 "THE NEW YORK TIMES." 
 
 have heard much of the beneficent working of the German 
 laws for the insurance of working people from the cost of accident 
 and illness. In theory it is a sound system, since it aims at the 
 governmental regulation and protection of the insured from funds 
 distributed according to accepted principles of insurance. It is 
 thirty years since the system was established. A correspondent 
 of The Spectator of London summarizes an important document 
 throwing a good deal of light on the actual operation of the sys- 
 tem. This is an article in the Zeitschrift fur Politik, by Herr 
 Ferdinand Friedensburg, who recently retired from the post of 
 President of the Senate of the Imperial Insurance Office, after a 
 service of twenty years. It is practically a series of charges of 
 which these three are the most significant : 
 
 "The first is that the State insurance, specially designed to replace 
 pauperism and charity, is itself merely pauperism under another form. 
 The second charge is that it has fostered to an incredible extent the 
 German evil of bureaucratic formalism. The third and the worst charge 
 is that it has become a hotbed of fraud, and therefore a spreader of 
 demoralizing practices and ways of thought. 
 
 "As to the first charge, he alleges that almost from the begin- 
 ning it was found difficult to secure fair and honest adjudication 
 of claims. The principle of giving the benefit of doubt to the 
 claimant came into early operation, and the claims, under its 
 insidious influence, multiplied in number and became less and less 
 valid. 'The workmen began to come as beggars asking and ex- 
 pecting the insurance laws to be stretched in their favor/ The 
 expenses of the system continued to grow as the force required 
 increased. 
 
 "The number of officials in the Imperial Insurance Office has multi- 
 plied in tune with the ever-waxing burden of work, so that in the 
 estimate year 1909-10 it had risen to sixty-three permanent members, 
 in addition to the President, the two Directors, and ten assistants; 
 while the number of judicial assessors has increased from four to no 
 less than ninety-nine. In the provinces the best voluntary social workers 
 have withdrawn in disgust, leaving the administration of the industrial 
 insurance funds to become more and more professional and bureaucratic. 
 
 "Not only has the force increased, but under the pressure of 
 the claimants it has become inefficient and wasteful, so that the 
 
general costs, per insured, have increased 50 per cent, since Herr 
 Friedensburg has been in the service, while the work of inspec- 
 tion and regulation undertaken by the Government has steadily 
 deteriorated. 
 
 "Some of the incidents related by Herr Friedensburg will remind 
 American readers of the history of our Pension Office and pen- 
 sion laws. New classes of 'parasitic lawyers' have sprung into 
 activity, inventing and pressing claims, and neighborhood doc- 
 tors, whose scruples will not permit them to sustain such claims, 
 are boycotted and threatened with ruin. The ingenuity of the 
 claims is often not so remarkable as their impudence. Agricul- 
 tural laborers are especially kindly regarded. To get admitted 
 to that class, one man claimed that he was chopping wood to heat 
 fodder for cattle when his accident occurred. Another put in a 
 claim even more remote and curious. He was by calling a coach- 
 man, and he alleged that at the time of his accident he was driv- 
 ing to church, 'to pray for rain for the crops/ If these ridiculous 
 and false claims were simply made, exposed, passed on, and de- 
 nied, the expense to the State would be extravagant. But a suffi- 
 ciently large percentage of them are admitted and paid to make 
 a most mischievous effect on the general morality. We know by 
 sad experience how corrupting our pension system has become. 
 The cause and principle of corruption in the German insurance 
 system are essentially the same, and the field of operation is far 
 wider as well as more permanent." The New York Times, July 
 9, 1911. 
 
REVIEW OF DR. FRIEDENSBURG'S BROCHURE IN 
 "THE SPECTATOR" (LONDON). 
 
 "THIS remarkable brochure, which is a reprint of an essay from 
 the last number of the Zeitschrift fur Politik, was described briefly 
 in a letter in The Spectator of June I7th ; but both for its intrinsic 
 interest as an expert's view of German social legislation and for 
 its bearing upon British legislative proposals it deserves fuller 
 treatment. The purpose of Privy Councillor Friedensburg is to 
 expose the abuses of German State insurance as it has miscarried 
 in practice, and not at all to express any opinion on its underlying 
 principles. His indictment deals with a great many evils, and is 
 extremely complicated and technical ; but he explains at the begin- 
 ning that all the evils arise from the one fact that the various 
 State insurance systems have been administered in a spirit of 
 charity which is flatly opposed to the intent of the original pro- 
 jectors. 'The legal character of the whole of our working-class 
 insurance,' he says, 'has not been realized as a living fact; and 
 that is the root of the whole evil/ By 'legal character' he means 
 that the relations between workmen claimants on the one hand 
 and the pension funds on the other were framed according to 
 juristic conceptions. State employers and workingmen were all 
 partners in a common enterprise, and their various rights and 
 obligations were rigidly regulated. This intention was accentu- 
 ated by the fact that the procedure established for settling pension 
 and compensation disputes was borrowed in the main from the 
 civil code. The conception of beneficence was explicitly ex- 
 cluded. The insured workingman was given specific rights, 
 which he could enforce in the courts, but he could not claim more. 
 If he did make such a claim the pension arbitrators and judges 
 could no more allow it out of a spirit of indulgence than a judge 
 in an ordinary civil court could decide against the evidence merely 
 because the party in the wrong appealed to him for sympathy. 
 
 "That theory, says Dr. Friedensburg, has been ignored in prac- 
 tice. Charity crept in and corrupted the system at the beginning. 
 The insurance judicature held that 'in granting pensions there is 
 needed only a special, less convincing kind of proof.' Considera- 
 tions, 'proper in a poor-law administrator but not in a judge/ 
 governed their decisions. The State further made the mistake 
 of propagandizing in a costly way for the new institution. 'With 
 
full hands enormous sums were scattered in order to familiarize 
 the people with the pension idea.' The insurance judges, includ- 
 ing the supreme Imperial Insurance Office, began by treating 
 the workmen, not as litigants to be handled impartially, but 'as 
 ill-reared, fractious children, who could easiest be reformed 
 through kindness/ 
 
 " 'The workmen very soon got accustomed to bringing their com- 
 plaints, doubts, and claims of all natures whatsoever to the Imperial 
 Insurance Office, often without appealing to any intermediate instance. 
 The number of these appeals grew from 304 in 1887 to 3,303 in 1909. 
 . . . . Many documents teemed with insults, threats to appeal to 
 
 the Emperor, to Bebel, to the Vorwdrts In this wise there 
 
 develops an absolutely monstrous quantity of clerical work (geradezu 
 ungeheuerliche Vielschreiberei) .' 
 
 "Of late years the craze for litigation over Pension and Com- 
 pensation matters has become extraordinary : 
 
 " 'This easily explains why in 1909, out of 422,076 decisions by the 
 industrial unions, 76,352, that is, 18.9 per cent, have been appealed 
 against; that of the roughly 100,000 arbitration judgments 22,794, that 
 is, 27.74 per cent., were fought further. The figures for Invalidity and 
 Old Age are not much better.' 
 
 "The Imperial Insurance Office, which is intended to handle 
 questions of law, is overburdened with frivolous and unfounded 
 claims. The problem of the exact amount of compensation 'for 
 a twisted thumb* is fought until it reaches this highest Court : 
 
 " 'No less than 77.7 of the appeals to the highest instance in 1909 
 were on the question of the exact amount of a claimant's loss of earning 
 power How greatly the claims for trifling injuries have in- 
 creased is shown by the fact that from 1888 to 1908, despite the increase 
 of the total compensation paid from 5,900,000 marks to 155,100,000 marks, 
 the average compensation per accident fell from 232.19 marks to 155.53 
 
 marks There are men, particularly among the wood-workers, 
 
 who for three or four different injuries of a kind very common in 
 their occupation draw part pensions of 305., 403., or more, and yet are 
 
 earning their full wages It is no wonder that the number of 
 
 accidents grows with monstrous speed. In 1886 100,159 accidents were 
 reported, and 10,540 compensated; in 1908 the figures were respectively 
 662,321 and 142,965.' 
 
 "This is due, in part, to the leverage which an 'accident' gives 
 to a chronically sick man to get permanent support. 'Often an 
 accident is actually sought for and arranged.' The 'victim' swears 
 that his old illness is the result of the 'accident' and gets conse- 
 quential help. Whole pages of Privy Councillor Friedensburg's 
 book deal with similar frauds. 'It is a common experience,' he 
 
 10 
 
says, 'to find workmen doing everything possible to foster their 
 illnesses' : 
 
 " The doctor, usually regarded as the sick man's best friend, becomes 
 his worst enemy. The most embittered quarrels rage in the sanatoria, and 
 complaints and grumbling over spoiled food and bad treatment appear, 
 of course anonymously, in the form of newspaper articles/ 
 
 "This last is a characteristic feature of all pauperizing enter- 
 prises. But at heart, says Dr. Friedensburg, workmen prefer 
 the hospitals and sanatoria to their own homes, 'and no longer 
 feel well at home, but continue to hanker after the flesh pots of 
 Egypt/ The laxity which has neutralized the benefits of State 
 insurance, however, is not confined to the workman and to the 
 special insurance authorities. The employers and the minor local 
 officials have fallen into the same pit. The legal and ethical con- 
 ceptions of insurance, as an institution in which two sides are 
 materially interested, required that employees should de facto pay 
 their shares of the premiums as prescribed by the law. That was 
 essential to the workingman's self-respect. It has not been 
 realized. In domestic service the employer out of a sense of 
 charity habitually pays both halves of the premium ; and many 
 employers of industrial labor, especially in the country, do the 
 same. The local non-pension authorities are similarly demoral- 
 ized; and they oppose the basic idea that State insurance is a 
 matter of legal right and not of charity or of class exploitation : 
 
 " 'The communal chiefs (Amtsvorsteherri) act entirely under the 
 belief that they ought to help their local residents. They get this belief 
 as a result of the communis opinio that the insurance funds have more 
 money than they know what to do with ; and this idea strikingly deadens 
 the conception of legality and love for the truth.' 
 
 "Naturally the universal laxity, the payment of unjustified 
 claims, and the extravagance practised in equipping hospitals and 
 sanatoria impair the integrity of the insurance funds. Employers 
 do all that is possible to escape their burdens, which they feel to 
 be unjust, and in vain enormous sums are annually exacted from 
 them in fines. The higher insurance authorities are repeatedly 
 being called upon to remedy the evils due to such causes : 
 
 " 'Only those who have taken part in these quarrels I might call 
 them battles have any idea of their depressing effect and their costliness. 
 This alone makes it understandable why industrial unions and insurance 
 institutions, in particular those at work among the agricultural population, 
 have been repeatedly on the brink of bankruptcy. To effect any improve- 
 ment in their position there are needed month-long tours both of the 
 officials of the organizations themselves and of the officials of the Im- 
 perial Insurance Office.' 
 
 II 
 
"Dr. Friedensburg says that the excessive cost of the insurance 
 system, which is one result of the degradation of the system into 
 charity, is complained of by employers ; and that State insurance, 
 therefore, reacts injuriously upon the Empire's industry: 
 
 " ^Unluckily, it is just the middle and petty employers who feel as 
 most oppressive the percentage increase of their working expenses caused 
 by the payments they must make to the various systems of insurance. 
 As a result of the cost of insurance which has gradually become mon- 
 strous it amounts to 2,000,000 marks a day German industry is put 
 at a disadvantage and is hampered to the extreme in its competition 
 with foreigners. The institution is held first of all responsible for the 
 marked rise in prices, which is felt as oppressive by all classes of the 
 population/ 
 
 "It is impossible here to deal with the evidence given by Dr. 
 Friedensburg of wholesale dishonesty and of the painful tolerance 
 shown by the public to frauds against the Pension Funds ; that is, 
 against the State, the employer, and the workman as the three 
 contributories. Numerous men, he says, live by travelling about 
 the Empire fabricating pension and compensation claims for 
 others. An official gives false evidence for a claimant on condi- 
 tion that the claimant shares the proceeds : he is sentenced only 
 for 'negligent perjury/ No serious attempt is made to suppress 
 insurance frauds by penal methods, because 'if all the untruthful 
 statements made in pension matters were criminally brought be- 
 fore the Courts, the number of our State procurators and criminal 
 judges would have to be doubled and trebled/ 
 
 "The original provision that claims could be fought cost-free 
 was so abused by the making of baseless claims that it had to be 
 abolished by amendment in 1900. The amendment allows the 
 Courts to impose costs on a litigant who obstinately persists in 
 hopeless appeals. But the Courts, under the ban of 'charity/ 
 interpret this amendment by imposing costs upon the Pension 
 Funds when these are the losers, but by allowing costs to 
 litigious workmen. The result is that the latter 
 
 'come with absolutely hopeless claims across the whole of Germany to 
 Berlin: their expenses to Berlin are borrowed, but the cost of sending 
 them home has to be recovered from the Poor Law administration, 
 after infinite letter-writing, explanations, and misunderstandings/ 
 
 "It is curious, in view of the careless statements which are 
 habitually made in England, to find the 'Poor Law administration* 
 playing this important role. But Dr. Friedensburg shows that 
 neither of the two evils against which State insurance was directed 
 has been exorcised. Class opposition (i. e., Socialism) has not 
 
 12 
 
been weakened, nor has pauperism been diminished. In February, 
 1910, the Imperial Secretary of State for the Interior admitted 
 the first. As for the promise to kill pauperism, 'it is remarkable/ 
 says Dr. Friedensburg, 'how little of that promise is heard to-day.' 
 He refers to Herr Zahn's recent study intended to prove the con- 
 trary, but quotes Herr Zahn's admission : 'In reality the poor ex- 
 penditure, both as regards the number of beneficiaries and as 
 regards the number of individual allowances, has almost every- 
 where increased.' 
 
 "The system, concludes Dr. Friedensburg, is a circulus vitiosus. 
 Charity, pauperism, and fraud are the segments of the circle ; and 
 'to those who do not see in their countrymen a mere mass it is a 
 deeply painful experience that the insurance has directly led to 
 a general alienation and demoralization.' 
 
 "Such is the view of Germany's social legislation, as seen by 
 a high official who has been administering it for twenty years. 
 As to how far it can be taken as a final word, and a sufficient 
 demonstration of the worthlessness of the system, the writer re- 
 serves his opinion. But it is at least a remarkable exposure of the 
 delusion, common in England, that the German system is so 
 admittedly and unqualifiedly a success that it is outside the sphere 
 of native criticism." The Spectator (London), July I, 1911. 
 
THE PRACTICAL RESULTS OF WORKINGMEN'S 
 INSURANCE IN GERMANY 
 
 BY DR. FERDINAND FRIEDENSBURG 
 President of the Senate in the Imperial Insurance Office (Retired) 
 
 Translated from the German by Louis H. GRAY, PH.D. 
 
 Amplified Reprint from the Zeitschrift fur Politik, 
 
 Vol. IV, Parts 2-3 
 
 THE Imperial Message of November 17, 1881, constitutes not 
 only the Magna Charta of labor legislation, but also the scheme 
 for its realization ; and when it is combined with the data afforded 
 by the various laws and with the sessions of the Reichstag, it ad- 
 mits of not the slightest doubt as to the foundation on which 
 workingmen's insurance was intended to be constructed. The 
 object was to afford "Government protection" to workingmen 
 who, through sickness, accidents incurred in their occupations, 
 invalidism, or old age, were unable to gain a livelihood, and also 
 to their dependents and survivors; and this was to be accom- 
 plished "by a combination of the material forces of the life of the 
 people under the form of corporate associations with Govern- 
 ment guarantee." Strictly speaking, the Message created no 
 new principles of law. Corporations had always existed for the 
 promotion of the best interests of their own members or of others, 
 and, like all other legal persons, had enjoyed Government guar- 
 antee, sometimes, it may be, in greater measure than was alto- 
 gether agreeable when Government guarantee became Govern- 
 ment supervision. Neither was the concept, nor even the word 
 "protection" new. The common law of Prussia had already 
 spoken of the special "protection" which the State exercises over 
 such persons as are unable to provide for themselves ; the Servant 
 Regulation Act of 1810 compels masters, under certain circum- 
 stances, to "protect" sick servants ; similar provisions are made by 
 the laws of 1842 and 1855 for the care of the poor; and the 
 Pensions Regulation for Civil Service Employees, promulgated 
 in 1842 and corresponding almost word for word with the Im- 
 perial Message of 1881, recognizes the regulation and the protec- 
 tion of the conditions of Government employees as a most impor- 
 tant matter for the State to supervise. The term "support," 
 which is preferred by the Sickness Insurance Law and which is 
 
 15 
 
also employed by the common law, was used in the Imperial 
 Law of June 6, 1870, referring to the place of residence of those 
 so "supported." It occurs likewise in the Imperial Trade Regu- 
 lation, and it is significant that the Marine Accident Insurance 
 Law designates as "protection" those services to which seamen, 
 in case of sickness, are entitled in accordance with the Commer- 
 cial Code and the Mariners' Regulations. The only thing that 
 was essentially new, from a legal point of view, in the Imperial 
 Message of 1881 was that it united and amalgamated these vari- 
 ous concepts and components. Under no circumstances could 
 there be any doubt that the German Empire here desired to 
 establish an actual legal institution, and not a mere government 
 or administrative regulation; and it was equally obvious that 
 this creation was to come within the domain of private law in 
 those respects which were most essential to those who were thus 
 insured. The Empire took upon itself obligations which found 
 their counterparts in the rights of the insured, and it created for 
 itself rights to which the obligations of the party of the second 
 part corresponded. 
 
 This general character of the Imperial Message received 
 sharper expression in numberless details. On the one hand, those 
 who were insured shared in the burdens and the expenses of the 
 insurance, and they likewise shared in the management; while 
 the insurance carriers were empowered to impose penalties not 
 only upon other insurance carriers, but also upon those whom 
 they insured. On the other hand, many individual requirements 
 of ordinary civil law were accepted, such as forms of procedure, 
 time limitations, exclusion of claims on account of non-use, and 
 the like. That there might be absolutely no doubt as to the rights 
 of the insured under this insurance, not only did he possess the 
 power to prosecute with all customary legal means of redress, but 
 a strict line of demarcation was also expressly drawn between 
 this form of insurance and poor relief; for it was enacted that 
 enjoyment of the advantages arising from insurance should not, 
 as was the case in application for poor relief, carry with it diminu- 
 tion of civil rights. The Imperial Insurance Office subsequently 
 made an additional decision by which it recognized the claim of 
 the insured to be inheritable, and placed such claim, in this 
 respect likewise, on the same basis as a private right. 
 
 With marvelous rapidity all these new laws became estab- 
 lished despite their truly enormous realm of activity which, in 
 one way or another, affected the entire nation, despite the diffi- 
 
 16 
 
culty of the subject-matter of the laws themselves, and despite 
 the innovations arising from a large number of special require- 
 ments. Theorizers were still wrangling over the legal nature of 
 the enactments, not only as a whole, but even in regard to their 
 component parts; and the laws were already in operation as 
 though things had never been otherwise! Those were noble and 
 instructive days. With magnificent zeal, inspired alike by theo- 
 retical interest and warm enthusiasm, every nerve was strained 
 to perform the task set by the Imperial Message, and to translate 
 the thought of protection into act. The legislator certainly did 
 not fail to grant the insured all legal favor. Wherever possible, 
 all obstacles to the realization of their claims were obviated ; they 
 were freed from all so-called legal formalities. In a word, what- 
 ever could be done was done to aid the spirit of the law to tri- 
 umph everywhere and to help the insured, under all conditions, 
 to secure the support that was due him. The insurance organs 
 both those of the State and those of the insurance carriers did 
 even more. Free from all bureaucracy and red tape, surrendering 
 the most customary and most common formalities, the claimants 
 for pensions, who at first were naturally unskilled and ignorant 
 in this respect, were assisted to validate their rights ; they were 
 taught unwearyingly, while judge and advocate were combined in 
 one person. 
 
 In the very first statistical year of accident insurance (1886) 
 15,863 pensions, amounting to 1,547,593 marks, were granted, 
 this including indemnification for the most insignificant injuries 
 resulting in a loss of 3 or 5 per cent, of earning capacity. Invalid 
 insurance, as soon as it went into effect, paid old-age pensions 
 to some 130,000 persons who had worked within the three years 
 previous a gift pure and simple. Enormous sums were scat- 
 tered with generous hands to familiarize the people with the idea 
 of insurance ; and in investigating the legality of claims for insur- 
 ance magnanimity was carried to such an extent that, on the 
 analogy of the principle in dubio pro reo, pension claims were 
 recognized in cases of doubt, simply to avoid embittering quarrels 
 which it had been one of the legislator's most cherished aims 
 to avoid. 
 
 This fine zeal, which saw in workingmen's insurance the first 
 ripe fruit on the tree of the social justice of the future, can be 
 the object neither of reproach nor of scorn. The unselfish 
 endeavor to realize the intentions of the law is in itself a proof 
 of the idealism inherent in strata of society that are to-day the 
 
 17 
 
objects of much contumely. But it was unwise; to quote an old 
 adage of deep significance, "Less would here again be more." 
 In any case pause should have been made betimes, that habitua- 
 tion to insurance might not degenerate into pampering through 
 insurance. First and foremost, this should have been the outlook 
 of the insurance carriers, for the law had made it their duty to 
 manage the funds of their associations like good guardians. But, 
 on the contrary, the extreme concessions made to the insured 
 resulted in the necessity of ever-increasing claims on those circles 
 whose contributions gave the requisite funds. This has recently 
 been proved, with special reference to the sick funds, in most care- 
 ful and suggestive fashion by Privy Medical Councillor Dr. F. Rit- 
 ter, of Oldenburg (Grenzbote, 1910, No. 52), who has shown how 
 entirely apart from deliberate deception and shirking of labor 
 the funds suffer from the continual widening of the circle of the 
 insured, not only through the inclusion of the family, etc., of the 
 insured, but also because insurance continues to be held by those 
 who had been expected to withdraw as their incomes increased, 
 while this latter class is precisely the one which lays more and 
 more claim to such assistance, both in kind and in degree. In 
 consequence of the noteworthy rise of wages in recent years the 
 contributions to invalid insurance have naturally increased; and 
 as regards accident insurance it need only be said that the total 
 disbursements of the Trades Associations have risen from 2.57 
 marks for each man insured and 19345 marks for each accident 
 reported in 1888 to 7.40 and 303 marks, respectively, in 1908. 
 It would accordingly seem that the real limit of endurance has 
 now been reached, if, indeed, it has not already been exceeded. 
 
 Unfortunately, the employers of moderate or of scanty means 
 are the very ones from whom the contributions to the various 
 classes of insurance exact a percentage of running expenses that 
 becomes more and more oppressive. Unlike larger firms, they 
 are unable to recoup themselves by their power to set prices, 
 which are determined independently of them; and, although 
 relatively few complaints have thus far been heard from these 
 circles, this is very possibly because the more personal contro- 
 versies between employer and employee, which in the labor world 
 are the characteristic of the time, give rise to even more bitterness 
 and anger than these contributions to the Trades Associations. 
 Only recently the Prussian Minister of Finance has shown, by 
 actual statistics, how the workingman submits to a taxation by 
 his "colleagues" that would undoubtedly drive him to revolution 
 
 18 
 
if it were the State that levied it. An additional factor is terror 
 of the Social Democrats ; and, in pursuance of a train of thought 
 that was vaguely felt by the original legislator, and which we 
 shall consider again at the close of our study, it was believed 
 that the threatening perils of Social Democracy might be averted 
 by contributions toward the insurance fund that the working- 
 men might be bought off, so to speak, from revolution. The 
 extreme unwillingness to incur disfavor with this party is clearly 
 shown by the attitude of a witness in the Moabit Riot trial, who, 
 when asked if he belonged to it, first answered with a decided 
 denial, then declared that he did, and ended by saying that he 
 "belonged to no party." 
 
 As early as February 4, 1890, an Imperial Decree emphasized 
 the necessity of "so maintaining German industry that it may 
 compete with the markets of the world," this solicitude being 
 based on the incontestable statement that "Decrease of home 
 industry through loss of foreign trade would deprive of bread 
 not only the employer, but also the employee." The instigations 
 of the Social Democrats have apparently blinded the working- 
 men to the fact that it is poor economy to kill the goose that 
 lays the golden egg; but recently there has become audible an 
 increasing volume of protest from large organizations, worthy 
 of respect in every way, that authoritatively voice the complaints 
 of the tradesmen, both small and great. Expressly denying from 
 the very start all hostility to workingmen's insurance in the 
 abstract, they show how gravely German industry is handicapped 
 in competition with foreign markets by the cost of insurance, 
 which can now be characterized by nothing short of monstrous, 
 amounting, as it does, to almost exactly 2,000,000 marks daily; 
 it is this insurance that they make primarily responsible for the 
 great rise in prices which bears so heavily on all strata of society ; 
 and finally they point to the extreme difficulty, if not impossi- 
 bility, of recovering these funds, although this would be abso- 
 lutely necessary should Germany become involved in economic 
 calamity, financial panic, or unfortunate war. 
 
 Excluding from the mass of accessible expressions of opinion 
 on this subject those of the Trades Associations themselves, 
 since they would naturally be exposed to the charge so much 
 in vogue to-day of lack of impartiality, we cite only the reports 
 of certain chambers of trade and commerce for the last year. 
 Liibeck complains that the workingmen alone receive support 
 in the Reichstag, to the utter disadvantage of the employers; 
 
 19 
 
and adds that there should be some end of rivalry for the favor 
 of the workingmen from mere motives of partizan politics. Elber- 
 feld writes: "The steady advance in the price of production, 
 due to the increase of wages, salaries, and other expenses, the 
 augmented taxes, and last, but by no means least the financial 
 burdens of a social policy which limits industrial freedom seri- 
 ously endanger the exportability of the products of many branches 
 of industry, this being especially true of the textile industry, 
 whose foreign competitors pay lower wages and have no social 
 burdens, or, at most, merely minor ones. We must, therefore, 
 earnestly and emphatically repeat the warning against an exces- 
 sive tension of the burdens of social policy." Finally, Essen 
 declares: "If, disregarding the burdens of taxation, we con- 
 sider simply the burdening of our industrial activity with social 
 assessments, we reach the result that even to-day the burden of 
 contributions to insurance, caused by this social policy, alone 
 amounts to nearly 800,000,000 marks annually. It is self-evident 
 that such enormous assessments, especially after crises and in 
 periods of depression, can only constitute a formidable obstacle to 
 the recovery of our economic life. It is equally obvious that this 
 obstacle will in future become increasingly powerful when com- 
 bined with the steady augmentation of burdens that may cer- 
 tainly be foreseen. Nevertheless, the surplus expenses which 
 the new Government Insurance Regulation will create amount, 
 according to one estimate, to 127,000,000 marks, and according 
 to other estimates to 300,000,000 marks annually, while the pen- 
 sion insurance of private officials will involve an additional burden 
 of some hundreds of millions of marks annually. We must, 
 therefore, soon reckon with a burden of about 1,250,000,000 
 marks each year, laid upon our industrial activity simply and 
 solely for purposes of social insurance. We are far from oppos- 
 ing either the legislation or the development of our social insur- 
 ance, but, in view of the alarmingly rapid rise of all these 
 assessments, we must emphatically admonish the reader of the 
 fact that, once these burdens are assumed, they must be perma- 
 nently borne, whether our foreign competitors follow us or not; 
 and they must be borne in times of economic depression no less 
 than in those of economic prosperity. And should there come 
 times when our industrial activity or even merely essential parts 
 of it should no longer be able to meet the social obligations 
 legally imposed upon it, then there will be no alternative except 
 for the State as the State to assume those burdens if it is to avoid 
 
 20 
 
a catastrophe whose scope none can foresee, even so far as 
 social conditions will be concerned." 
 
 The report of the Imperial Insurance Office meets these objec- 
 tions, which it recognizes as having a very real foundation, by 
 remarking that, despite its heavy burdens, German industry has 
 shared in the forward trend of the development of political 
 economy; it enumerates the theoretical advantages for the em- 
 ployer in an organization of Trades Associations; and it calls 
 attention to the fact that accident insurance frees the employers 
 from claims for damages and from suits for liability. And yet, 
 as the Office itself is forced to admit, at least this last advantage 
 loses much of its importance when it is remembered that, in 
 addition to his insurance, the individual employer is still liable 
 to a very considerable degree and one that transcends, in con- 
 sequence of certain decisions of the civil courts, what the legisla- 
 tor apparently foresaw and intended. It is, from every point of 
 view, a deplorable, though undeniable, fact that with the natural 
 exception of official laudations, which are of scant value there 
 is nowhere a trace of the enthusiasm which once greeted the 
 new institution. Everyone who can possibly do so endeavors to 
 escape from the burdens of insurance, and this naturally and 
 rightly results in counter-measures on the part of the corpora- 
 tions that carry the insurance, since they must and will secure 
 what is due them. Controlling officials of the various associa- 
 tions constantly traverse the country, themselves controlled in 
 turn by the Imperial Insurance Office and the State governments, 
 so that frequently one official objects to the measures required 
 by another, while the employer is at a loss to know whom to 
 obey, and unpleasantness is rife. An endless mass of writing 
 becomes requisite to track down and apprehend those who shirk 
 their obligations ; penalties are imposed to compel the delinquents 
 to perform their legal duties ; and "the combination of the material 
 forces of the life of the people" has become one which is abso- 
 lutely forced. The figures are eloquent : in 1908, the last year for 
 which statistics are available, the fines collected by the insurance 
 companies amounted to 268,177.11 marks, and those by the Trades 
 Associations to 412,608.51 marks. 
 
 Despite all these compulsory measures, the economic position 
 of the insurance carriers is by no means as secure as might be 
 wished. Though the Trades Associations have now been estab- 
 lished for twenty-five years, their status is peculiarly liable to 
 great variation, even if the Imperial Insurance Office sanctions 
 
 21 
 
change only for cogent reasons. At one time large groups of in- 
 dustries will petition to be transferred from one Trades Associa- 
 tion to another where, they hope, their taxation will be less ; and 
 at another time an employer will make the same request for him- 
 self individually, or will even seek to be exempt altogether. The 
 insurance obligations of individual industries and of entire lines 
 of industry thus become as problematical as their precise relation- 
 ship to the Trades Associations ; and the positions of main indus- 
 try and subsidiary industry are interchanged. This entails great 
 labor and expense, not only on the Imperial Insurance Office, but 
 also on the insurance carriers themselves; such being especially 
 the case when an industry burdened by an accident is concerned, 
 or when lines of industry peculiarly liable to accidents are 
 involved, since each Trades Association is naturally unwilling to 
 accept such industries, and one passes them on to the other. These 
 controversies affect the Government authorities, the chief victim 
 being the jack-of-all-trades of Prussian administration, the 
 district president, who is often asked questions, in the hope of 
 reaching a decision that shall be as unbiased as possible, which 
 the employer himself could not answer. Only he who has taken 
 part in these controversies or, rather, battles can form any 
 conception of their embittering and costly nature. It thus be- 
 comes readily intelligible why those Trades Associations and 
 insurance institutions which carry on their work among an agri- 
 cultural population are the very ones that repeatedly come peril- 
 ously close to bankruptcy, so that the officials of the organizations 
 concerned, and of the Ministry of the Interior and the Imperial 
 Insurance Office, are compelled to make tours that may require 
 months, in order to gain at least some measure of relief. 
 
 Activity in the Trades Associations has gradually become both 
 unpleasant and unpopular, as is clear from the fact that there is 
 a steady dwindling in the forces which at first were placed at the 
 service of those Associations, and which included names of high 
 reputation, experienced students of social politics, and political 
 economists. Since the managers of the Associations were re- 
 quired to be chosen from the ranks of employers still engaged in 
 active business,- and not from those who had retired to private 
 life, and since the law forbade the managers to receive any salary, 
 allowing them merely compensation for loss of time, the Asso- 
 ciations sought to retain their services by giving them such com- 
 pensation in generous measure. Thereupon the Social Demo- 
 cratic press raised its customary outcry "in the name of the 
 
 22 
 
workingmen" who, in reality, had no concern in the matter, 
 since they contributed nothing toward accident insurance that 
 this compensation was a violation of the law. Although this 
 assertion was false, the boards of control were so weak as to 
 interfere with the legitimate rights of the Associations and to 
 curtail the compensation for loss of time as far as they possibly 
 could, even though they were given proof that the managers in 
 question, in their devotion to the interests of the Associations, 
 were suffering losses that could scarcely be reckoned in marks 
 and pfennigs. The natural consequences are a constantly increas- 
 ing difficulty of securing the proper persons for these important 
 positions, a limited degree of devotion to the interests of the 
 Associations on the part of those who have actually been secured, 
 and a resultant and steadily accelerated transfer of the control of 
 the Associations into the hands of paid officials, business mana- 
 gers, administrative directors, and similar officers of various 
 designation. However excellent the work of these gentlemen 
 may be and excellent it is indeed none the less, there is no 
 longer any "combination of the material forces of the life of the 
 people," which was, of course, intended to be self-administrative. 
 Incidentally it may be noted that this system is by no means less 
 expensive, for the cost of administration has risen from 34 
 pfennigs per insured in 1888 to 53 pfennigs in 1908. 
 
 Hand in hand with the growth of bureaucracy the Trades As- 
 sociations tend more and more to become regular organizations 
 of officials, especially as the officers of the middle and lower rank 
 demand permanent positions and pension privileges, these de- 
 mands being entirely justifiable from their point of view. In the 
 case of agricultural Trades Associations at least in Prussia 
 bureaucratic administration is implied from the very first in virtue 
 of their connection with the State, municipal, and provincial au- 
 thorities. Since these authorities normally control invalid insur- 
 ance, two officials, occupying the same position and charged with 
 the duty of deciding a given case, may go to law with each other 
 in the name of the two insurance carriers which they control when 
 one of them desires to shift a pension claim from himself to his 
 colleague. This is a result of bureaucracy which many will fail 
 to deem as serious as it really is. In the very nature of the case 
 the element of autonomous administration recedes far into the 
 background where invalid insurance is concerned, although the 
 more recent wording of the law has sought to save this principle 
 to some extent by the creation of an intermediary in the form 
 
 23 
 
of a Pension Office. Nevertheless, the enormous mass of work 
 to be performed apparently renders impossible any realization of 
 the basal concept of autonomy, for the sessions of the committees 
 appointed for this purpose are utterly unable to give thorough 
 consideration to the ever-increasing host of applications. The 
 paid officials perform the chief task of preparation, and their 
 influence on the final decision is thus self-evident. 
 
 It is beyond all question that autonomy has been most per- 
 fectly secured at least superficially in the case of the sick 
 funds, yet the result has been scarcely a happy one; it has at 
 least failed to realize the concept and wish of the legislator. It 
 is well known that the Social Democrats have found a way to 
 put the sick funds under their complete control by means of 
 distribution of votes in the committees ; and the qualification for 
 the office of president, treasurer, comptroller, and other vacancies 
 is not merit, but political affiliation all these offices are reserved 
 to be the perquisites of trusty fellow-partizans. The phenome- 
 non is identical with that presented by the official positions in the 
 miners' unions, which have recently extorted public protest from 
 so reserved a man as Dr. Sydow, the German Minister of Com- 
 merce. By a vicious circle, which will be still more frequently 
 evident in the future, this firm foundation serves as the basis for 
 an agitation that is, for this very reason, all the more powerful, 
 so that the institution which was designed to cut the ground from 
 under the revolutionary party is now made to promote it. The 
 writings of St. Neumann (Die Sozialdemokratie als Arbeitgeberin 
 und Unternehmerin) and of M. Lohan (Die sozialdemokratische 
 Gefahr), and especially Moller's recent Herrschaft der Sozialde- 
 mokratie in der deutschen Krankenver sicker ung, supply an over- 
 whelming mass of details to which the press adds new instances 
 almost daily. And it should also be noted that complaints of the 
 diversion of sick funds to purposes hostile to the State are now 
 commencing to come from those parts of Germany that have a 
 Polish-speaking population. 
 
 The real value, in many instances, of State or Imperial super- 
 vision of the autonomy of the Trades Associations may be seen 
 in yet another respect, which is at the same time a proof of the 
 statement already made, that the generosity of the insurance 
 companies is excessive. As in the former case, it was a wise, 
 beneficent, and thoroughly commendable measure for Trades 
 Associations and institutions to build hospitals and sanitariums 
 for those whom they insured, that prevention and cure might 
 
 24 
 
there be effected with the greater speed, perfection, and per- 
 manency. But it was neither commendable nor in accord with 
 the duties of a good parent and careful guardian that these 
 measures should be carried out with an expenditure that can 
 properly be characterized only as wasteful, and that was fore- 
 doomed to create false ideas of the enormous wealth of the insur- 
 ance companies, besides exaggerating all claims upon them both 
 in kind and in degree. No one can object in the least to the fact 
 that these hospitals were equipped in the most appropriate and 
 practical manner, and that, without regard to expense, the most 
 modern achievements of skill, architecture, industry, and medical 
 science were installed ; nor can any one cavil at the lavishing of 
 the most whole-hearted care for the welfare of the inmates. And 
 yet there is no more need for such buildings to be homes of luxury 
 than there is for the business offices of the insurance carriers to 
 be palaces. Nor was this all. The inmates of many of these 
 institutions enjoyed food and drink, shelter and chance for slum- 
 ber, entertainment and recreation such as they had never dreamed 
 of before, so that many and many a one learned to prefer his 
 sojourn in the hospital to his own home, and, when he had 
 returned to his family, was no longer content, but yearned for 
 the flesh pots of Egypt, for the comforts which, too brief for his 
 desires, were yet long enough to fill him with envy and hatred for 
 those who, as he fancied, always fared so well. "Less would 
 here again be more." One example out of many will be sufficient. 
 Such a sanitarium which, it was estimated, could be built for 
 500,000 marks, finally cost 2,700,000, but it included a hall which, 
 in the architect's proud claim, was a modern imitation and adapta- 
 tion of the Baths of Caracalla, to say nothing of a bowling-alley 
 which alone required an expenditure of 18,000 marks, while the 
 patients were to be entertained by four orchestrions, at 12,000 
 marks each. 
 
 But what do the boards of control do in such cases? It is a 
 magnificent testimonial to our official spirit, faithful to time- 
 honored Prussian tradition, that the trend toward luxury and 
 extravagance, which forms so repellent and dangerous a charac- 
 teristic of the materialistic tendencies of our time, has found, 
 relatively speaking, less entrance here than in any other class. 
 Here the mad craze for external show is not yet the dominating 
 factor ; and economy is observed even in the case of money which 
 is not one's own, which belongs, in other words, to the State. 
 For these reasons the plans of the insurance institutions at first 
 
 25 
 
aroused special consternation in the Imperial Insurance Office, 
 for the Trades Associations are far more conservative in this 
 regard, since their members share immediately in their operations. 
 Efforts were made to simplify the institutions and to maintain 
 less expensive establishments, not only for their own offices, but 
 also for their sick and convalescent; and neither ink nor paper 
 was spared in the cause of reform. But it was all in vain. Those 
 who are familiar with our official organism know that the lower 
 court is not over-fond of amendment by the upper, especially 
 when the case is one of alleged self-government. So many 
 plausible reasons could readily be brought forward to justify this 
 luxury : insurance would gain regard and popularity ; the insured 
 would measure the good will of their compatriots and the protec- 
 tion of the State in proportion to the sums expended for them, 
 etc., etc., in a strain known only too well. What was the Im- 
 perial Insurance Office to do ? Was it to proceed to inflict twenty- 
 mark fines on the executive committees? And suppose it did 
 carry its plans into effect? In any event the Office would have 
 been opposed by public opinion, whose generosity, as will be 
 shown below, is exceeded only by its ignorance. Accordingly, 
 the Office was silent, for its right of supervision had proved to 
 be like the famous knife that had no blade and was minus a 
 handle. Before long all the authorities were in the same boat, 
 hailing with full official paraphernalia that happy day when hun- 
 dreds of thousands, that might have been employed to advantage, 
 were squandered in empty show to the detriment of the nation 
 and the breeding of discontent. 
 
 If the insurance carriers must be charged with having failed, 
 to a greater or a lesser degree, to observe that conservatism which 
 both private and public considerations dictated with regard to 
 those whom they insured, this indictment holds in far severer 
 measure against the State organs of insurance. In this respect 
 the Imperial Insurance Office has been particularly guilty of 
 having entered upon a course that is apparently beset with the 
 gravest perils. It must be clearly borne in mind that the efforts 
 of this board were, as has already been said, necessarily devoted 
 to gaining the confidence of the people, and especially of the so- 
 called working classes, who had even then been superabundantly 
 filled with discontent and false teachings, to making the new crea- 
 tion of value to them, and to accustoming them to a mode of treat- 
 ment so entirely different from the rigidly legal point of view. 
 This was no easy task. The first president of the Office was fond 
 
 26 
 
of terming the insured as children, often ill-bred and stubborn 
 children, who could best be won by kindness. It may well be 
 questioned whether this comparison rightly appraised the class 
 consciousness of the workingmen of to-day, and whether it was in 
 harmony with the extensive rights which they enjoy in the State 
 by virtue of modern legislation or with their still more sweeping 
 demands. It may even be queried whether, from the point of 
 view of mere logic, a human being may be treated as a child in 
 one respect, while in another respect he is very decidedly con- 
 sidered an adult. But the comparison was an anachronism from 
 each and every point of view. It was an inheritance from the 
 despotism of eighteenth century rationalism, though this benevo- 
 lent despotism had not only cake ready for its children subjects, 
 but also, like every wise teacher, a good stout rod. Yet this 
 principle, had it been intelligently applied, might have accom- 
 plished much ; it might have been of advantage for all concerned, 
 especially in the initial stages, and particularly in the administra- 
 tive division in drawing up "petitions for workingmen's aid." 
 As a matter of fact the workingmen very speedily became ac- 
 customed to present their grievances, doubts, and claims of any 
 sort whatever to the Imperial Insurance Office, frequently without 
 making claim "on any class of intermediate court. The number 
 of these petitions rose from 304 in 1887 to 3,303 in 1909. With 
 infinite patience, and with an expenditure of time, devotion, and 
 energy that was often out of all proportion to the subject-matter 
 of the petitions, every effort was made to do justice to the peti- 
 tioners, their cause was pleaded before every possible court, ample 
 instruction was given them, and, to use a favorite expression of 
 the Office, a strong right arm was lent to those who were insured. 
 But even the Imperial Insurance Office is not omnipotent, and 
 there are impossibilities even in workingmen's insurance. Never- 
 theless, the children, spoiled as they have been, now become 
 stubborn and ill-bred; and many petitions are filled with insults 
 and threats to appeal to the Emperor, to Bebel, and to the Social 
 Democratic Vorwarts; while letters are written incessantly, even 
 though the Office may repeatedly explain that it can do nothing 
 further for the petitioner. 
 
 In this way an absolutely enormous mass of writing has been 
 multiplied, and two details have had an especially injurious effect. 
 One is the habit of continually giving the petitioner specific in- 
 struction as to his legal rights, though the precise form chosen 
 is usually an unhappy one. He is informed that he must await 
 
 27 
 
the decision of the Trades Association. "Should you be dissatis- 
 fied with this decision, you have the right of appeal. In case 
 you fail to be satisfied with the verdict then rendered, you next 
 have the right of recourse to the Imperial Insurance Office." This 
 instruction is entirely superfluous, for the law expressly requires 
 the decision of the Trades Association to designate the petitioner's 
 legal rights with all requisite minuteness; and even a "child" 
 like the workingman must know, now that workingmen's insur- 
 ance has been in force for almost a generation, that the Imperial 
 Insurance Office is the final court in ninety-nine out of a hundred 
 cases. Since the petitioner is, naturally enough, "satisfied" with 
 a decision or verdict only when it gives him all that he demands, 
 he now considers himself practically bound to make use of his legal 
 rights ; and his composition not infrequently begins with the phrase, 
 "At the direction of the Imperial Insurance Office I appeal" (or, 
 "take recourse"). In this way there is a purely artificial multi- 
 plication of legal rights, and it becomes readily explicable that in 
 1909, out of 422,076 decisions of the Trades Associations, 76,352, 
 or 18.9%, were opposed by appeals, and out of some 100,000 
 verdicts by courts of arbitration, 22,794, or 24.74%, were met by 
 recourse. The proportions are not much better in the institutions 
 for invalid and old-age insurance, although here, in the great 
 majority of cases, the data contained in the vouchers are of them- 
 selves sufficient to decide the fate of an appeal. The decisions 
 in these classes of insurance numbered 386,737, the appeals 28,831, 
 and the revisions of decision 6,161. All these figures have a 
 tendency to rise this tendency being strongly marked in the case 
 of accident insurance and they are amply sufficient, without 
 taking other evidence into account, to warrant passing verdict 
 on our insurance, which was called into existence to avoid contro- 
 versies concerning damages for liability. 
 
 The second detail which has laid an insufferable burden upon 
 both the insurance carriers and the entire institution has its origin 
 in a publication of the Imperial Insurance Office which states that 
 it permits the Trades Associations that it is, in other words, 
 not irreconcilable with the obligations of a guardian and parent 
 to submit to a second examination a claim whose legal validity 
 has already been denied, and to pass a new decision, such a de- 
 cision, even though again adverse, rendering it possible for the 
 insured once more to try his fortunes by means of the courts. 
 This eliminated for (or, more accurately, to the prejudice of) 
 the Trades Associations the legal power which, in all other re- 
 
 28 
 
spects, was generally recognized as one of the most important 
 defences of legal security. There was no possibility of taking 
 from the insured a pension which had been unjustly granted him, 
 even though such grant should prove to have been based on error. 
 On the other hand, the permission of re-examination accorded to 
 the Trades Associations has developed, in course of time, into 
 obligation, for the heavy hand of the Imperial Insurance Office 
 presses upon them until they yield and render a decision, where- 
 upon the pension struggle begins anew. This course of procedure 
 might be accepted with favor if it was followed only in peculiar 
 and exceptional instances ; but it has become far too general be- 
 cause of the efforts of the Office to "help," and because of in- 
 sufficient power of resistance on the part of the insurance carriers, 
 who are unwilling to incur the disfavor of their supervising 
 court especially when they intend ultimately to win their point 
 as regards the baseless claim and who fear the charge of lack- 
 ing friendship for the workingmen more than the complaints 
 of their overburdened colleagues. Here again there is total for- 
 getfulness of the great general principle that bitterness engen- 
 dered by pension controversies was precisely what the legislator 
 feared, and that he sought by every possible means to exclude 
 such controversies. 
 
 The real administration of justice is still more suspiciously 
 affected by the attitude which thrusts into the background the 
 legal character of protection and brings into the foreground the 
 desire to help. It is beyond all question, even though there was 
 no explicit legal declaration on the subject, that the Imperial 
 Insurance Office was intended from the very first to be a court 
 of justice with full judicial independence, and the legislator gave 
 this court of justice a legal equipment that was possessed by 
 scarcely any other court of its class. Its president was to be its 
 presiding judge; a member of the Office was to report its pro- 
 ceedings ; the Federal Council was to delegate one of its members 
 to guard the great interests of the Empire; two judges were to 
 maintain the court's connection with the jurisdiction of the civil 
 law; and an employer and an employee were to represent their 
 colleagues. This was, of course, feasible only when the judicial 
 rulings of the Office were but seldom required. Nevertheless, 
 the pompous and unwieldy machinery remained unchanged even 
 when the suits for pensions became more and more frequent, and 
 when the Imperial Insurance Office was forced to become the 
 favorite arena for litigitis and pension hysteria. The president 
 
 29 
 
has practically ceased long since to be the presiding judge, and 
 even the directors have far too many other claims upon their 
 time; the role of presiding officer falls to the older members, 
 whom the Emperor nominates to this especial position, and who, 
 with significant contempt for their scope of activity, are denied 
 the title of president which is customary in such cases. The 
 Federal Council is almost invariably represented by members of 
 the Office, and the judges complain of the overwhelming burden 
 of reports and verdicts which they must assume. The labor that 
 is both required and performed is enormous ; during 1909 cases 
 of accident insurance alone demanded 1,297 sessions. And yet 
 the Imperial Insurance Office complains that, "Despite this in- 
 creased activity, which is possible only by straining every nerve, 
 the Imperial Insurance Office has not succeeded in so mastering 
 the tremendous increase of recourse cases as even approximately 
 to pass final decision on such cases with that rapidity which is 
 both requisite for the insured and intended by the legislator. On 
 the contrary, a state of affairs has here developed which grows 
 worse from year to year, and which in recent years has become 
 utterly unbearable." No criticism, however hostile it may be, 
 passes sterner condemnation on our insurance than this truly 
 piteous lament. 
 
 In the majority of these sessions there is absolutely no ruling 
 on questions of law. The seven men, selected representatives of 
 their various colleagues, decide whether, for example, a man who 
 has been injured shall receive a partial pension of 10% for a 
 crooked finger, or whether nothing is due him. The great ma- 
 jority of cases decided by the Imperial Insurance Office are 
 wretched wranglings as to how far a man who has been injured 
 has lost his earning capacity in consequence of his accident; yet 
 cases of this type formed no less than 77.7% of the total number 
 of recourse actions in 1909. The great increase in claims for 
 trivial injuries is shown by the fact that between 1888 and 1908 
 the average amount paid for each accident indemnified sank from 
 232.19 to 155.53 marks, although the total cost of indemnity rose 
 from 5,900,000 to 155,100,000 marks during the same period. 
 In the case of invalid insurance somewhat decisive measures soon 
 became necessary. Here retrial is the last legal resort, and the 
 court is usually composed of only five persons. This state of 
 affairs has long been universally recognized as intolerable, and 
 the Imperial Insurance Office itself sees its only hope in a "not 
 too narrow limitation of its competency for final decision in con- 
 
 30 
 
troversies regarding claims for damages, especially in the domain 
 of accident insurance." The reason why no remedy has yet been 
 found is probably not regard for the wishes of the Trades Associa- 
 tions, which, for reasons to be considered later (page 44), prefer 
 recourse to retrial, but the difficulty of framing regulations which 
 will meet the problems involved. Yet the law is practically in- 
 consistent when there is competency of decision where the Empire 
 shares in the burden, but not where the Trades Associations carry 
 the pension load. Nevertheless, the Empire suffers even under 
 such conditions, since it pays the expenses of maintaining the 
 court, while the number of positions in the Imperial Insurance 
 Office has increased to a degree that can be termed nothing short 
 of unnatural, in proportion to the steady growth of the tasks 
 that it must perform. In the fiscal year 1909-10 there were, 
 in addition to the president and the two directors, sixty-three 
 standing members, besides ten assistants, while the number of 
 associate justices had risen from four to ninety-nine. 
 
 The conviction that jurisdiction must also help those who have 
 been insured has laid another and a very considerable burden 
 upon the Empire because of the voluminous testimony which is 
 taken in the last court that of recourse this being done in great 
 part, through a sort of agreement between the presiding judge 
 and the official who reports the proceedings, before the case is 
 debated in open court. Just as the administrative division ex- 
 amines the petitions for workingmen's aid, the senates scrutinize 
 from every point of view the petitions that come before them, 
 in the hope that some further concession may be made the per- 
 sons insured. Nor is this scrutiny restricted to the claims and 
 demands of the appellant, for if he considers himself aggrieved in 
 the degree of his loss of earning capacity as assumed by the lower 
 court, he may, under certain circumstances, exaggerate the 
 amount of his yearly wages which serves as a basis for calculat- 
 ing his pension ; and the Office has repeatedly declared that a 
 petitioner's dissatisfaction, in any respect whatsoever, with the 
 preliminary judgment rendered him secures for his petition the 
 consideration due to any legal means of redress. Documents are 
 searched or at least should be with the utmost meticulosity, 
 on the chance that some point may still bear "interpretation" in 
 favor of the insured ; expert opinion is heaped on expert opinion, 
 often with the additional requirement of tedious hospital observa- 
 tion of the person alleging injury, especially in case of one of the 
 many neuroses which it is so much the fashion to claim to be the 
 
 31 
 
results of accident. The foremost medical authorities must then 
 be consulted, and they prepare learned treatises which, in very 
 many cases, amount simply to making the decision dependent on 
 the value placed upon the evidence offered, this being dutifully 
 left to the judge. All this is naturally very expensive, and, 
 although every president of the Office has had thus far to limit the 
 taking of evidence, practically the only result has been to provoke 
 charges from many quarters that the independence of the judges 
 was being attacked. A few of last year's figures will suffice to 
 prove the truth of these statements. Out of 4,509 cases evidence 
 was taken before trial in 3,370, and on the basis of a formal 
 resolution of the senate in 1,139, while expert medical opinions 
 were sought in 2,014. Of the 2,500,000 marks expended for the 
 Imperial Insurance Office in 1910, the Imperial budget provided 
 95,000 marks simply for the taking of evidence. 
 
 Even the senates of invalid insurance are not exempt from this 
 mania for instruction. Instead of thanking their creator for 
 wishing to save them from repellent association with petty de- 
 tails of actual data, so utterly unworthy of the dignity of a court 
 of last resort, they availed themselves of the provision that a 
 decision is liable to retrial if it contradicts the "evident contents 
 of the records" to make excessively minute investigations, on the 
 chance that they might find here and there in the records some 
 assertion however unimportant it might be which, when duly 
 proved and properly applied, might be sufficient to cause a differ- 
 ent verdict to be rendered. He that seeketh findeth, and as a con- 
 sequence of the enormous mass of work exacted from the courts 
 of arbitration, the resultant brevity customary in many places 
 when recording the written basis of the verdicts, and the impos- 
 sibility of foreseeing what the Imperial Insurance Office will 
 finally deem essential, almost every verdict of a court of arbitra- 
 tion will include some such contradiction to the evident contents 
 of the records. The verdict is then annulled, and the case is 
 returned to the lower court for reconsideration, frequently when 
 it is perfectly clear that the final result, notwithstanding all these 
 precautions, will be unfavorable to the person insured. Even 
 if there be no other outcome, the court of arbitration is supposed 
 to receive "educational influence"; although it may be ques- 
 tioned whether such influence is the purpose of jurisdiction, and 
 whether infinite harm may not be wrought to insurance by arous- 
 ing empty hopes in the insured. Once more figures are eloquent. 
 Of the 6,161 retrial decisions in 1909, 15.3% call for recon- 
 
 32 
 
sideration of the case by a lower court, and there are instances in 
 which a case has been sent back for reconsideration two, and 
 probably even three, times. 
 
 Attention has already been called to the perils threatening 
 jurisdiction when it is based on subjective sentiment rather than 
 on the objective foundation of the law, and when it derives its 
 decisions from benevolence, social sympathy, humanitarianism, or 
 whatever other feelings these unhallowed catchwords cover. This 
 may readily be perceived in deliberations on a case that really 
 admits of doubt. The concepts and principles of jurisprudence 
 are extremely unpopular in the Imperial Insurance Office; the 
 most subtle legal argument falls flat before the charge that it is 
 not social, and the most that such pleading can do is to give an 
 external justification to a decision that has been rendered from 
 motives of benevolence. Consequently there is not only a general 
 and increasing decline in theoretical interest in the law of work- 
 ingmen's insurance, to which many distinguished authorities at 
 first devoted themselves, but, with the exception of some valuable 
 commentaries, the circles of the Imperial Insurance Office have 
 themselves written practically nothing but guides through the 
 mazes of jurisdiction and similar aids in service of a prejudice 
 that may indeed be necessary, yet is of an inferior character both 
 intellectually and ethically. How different is this condition of 
 affairs from that which prevails in the Supreme Court of the 
 Empire and in other supreme courts, even though its wide scope 
 of duties fully entitles the Imperial Insurance Office to be con- 
 sidered their equal! Yet a celebrated Secretary of State in the 
 Imperial Ministry of the Interior has made scholarly study of 
 the legal aspects of their professional activity practically impos- 
 sible for members of the Imperial Insurance Office by making 
 publications on these themes dependent on his approval. In his 
 day Bismarck declared that he would make the Federal Council 
 small to strengthen the Imperial Insurance Office; his successors 
 hold it down whenever they can. Can the Office, then, be blamed 
 when the majority of its members, who are allowed to see noth- 
 ing but recourses and retrials, are submerged in petty details, and 
 lose sight of widesweeping points of view? 
 
 This neglect of broad outlook in favor of assistance in indi- 
 vidual cases is one of the grave detriments to the insurance busi- 
 ness of the present day, and it has infected the entire domain of 
 jurisdiction. This, more than anything else, should be kept free 
 from considerations based on personal sentiment, which is an 
 
 33 
 
utterly unstable foundation. Perhaps this is the very point where 
 subsequent reality has diverged most widely and most pain- 
 fully from the concept which guided the legislator. Yet it is 
 precisely here that the Imperial Insurance Office finds a special 
 and justifiable characteristic (or, rather, the glory) of its jurisdic- 
 tion, and it devotes a lengthy defence to the concept that its ver- 
 dicts, "in conformity with the intention of the legislator, must be 
 filled with that spirit of benevolence toward those who both need 
 and are entitled to protection that has long been customarily 
 designated 'social and political sentiment.' " Herein it enjoys 
 the unstinted applause of its former senatorial president now 
 counsellor to the Superior Court of Administration Dr. Wey- 
 mann, who, in the March number of the Preussische Jahrbucher, 
 enthusiastically exclaims: "This is jurisdiction indeed, from 
 whose eyes flashes the native hue of resolution." Herr Weymann 
 proceeds with the admirable statement that in our jurisdiction 
 and jurisprudence a ceaseless battle is being waged for the 
 victory of the right with the concepts that are conducive to it, 
 and as whose antitheses he brands those "dialectic and purely 
 formalistic views characterized by the maxim, fiat justitia, pereat 
 mundus." Similar views have recently been promulgated through 
 an appeal from Cologne regarding the alleged need of reform 
 what does not need reform to-day? in our administration of 
 justice. This is not the place for a general discussion of this 
 special shading of our modern movements for reform, but it may 
 be noted that Emperor Ferdinand I. employed this Latin aphor- 
 ism in a very different sense from what is customary to-day, 
 when it commonly serves as a catchword to condemn jurisdiction 
 which is in conformity with the law. The Emperor meant, as 
 Zinkgrefs German rendering clearly shows, that justice must 
 prevail, even against the might of the world ; that, in other words, 
 right is more than might, a position that scarcely any one will 
 deny. The only lamentable fact is that the twisting of words 
 which is now so popular, and which is, so to speak, pursued as a 
 regular sport, immediately gives rise to the question, "What is 
 justice?" It must, however, be borne in mind that this jurisdic- 
 tion which is in conformity with the law this stumbling-block 
 of all precipitation and excrescence, for which neither the Impe- 
 rial Insurance Office nor Herr Weymann would plead has, long 
 since, been recast into the formula, fiat justitia, ne pereat mundus, 
 thus obviating all misinterpretation of the Emperor's words. Yet 
 from this point of view the type of jurisdiction emanating from 
 
 34 
 
the Imperial Insurance Office can not be pronounced altogether 
 fortunate, even by its warmest admirers. 
 
 In consequence of the basal principle which we are here oppos- 
 ing, the senatorial members of the Office, and especially the presi- 
 dent, must submit to being occasionally informed by zealous 
 representatives of the insured that it is their duty to decide invari- 
 ably in favor of the workingman in case of doubt; and, in addi- 
 tion, those insured persons who are called to the Imperial Insur- 
 ance Office in Berlin are immediately introduced to a body of 
 associate justices who are blessed by being controlled by the 
 Social Democrats, and the new members there receive corre- 
 sponding instruction as to their judicial duties. Even associate 
 judges who have had a legal training cling tenaciously to the idea 
 that, in pension cases, a conviction of a very peculiar nature is 
 requisite either for affirmation or for denial. Here again the 
 reason lies in a decision of the Imperial Insurance Office a de- 
 cision which, in the abstract, was rilled with good intentions and 
 based on a solid foundation. This ruling, designed to elucidate 
 the concept of untrammeled estimation of the value of the evi- 
 dence offered, declared that a court of arbitration might, under 
 certain circumstances, base its verdict simply on probability, pro- 
 vided this gave conclusive evidence of the existence or non-exist- 
 ence of an actual state of affairs. Since, however, "rigid proof" 
 was required in other cases, as in the exceptional instance of 
 hernia as a result of accident, the theory was developed that a 
 minor degree of certainty possibly even mere probability was 
 sufficient reason for granting a pension. The remark may, there- 
 fore, frequently be heard that, "As a man I am convinced that 
 the claim lacks all foundation, but as a judge I do not feel myself 
 justified in denying the pension." Such considerations are very 
 proper for an overseer of the poor, but not for a judge in -a court 
 of law ; and yet how could they be refuted by counter-arguments ? 
 Thus the insurance courts are invaded by the crying evil of our 
 courts with juries, that the judge's convictions are influenced only 
 too easily by external considerations foreign to his domain; and 
 this evil is here perhaps the more corrupting since, though it is 
 better at least in the popular mind to acquit any number who 
 are guilty rather than condemn one who is innocent, in insurance 
 not "only" does the certainty of the law suffer, but the insurance 
 carriers are also overburdened. Moreover, in the other courts 
 this problem touches only isolated cases; but in the insurance 
 courts the question affects a fundamental point of view which, in 
 
 35 
 
the end, imperils the entire institution without reaching, as will 
 be shown below (page 59), a result that gives even an approxi- 
 mate degree of compensation. 
 
 Nor is this all. Men and judges are but men render ex- 
 tremely divergent decisions according to their views and senti- 
 ments, and according to their own circumstances and their power 
 of resisting external influences. Where, therefore, no rigid form 
 of law has fortunately been found to compel decision one way 
 or the other, views as to what is right vary in considerable meas- 
 ure. This is shown in the simplest concepts, in the most ordinary 
 considerations of every-day life. Many associate judges, for 
 example, give much weight to the wages still received by the 
 injured party, while others consider this point wholly immaterial. 
 These and similar contradictions thus become no rare occurrence 
 in the verdicts rendered by every court; and the connotations in 
 the mind of each individual of such obscure concepts as "social," 
 and such subjective ideas as "benevolence," can not fail to be 
 manifold. Much divergency is, therefore, inevitable in a juris- 
 diction which operates with such bases of decision. Since no one, 
 outside a very narrow circle, understands the subtleties by which 
 the Imperial Insurance Office construes a peculiar case one 
 which, in other words, calls for the granting of a pension con- 
 trary to the normal rule a fertile soil is prepared for the charge 
 of partiality. Lamentations are rife that jurisdiction and the 
 people are aliens to each other. In opposition to this attitude one 
 of our foremost judges has well argued, in a Festschrift in honor 
 of the University of Berlin, that the reason for this phenomenon 
 lies in the steadily increasing lack of knowledge of the nature of 
 law, the deterioration of such knowledge being accelerated by a 
 system of jurisprudence which substitutes vague sentiment for 
 fixed rules of law. This has likewise been recognized by Pro- 
 fessor Rosin in his review of the new "Handbook" of the Im- 
 perial Insurance Office (Preussisches Verwaltungsblatt. Dec. 3, 
 1910). Establishing the fact of excessive influence of social and 
 political sentiment on the rendering of verdicts, he queries 
 whether, in view of this, it is really advisable to maintain a special 
 insurance for accidents contingent upon occupation, in addition 
 to the general insurance of invalids and survivors. This thorough 
 student of our workingmen's insurance, to whom the greatest 
 indebtedness is due as regards its juristic construction, is con- 
 vinced of the impracticability of uniting the strict judicial de- 
 cision which the rules of accident insurance demand with the 
 
 36 
 
endeavor to make the services of such insurance effective in the 
 widest measure possible. As a matter of fact, one or the other 
 of these aims must recede into the background; and a few ex- 
 amples will show how jurisdiction gets around this difficulty. 
 
 As already noted, the question of the degree of earning capacity 
 still possessed by an injured person is by far the most frequent 
 problem for decision; and this holds good whether it is a case 
 of indemnity for the first time, or an increase or decrease of 
 pension in view of aggravation or improvement in the plaintiff's 
 condition. It is evident from the very first how important a role 
 is played by the personal sentiment of the individual judge the 
 greater or less degree of his "friendship for the workingman," 
 his knowledge of conditions in the various trades, the credence 
 which he gives to the allegations of the person injured, his 
 personal experiences possibly by a similar injury sustained by 
 himself or within the circle of his acquaintances and his degree 
 of confidence in medical science. This consideration should of 
 itself be sufficient to relieve a judge in a court of last appeal from 
 such decisions. It is true that two tables have been drawn up 
 showing the valuations placed on individual injuries, such as the 
 loss of an eye, arm, or leg. Similar data are given, as is well 
 known, with almost comic minuteness in the folk-laws of the 
 ancient Germanic peoples, and also by very modern insurance 
 companies, while tables of the same sort have been compiled from 
 the decisions of the Imperial Insurance Office. It is perfectly 
 true that the Office declines and with entire justice to formu- 
 late a rate table which shall be valid generally, and that it reserves 
 for itself the right of estimating damages according to each in- 
 dividual case. Yet even here and again with entire justice 
 certain fixed principles have been developed, as that the loss of 
 an eye regularly entitles a workingman to from 30 to ^Z 1 A% 
 of the pension for complete loss of earning capacity. This very 
 principle is one of those most constantly opposed. The Trades 
 Associations have given the Office long extracts from the pay- 
 rolls which prove beyond all doubt that very many workingmen 
 if not the majority of them receive, after losing an eye, pre- 
 cisely the same wages as those who have suffered no injury, and 
 as they themselves did previous to their accident; and that these 
 maimed workingmen share in the increase of wages that are 
 either general or to be secured by the workingman's own services. 
 A still more curious result arises from certain combinations of 
 injuries to the hands or fingers. It has been shown that such 
 
 37 
 
injuries, when received in brawls or in other ways unconnected 
 with the workingman's occupation, do not prevent him from 
 gaining his old wages within a short time, for the adaptability and 
 habituation of the human body are nothing short of marvelous. 
 Nevertheless, an industrial accident with exactly the same results 
 was indemnified with a pension of 30%, or even more. There 
 are workingmen, especially among those engaged in the wood 
 industry, who draw pensions of from 30 to 40% for two, three, 
 and even four accidents of this type, which are very frequent 
 in their occupation; and yet earn full wages. An especially 
 troublesome difficulty results from a decision of the Imperial 
 Insurance Office which is again perfectly justifiable in the abstract 
 and which, in awarding damages for an accident, requires that 
 injuries existent before the accident in question be taken into 
 consideration. It is evident that a man suffering from an old 
 injury to his hand receives more harm if he is also injured in 
 the leg than if he had previously been entirely uninjured; or, 
 to put the case more strongly, the loss of the second eye is incom- 
 parably worse than the blinding of the first. On the other hand, 
 it is unjust to make the Trades Association responsible for con- 
 sequences which have their origin in the injured man himself; 
 and it thus becomes most difficult to find a golden mean that will 
 satisfy both parties' sense of justice. In agricultural insurance 
 provision has been made for such cases by estimating the pensions 
 according to the corresponding loss of yearly wages. Yet even 
 here benevolence still has a scope which can scarcely be recon- 
 ciled with the duty of a judge to consider simply the facts in the 
 case before him. Thus, for example, a court of arbitration known 
 to be particularly "friendly to the workingman" once awarded 
 a pension on the basis of complete and undiminished wages to an 
 injured farmer who had been deaf and dumb prior to his accident ; 
 though there could be no doubt that if he had lost his speech 
 and hearing through an accident incurred in his occupation, he 
 would have been granted a very high pension, if not, indeed, the 
 highest. 
 
 The question whether an accident is to be regarded as incurred 
 in the pursuit of an occupation, whether it is, in other words, 
 to be indemnified by an accident pension, would seem at first 
 blush to be the problem that might most readily be solved by 
 legal considerations, so that here benevolence would appear to 
 have its smallest range of action. Experience, however, teaches 
 a very different lesson. It is a recognized principle that accident 
 
 38 
 
insurance is awarded only for injury by an actual accident, not 
 for a sickness which the insured has contracted in consequence 
 of his trade employment. Accordingly, every possible effort 
 has been made to construe the law so as to make the Trades 
 Associations responsible in these cases as well. Thus, for ex- 
 ample, many cases of poisoning, which normally do not become 
 perceptible until the harmful influence has long been operative, 
 are regarded by one theory as the result of a number which, 
 under certain circumstances, may be very great of small in- 
 dividual industrial accidents, each consisting in one inhalation of 
 the deleterious substance. Although this theory has not yet become 
 dominant in jurisdiction, kindred views have long prevailed. In- 
 dustrial accident is assumed not only in cases where the injury 
 results from a single, sudden occurrence, but also where the 
 injurious process did and must continue for some time in order 
 to produce an effect prejudicial to earning capacity, such as 
 colds as a result of working in water, heat stroke from remaining 
 in excessive heat, paralysis from working in rooms where electric 
 machines are in operation, and the like. If in such cases the 
 distinction between sickness and accident is made to consist in 
 the length of time that the deleterious influence has continued, 
 the door is opened wide to subjective estimates, to social and 
 political sentiment, and to benevolence. A precisely similar prob- 
 lem emerges in cases where a sickness latent in the person 
 insured breaks out in consequence of some process connected 
 with his occupation, as happens, for instance, when persons with 
 a tendency to consumption are obliged to lift and carry. Or if 
 a disease perhaps merely the weakness of old age which still 
 permits the sufferer some measure of toil is so aggravated in 
 consequence of a slight accident, as is frequently the case, that 
 he can no longer do any work whatever, is the old disease or the 
 slight accident the reason of the cessation of his earning capacity ? 
 These cases are frequently complicated by death, which the person 
 insured might indeed have expected in the near future, but which 
 may have been hastened by the accident, and perhaps also by the 
 excitement incidental to it, the confinement to his bed, and the 
 like. Is the man then killed by the accident? In these cases 
 decision is rendered in favor of the insured when the accident was 
 an essential contributory factor in causing his loss of earning 
 capacity or his death ; and the estimate placed upon "essential" 
 is again determined by benevolence. 
 
 Even abstract questions of law are brought within this fatal 
 
 39 
 
sphere. That accidents incurred while on the way to work can not 
 be deemed industrial accidents scarcely requires proof, and yet all 
 kinds of indirect ways have been devised to help those who have 
 thus been injured to secure pensions, so that many grants have 
 been made in cases where the employee chanced to be carrying 
 a tool which contributed to the accident, or where his employer 
 directed him to take a certain road, or to attend to this or that 
 on the way, and the like. The extreme difficulty of deciding, 
 under certain circumstances, and especially in agricultural oc- 
 cupations, between uninsured labor on one's own account and 
 insured industrial activity has led, on the one hand, to a most 
 agonized splitting of hairs or to a divergent decision of similar 
 cases, based on the chances involved in rendering the verdict; 
 while, on the other hand, it has given rise to most marvelous 
 assertions by those who have been injured, that they may prove 
 that the injuries in question were received in consequence of their 
 occupation. Two particularly striking examples will be sufficient 
 to show this. A farmer was injured on his way to church, but 
 he claimed that he was going to pray for rain, that his journey 
 had, therefore, been made in the interests of agriculture, and that 
 he should receive compensation for his accident. In undressing 
 her daughter, aged six years, a peasant woman injured her 
 finger, which, on account of subsequent infection, had to be ampu- 
 tated. She declared that the child had been engaged in agricul- 
 ture, since it had kept the geese; the undressing of the child, 
 therefore, should be considered the same as unharnessing a 
 draft animal, and should be accounted an agricultural opera- 
 tion. The very preferment of such claims shows what may be 
 expected in the courts of jurisdiction, and any one who glances 
 through the volumes of published decisions will often be aston- 
 ished to see all the calamities that are forced into the category 
 of accidents incurred in the course of occupation. In this way 
 the jurisdiction contributes to the unnatural growth of industrial 
 accidents. In 1886 the accidents reported were 100,159, and 
 damages were awarded in 10,540 cases ; in 1908 these figures were 
 662,321 and 142,965 respectively. Then words were poured out 
 in the Reichstag to lament the sacrifices demanded by the Moloch 
 of capital, and foreigners to whom our insurance was lauded 
 pointed to this increase and emphatically declined to allow it to 
 be introduced in their own countries. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the entire system of this jurisdiction, espe- 
 cially in accident insurance cases, might here be set forth, subject 
 
 40 
 

 after subject, and controversy after controversy; and it might 
 be shown how it has been possible to transcend even the benefi- 
 cent intentions of the legislator at every time and in every place, 
 regardless of any union of the advantages granted the insured 
 with consideration for the common weal, or with the justice due 
 the Trades Associations as the party of the second part. Only 
 cursory mention can be made of the controversies centering 
 around yearly wages as the basis of estimating pensions. Con- 
 trary to the intention of the law, which was designed to secure a 
 certain average in such estimations, and which sought also to 
 express the concept that the workingmen should contribute at 
 least indirectly to the expenses of insurance, the courts have 
 exerted every effort to credit the insured never with less, and, 
 wherever possible, with more, than his actual wages, the attempt 
 thus being made to compensate him for the "wrongs" which he 
 suffered on account of the legal provision that loss of his entire 
 earning capacity could be indemnified only to the extent of two- 
 thirds of his wages. To this must be added the endeavor to 
 extend the benefits of insurance in widest possible measure to 
 persons and legal relations which hitherto it had not comprised. 
 The deciding senates repeatedly declared industries insured which 
 the administrative division invariably emphatically declined to 
 insure ; and similar difficulties were involved in carrying through 
 the insurance itself, with its registration, reckoning of contribu- 
 tions, and other necessary details, as when, for example, some 
 person hitherto considered to be independent is held to have en- 
 tered upon or to have been transferred to an industry for the 
 sake of the pension. 
 
 With full consideration of the dangers of supplementary defi- 
 nitions, and with due regard for the general security of the law, 
 the legislator had very intentionally laid down clear rules as to 
 forfeiture of claims through non-use within a given time. Never- 
 theless, this is frequently considered unfair; and the Trades As- 
 sociations, which are supposed to act with all the conscientious- 
 ness of a faithful guardian, are even objects of suspicion if they 
 raise this objection, although no guardian would escape an action 
 for damages should he fail to employ it. In considering whether 
 and how far the insured may possibly have been prevented from 
 securing his rights because of circumstances beyond his control, 
 so that forfeiture by expiration of time-limit can not be counted 
 against him, jurisdiction develops a degree of condescension which 
 lowers the workingman to the level of a child incapable of judg- 
 
ment, and, as a sorry compensation, makes this beneficial rule an 
 empty and totally ineffectual bogy. Absolute ignorance is fre- 
 quently imputed to the "poor, ignorant workingman." For 
 example, a decision was once formulated with infinite toil and 
 trouble which assumed that the person insured was aware that 
 a letter must have a postage stamp, or else it runs the risk of 
 being refused by the addressee. The same people who demand 
 for the workingman the most sweeping control in the guidance of 
 the State can not do enough to prove his mental limitations where 
 his most vital private interests are concerned. 
 
 The law sought also to protect the workingman against acci- 
 dents due to carelessness and inattention, and it accordingly 
 authorized the employer to frame prohibitions designed to obvi- 
 ate any possible dangers arising from this cause. Acting on this 
 principle, jurisdiction long maintained that a workingman who 
 disobeyed such a prohibition which had been made properly effec- 
 tive placed himself "outside his industry," and accordingly lost 
 all claim to a pension in case of accident. This ruling has recently 
 been abandoned. In considering the occupations incidental to an 
 industry the causal relation between accident and industry requi- 
 site to recognition of an industrial accident is no longer excluded 
 by the fact that the person insured may have incurred the acci- 
 dent in question because of his disregard of a prohibition of the 
 type just described. This decision is certainly extraordinarily 
 friendly to the workingman, but its perils are equally extraordi- 
 nary, since it cripples the efficiency of regulations framed to 
 prevent accidents, and, consequently, the protection of the work- 
 ingman, which is acknowledged to be an important function of 
 accident insurance. 
 
 One more point may be cited in conclusion to show how far 
 jurisdiction has carried the principle of the favor of the law. 
 With a childlike trust that was almost pathetic, the law granted 
 to those who were insured exemption from all costs and fees in 
 the prosecution of their legal claims. At the same time the courts 
 were empowered to decide whether the party against whom ver- 
 dict was rendered should pay its opponent extrajudicial fees, 
 and, if so, what these fees should be ; and also to determine what 
 expenses would be necessary for legal cognizance of the claims 
 and rights in question. In consequence of the unexpectedly rapid 
 growth of legal rights, the amendment of 1900 held that some 
 means of protection must be created, and it empowered the courts 
 to impose on the parties such costs as should accrue from the 
 
 42 
 
wanton prosecution of a hopeless claim. What was the result 
 of these regulations? Extra judicial fees were practically never 
 allowed to the Trades Associations, while they were granted to 
 the insured in ever augmented measure, even when the insured 
 could allege no real basis for their claims. Sometimes mere 
 inspection of the injured member, or even nothing more than 
 personal impression, was considered to be the taking of evidence, 
 in order to reimburse the costs incurred by the party against 
 whom verdict was rendered. This may, perhaps, occasionally 
 pass unchallenged in the courts of arbitration, yet it obviously 
 creates another strong temptation which, in case of unwelcome 
 verdict in a suit, results in the direct opposite of the reconcilia- 
 tion sought. As a matter of fact, people with perfectly hopeless 
 claims travel across the whole of Germany to Berlin ; the expenses 
 of the trip to the capital have been scraped together by borrow- 
 ing; and the return must be ultimately contested by the Depart- 
 ment of Poor Relief at a cost of infinite correspondence, annoy- 
 ance, and vexation. Yet it is extremely rare for the poena temere 
 litigantium to be imposed, and the Imperial Insurance Office itself 
 acknowledges that it has "little inclination" to penalize the insured 
 with costs, since they can seldom be collected, and although they 
 may legally be charged against the pension, this course "easily 
 leads to hardships, and causes embitterment" an argument which 
 appears to be entirely insufficient to justify the elimination of a 
 defence provided by the law with the express intention of obviat- 
 ing an abuse whose existence is universally recognized. 
 
 Naturally the Imperial Insurance Office is chiefly responsible 
 for the tendency developed by jurisdiction, for its decisions form 
 the model for, and are in certain respects binding on, the ver- 
 dicts of the courts of arbitration. Nevertheless, the courts of 
 arbitration must themselves be held partly responsible for this 
 development of actual administration, for, being still closer to the 
 facts than the authorities in Berlin, they might have protected 
 themselves against an extension of the benefits of insurance whose 
 suspicious character they could perhaps have estimated with still 
 greater impartiality. The fact that the courts of arbitration have 
 failed to realize this expectation, and that they have, as a whole, 
 assumed and maintained a position characterized by complete 
 loss of independence, is certainly due in great part to the scanty 
 esteem accorded, as has already been noted repeatedly, to insur- 
 ance by the administrative authorities of the State, since they only 
 too frequently employ as presiding officers of the courts of arbi- 
 
 43 
 
tration associate judges who have just passed their examinations, 
 and who, though young and well trained, have no qualifications 
 except benevolence for their difficult position, so that they often 
 act as a drag on the decision of many claims in cases where such 
 decision has in the meantime become more strict. The grave 
 errors which frequently result may be seen in the printed decisions 
 of the Imperial Insurance Office, from which one case may be 
 cited as a real legal curiosity: a court of arbitration granted a 
 pension, but, in formulating its reasons for this decision, became 
 doubtful of the justice of its verdict, which it "amended" by de- 
 nying the pension in question. When complaints are made in the 
 Imperial Insurance Office that the recourses and retrials are 
 increasing, and when ways and means to remedy this state of 
 affairs are under consideration, the carelessness shown in the 
 choice of presiding officers for the courts of arbitration becomes 
 particularly evident, especially as these gentlemen generally 
 resign their positions just as they are beginning to become 
 familiar with their duties. Though it is self-evident that there 
 are many exceptions to this rule, the trouble is that they are only 
 exceptions, after all ; and so great and so manifest is this evil that 
 it has compelled the Trades Associations to cling to the legal 
 means of recourse, despite the grave sacrifices which it entails 
 upon them in other respects (see above, page 31). 
 
 If it has already been said that the boards entrusted with the 
 duty of jurisdiction have, like their members, shown to those 
 who are insured a complaisance which exceeds the limits of the 
 law, this does not, of course, imply an accusation of unlawful 
 partiality. These judges make their rulings after thorough con- 
 sideration of the case ; they act according to their best knowledge 
 and belief; and they are guided by an honorable conviction, fre- 
 quently against their own inclinations, since they believe that they 
 are morally bound to construe the law and their duty as they do. 
 It is only this construction which is criticized in the remarks here 
 made, which are intended to set forth, from a purely scientific 
 point of view, a divergent interpretation. Yet it is beyond all 
 doubt that if even a small fraction of the subtlety, learning, and 
 care now employed in favor of the insured were made to con- 
 tribute to the best interests of the Trades Associations and insur- 
 ance institutions, the nauseatingly familiar cries of partizanship, 
 class justice, robbery of the people's rights, and the like would 
 be raised. This statement is capable of proof. When the 
 amended accident insurance law went into force, laying many new 
 
 44 
 
burdens on the Trades Associations and bringing them few alle- 
 viations of their load, the president of the Imperial Insurance 
 Office at the time delivered an address to the representatives of 
 the Associations, in which he implied that the Office would en- 
 deavor to protect the insurance carriers against being over- 
 burdened, these innocent words bringing upon him a torrent of 
 abuse. 
 
 The old basal principle of Roman law, liberum corpus non 
 recipit existimationem, is impossible in modern times. Its proud 
 dignity finds no place in a world ruled by property interests, and 
 where, men boast, money is everything; while from a world of 
 poverty-stricken masses it is still more completely alien. It could 
 scarcely be expected, therefore, that the insured would observe 
 any restraint whatsoever in their demands for insurance; but, 
 on the contrary, it might be anticipated that the insured would 
 strain every effort to secure the comforts of insurance in the 
 greatest possible measure, and for the longest possible time. The 
 experience of many years has shown that the German has an easy 
 conscience so far as the State and its treasury are concerned, and 
 this experience is confirmed not only by the members of boards 
 for the assessment of taxes, but by every one who, in crossing a 
 frontier, has observed how assiduously everything is concealed 
 from the customs inspectors. Moreover, litigiousness has always 
 been regarded as one of our hereditary faults, so that even the 
 Imperial Insurance Office lays the responsibility for the enormous 
 increase of appeals and recourses on "the craze for litigation and 
 the stubborn insistence on alleged rights inherent in the German 
 mind, and the morbid tendency to go to law to the greatest pos- 
 sible degree, and especially to exhaust the resources of every 
 court." It must, however, be noted in simple justice that the 
 numerous foreigners, especially Poles and Italians, who gain a 
 livelihood in Germany vie with our compatriots both in greed and 
 in inventive genius. The Latins are especially cunning in taking 
 advantage of our institutions for the promotion of the general 
 weal, particularly as they are aided by their possession of diplo- 
 matic representation in Germany and by the friendly relations 
 required by our share in the Triple Alliance. As a rule, the entire 
 village, including the syndic and the physician, helps the pensioner 
 whose pension the wicked Germans wish to decrease or stop 
 altogether. In the last year 800,000 marks were taken from the 
 treasuries of the Trades Associations to Italy alone, a fact which 
 may be recommended to the consideration of the organs of our 
 
 45 
 
foreign policies when in the future as has so often happened in 
 the past Germans resident in Italy shall suffer injury, and even 
 mistreatment, in the course of their occupations. 
 
 For the general reasons just set forth, it was from the very first 
 a doubtful, if not absolutely incorrect, mode of procedure to grant 
 those who were insured exemption from costs in the prosecution 
 of their claims. It is true that scarcely anyone could have 
 dreamed that insurance would have been abused to the extent and 
 with the methods that have actually proved to be the case, and he 
 who looks for and regards something higher than the mere multi- 
 tude of his nation can feel only deep and bitter pain when he sees 
 that insurance has been the very factor which has led to univer- 
 sal degeneration and demoralization. To all who have not them- 
 selves passed through the horrible experience it will be perfectly 
 incredible how far beyond the generous favor of the law, how 
 far beyond the still more generous favor of all the authorities 
 even those of the Imperial Insurance Office claims are carried, 
 prosecuted through each and every court, and driven on with peti- 
 tions for workingmen's aid, memorials directly to the Emperor, 
 and complaints to all competent and incompetent authorities. In 
 considering the actual operation of the Imperial Insurance Office 
 examples have been given (page 40) of the gentle art of prepar- 
 ing claims, and while in all else, even in regard to the elements 
 of insurance, the most lamentable ignorance reigns, a knowledge 
 of backstairs methods of dealing with important points has been 
 developed to a degree which can only be termed amazing. The 
 enormous scope of insurance jurisdiction aids in the dissemina- 
 tion of this knowledge in ever widening circles. It is almost ab- 
 surd to see how considerations adopted in special cases to grant a 
 pension under circumstances that would normally exclude it 
 penetrate into the remotest corners and become the common prop- 
 erty of all pension hunters. The Imperial Insurance Office once 
 decided that an accident received while chopping wood should be 
 indemnified because it was shown that the wood in question was 
 being chopped to boil fodder for cattle. Since that time at least 
 if the allegations of claimants for pensions may be believed 
 cattle have never and nowhere received fodder that was not boiled, 
 nor has wood ever been chopped except to boil such fodder. 
 
 Here again the individual cases might be taken point by point, 
 and in each one it might be shown how those who are insured 
 seek to remove the last barriers that may possibly still prevent 
 the recognition of their claims by means of what can, unfortu- 
 
nately, be termed only lies. Once more only a few examples need 
 here be cited. Even in everyday life many sickly persons are 
 inclined to overrate and exaggerate their ills and aches, and the 
 popular modern complaint of nervousness has essentially fostered 
 this weakness in general. Now insurance furnishes a shockingly 
 fertile soil for this sort of nonsense, and here grows the evil and 
 envenomed weed of pension hysteria, one of the most melancholy 
 consequences of our wprkingmen's insurance. A vast amount has 
 been written concerning this evil, from the time when Professor 
 Oppenheim discovered "traumatic neurosis" in 1889, until it 
 finally enjoys practical unanimity in the authoritative circles of the 
 medical profession. Windscheid's clever aphorism, "Where there 
 is no pension, there is no accident neurosis/' sharply and clearly 
 expresses the conviction that has gradually become dominant; 
 but any estimation of the influence exercised upon the earning 
 capacity of the pension claimant through phenomena either caused 
 or at least increased by his "appetitive concepts" is subject to the 
 widest variations and exposed to the grossest errors with physi- 
 cians as well as with judges. In view of the enormous mass of 
 literature on the subject, reference can here be made only to the 
 admirable discussion of Franz C. Miiller (Zeitschrift fur Versi- 
 cherungswissenschaft, VII), who has shown in detail how the 
 evil has only been fostered by the excessive humanitarianism of 
 jurisdiction. As a matter of fact, those who are insured know 
 how to take advantage of the difficulties of decision which, in the 
 last analysis, are involved in even the simplest case. Whoever, 
 in the course of his occupation, receives an injury, which may be 
 of the most trivial nature and which, as has already been shown 
 in the case of injuries to the hand (see above, page 38), would 
 not disturb him in the least under other circumstances, guards 
 it like a veritable treasure and tends it like a milch cow. From 
 unconscious exaggeration to direct invention, from neglect of the 
 treatment prescribed to the artificial keeping open of wounds, 
 daily, and in the case of the majority of those injured, there is 
 found a gradation of the most diverse efforts to render their 
 condition suitable for the payment of a pension. Even artificial 
 limbs and similar appliances furnished by the Trades Associa- 
 tions are not used, are carelessly handled, and are even inten- 
 tionally damaged and then termed injurious. Every sickness and 
 injury a man either has or ever has had is brought into con- 
 nection with the accident, the allegation being either that the sick- 
 ness or injury was caused or aggravated by the accident, or that 
 
 47 
 
it is to be regarded as accelerating its own normal consequences. 
 Frequently an accident is deliberately invited, and is then made 
 to serve as a plea for a pension claim, in harmony with the juris- 
 diction already described (page 39) in cases of combination of 
 sickness and accident. Whether the injury is great or small makes 
 no difference. The vast majority of cases, as stated above (page 
 30), involve infinitesimal injuries, and the annullment of a partial 
 pension of 10% is fought with the same bitterness as a denial 
 of indemnity for the gravest sufferings. Improvement is the 
 last thing ever to be acknowledged; a gradual diminution of a 
 pension is bewailed as a continual source of uneasiness, and its 
 lessening in marked degree as a hardship. Any thought of 
 decreasing a pension is normally answered with the assertion that 
 the trouble is growing worse, if not with a demand that the 
 pension be increased, and in this way an accident forms the 
 starting-point of a series of suits which frequently do not end 
 even at the death of the man injured, since a pensioner having 
 other persons dependent upon him can scarcely die except as a 
 result of an accident received in the course of his occupation, 
 however long ago this accident may have occurred, and however 
 remote its cause, medically speaking, from his last illness. It 
 even happens frequently that an industrial accident results in no 
 injury whatever, and the man injured simply imagines that his 
 health is impaired. Hereupon he ceases to work and prosecutes 
 his claim through all the courts, especially when, as may be the 
 case, he has behind him an alleged expert who gives him a certif- 
 icate that this imagination constitutes a result of the accident 
 which calls for damages. In one such case the Imperial Insur- 
 ance Office denied a pension, only to be accused publicly of lack 
 of social intelligence. 
 
 Here again is manifested the lamentable phenomenon of the 
 transformation of reason into folly and of the change of benefits 
 intended into injuries. There can be no doubt from the very 
 first that the pension, the indemnity, should constitute only the 
 last means of protection to one who has suffered an injury, and 
 that the highest aim must be the recovery of earning capacity. 
 The law accordingly gave both the Trades Associations and the 
 insurance institutions extensive privileges in regard to the medi- 
 cal treatment of the insured, and the Imperial Insurance Office 
 is never weary of urging the most generous use of these privi- 
 leges. But there is an alarmingly large number of the injured 
 who are absolutely unwilling to be cured. The regulation that the 
 
 48 
 
insurance carrier must sustain the cost of cure gives them a 
 welcome opportunity to enjoy themselves in every way on an- 
 other's money, since they can almost invariably find a compliant 
 physician who will certify that the expenditures desired are 
 necessary and proper, regardless of their relation to the patient's 
 former modes of life and his social surroundings. This special 
 method, to which little attention has thus far been given, of taking 
 selfish advantage of the benefits of insurance to an excessive and 
 thoroughly corrupting degree has been discussed with surprisingly 
 rich results by the neurologist, Dr. Placzek, in a lecture reprinted 
 in the Zeitschrift fur Bahn- und Bahnkasseridrzte for 1910. A 
 single one of his examples may be cited here. An engineer earn- 
 ing 2,600 marks a year met with an accident and demanded 20 
 marks per diem for 48 days during which he had been nursed 
 in the house of his mother-in-law, the widow of a post-office clerk, 
 this total of 980 marks including a bottle of wine daily at 4 
 marks, caviar or asparagus for breakfast and supper, and 177 
 marks for cab hire. The sanitariums themselves, which have been 
 equipped at such expense, are regarded as a sort of "pension 
 lever," and are often the scene of bitter quarrels that give ground 
 for a very low opinion of the "reconciling influence" of working- 
 men's insurance, in view of the complaints and allegations of poor 
 food and bad treatment these always being, of course, anony- 
 mous, or appearing as letters to the daily press to which must 
 be added sweeping denunciations of the physicians. The physi- 
 cian is commonly supposed to be the best friend of his patient, 
 but here he is regarded as the bitterest enemy, against whom any 
 and every weapon may be used, as the voluminous examples 
 given by Dr. Placzek amply prove. And these institutions have 
 an unhealthy influence in yet another regard. Any means of 
 deception which a patient may not previously have known he there 
 learns through his contact with real or alleged fellow-patients, 
 becoming acquainted with the chief points in diagnosing his 
 complaint, and being taught how to feign the corresponding 
 symptoms if they do not arise of their own accord. It is self- 
 evident that his political education becomes perfect in this ad- 
 mirable school. 
 
 In cases of this type patients who exaggerate their sufferings 
 because of anxiety for their future have at least the excuse that 
 they can plead a bona fide injury. Accordingly, the Imperial In- 
 surance Office, which, to do it justice, unreservedly acknowledges 
 wild exaggeration on the part of many claimants for pensions, 
 
 49 
 
considers it humanly explicable that a patient who believes his 
 condition to be worse than it really is may resort to illegal meas- 
 ures in consequence of his fear that otherwise his injuries might 
 not be deemed sufficiently grave ; and the Office in like manner 
 explains the fact that those who receive pensions fight to the 
 bitter end to retain pensions which have once been granted them, 
 and which they often erroneously assume should be paid them 
 permanently. This is certainly an extremely mild judgment, per- 
 haps appropriate enough in the case of "children," but scarcely 
 complimentary to the modern workingman, who is, in all other 
 regards, so proud and lordly. However it may be considered in 
 the abstract, this excuse utterly fails when statements of fact 
 in regard to legal conditions are involved. This is particularly 
 true in the consideration of the problem of wages. While press 
 and convention can not lament bitterly enough the misery, the 
 starvation wages, and the grinding of the laboring classes, the 
 allegations of the insured rise to incredible heights in reckoning 
 up their pension claims, which include tips, free beer, clothing, 
 and the like to a degree and with a valuation that would fill the 
 tax commissioners with delight if they were given similar esti- 
 mates. If the present earnings of a person who has suffered in- 
 jury, but who, in consequence of improved health, should receive 
 a decrease of pension, are cited as evidence of such improved 
 health, the invariable reply is that the workingman in question 
 owes this wage simply and solely to the generosity of his noble- 
 hearted employer. The fact that, under all other circumstances, 
 "blood-sucker" is the gentlest designation vouchsafed this same 
 employer does not form the slightest barrier to this laudation, and 
 pensions bring oblations to an idol that otherwise is burned with 
 fire. 
 
 Pension lies unblushingly involve even family life. Attempts 
 are made, ever and again, to transform the wife into the employee 
 of her husband, and the husband into the employee of his wife, 
 as circumstances may demand ; brothers and sisters become serv- 
 ants ; and even children not yet four years old are alleged to be 
 regularly employed in agricultural pursuits. In his old age the 
 man who has retired from active life again becomes a plowboy, 
 and the mother-in-law who has been received into the household 
 is metamorphosed into a nurse-girl. This latter transformation 
 became especially popular since, when the invalid and old-age 
 insurance law went into effect on January I, 1891, persons who 
 had already reached the age of seventy could receive pensions 
 
 50 
 
only after proof that they had been engaged in an occupation 
 entitling them to insurance within the three years previous. The 
 clever concept doubtless emanated from Berlin, and spread like 
 wildfire over the whole Empire ; and though at first regarded as a 
 joke, since one would scarcely think of treating his mother-in-law 
 as a servant with regard to wages, stamped documents, or even 
 giving her notice to leave, yet it secured pensions for many old 
 women through benevolent consideration of the special circum- 
 stances involved. Accident insurance affected family relations in 
 another way, since, under certain conditions, it granted a pension 
 to the parents and grandparents of a man who had been killed 
 after having been insured, provided he had been their "sole sup- 
 port." The interpretative genius of the Imperial Insurance Office 
 executed one of its master-strokes in this ruling, since it assumed 
 this presupposition to be already existent if the deceased had 
 "actually and essentially been the sole support" of his ascendants 
 if he had, "in other words, protected them against poverty and 
 want." This interpretation was sanctioned by the legislator, and 
 the amendment of 1900 acknowledges that ascendants are entitled 
 to pensions if "they have been either wholly or predominantly 
 dependent for support upon the deceased." Legally, therefore, 
 those who are insured could wish for nothing more, but it now 
 becomes necessary to make the facts harmonize in every detail 
 with the demands a task which is carried out with a zeal anjd a 
 skill that would be absurd were the point at issue not so grave. 
 No matter how many children the parents may have had, the one 
 who has been killed is invariably their sole support, even if he has 
 been only a boy or an apprentice. He gave his parents every 
 pfennig that he earned, and he lived, so to speak, on air, while 
 his brothers and sisters, on the contrary, spent their wages, no 
 matter how ample they were, exclusively on themselves. Even 
 the fact that the parents in question draw an old age or invalid 
 pension does not exclude this claim, the result apparently being 
 a cynical comment upon insurance, which is supposed to protect 
 the insured against want. 
 
 This most unpleasant section of our discussion may be brought 
 to an end with the statement that in 1909 only 16.7% of the re- 
 courses of those alleging injuries were successful, and only 10.5% 
 of their retrials, these figures showing a steady tendency to de- 
 crease. This fact is, at the same time, the best proof of the 
 falsity of a charge of prejudice or exaggeration which might 
 perhaps the more easily be made since no one has hitherto dared 
 
 51 
 
to discuss these matters before the general public, although they 
 have long been familiar to the organizations concerned. 
 
 After the details just considered, the question of possible check 
 to this fraudulent method of securing pensions becomes too perti- 
 nent to be ignored. It is perfectly true that one seldom reads of 
 convictions for pension frauds ; and there are very good reasons 
 for this fact. If every individual guilty of false allegations in 
 claims for pensions were placed on trial for his offense, it would 
 be necessary to double and treble the number of our prosecuting 
 attorneys and criminal judges, with the result of nothing. Since, 
 according to the more recent system of jurisdiction, the so-called 
 factor of subjective guilt is requisite for conviction of fraud, it 
 would be necessary in every case to prove that the defendant had 
 himself been aware of the baselessness of his claim. It is obvious 
 how hard it would be to prove this to a neurotic patient, and this 
 is not the only instance where such demonstration would be diffi- 
 cult, since in all such cases the defendant might appeal, with fair 
 chances of success, to the general uncertainty prevailing not only 
 with regard to the structural details of working-men's insurance, 
 but also with regard to its aims and methods. A jury in East 
 Prussia was, therefore, entirely consistent though consistent only 
 in this limited sense when it rendered a verdict merely of in- 
 voluntary perjury against a local magistrate who, in consideration 
 of a promise that he should receive a portion of the pension, 
 falsely testified that a certain pension claimant had been in his 
 employ; for, it was alleged, the magistrate in question could 
 scarcely have foreseen the far-reaching effect of his statement 
 in so difficult a case. 
 
 This ignorance, which constitutes such a shameful symptom of 
 the political immaturity of our nation, is to be found among em- 
 ployers and employees alike, and the most amazing misconceptions 
 are current in each and every stratum of society. The workingmen 
 may be pardoned for frequently believing or at least asserting 
 that the expenses of accident insurance devolve principally, or 
 even solely, on them, since that is part and parcel of the stock 
 doctrines of the type of political economy taught by socialism. 
 It is far more grave that, despite the extraordinary facilities for 
 applying for pensions, very many of those who are insured are 
 still ignorant of the proper course of procedure in case they come 
 within the category of the actual beneficiaries of such insurance. 
 Serious blame here attaches to their teachers and guides, who 
 do not attempt impartially and accurately to explain to the work- 
 
 52 
 
ingmen these matters, which concern the laboring classes most 
 intimately and most vitally ; for it is this ignorance alone which 
 has rendered possible the development of a maleficent parasitical 
 excrescence, of which even the Imperial Insurance Office is forced 
 to complain, on the all-nurturing tree of insurance in the shape of 
 the professional counsellors in legal affairs, the so-called people's 
 advocates. It is true that modern legislation is far more kindly 
 to this profession than were, for example, the Prussian General 
 Statutes, although no one would now be willing to represent their 
 point of view. Nevertheless, it is beyond all question that the 
 most heterogeneous elements are found side by side among the 
 people's advocates, and it is not always the aristocracy of this 
 profession which devotes itself to insurance cases. The majority 
 of these individuals consider no claim too hopeless and no means 
 too vile to earn a fee. Many of them go from place to place in the 
 country, searching everywhere for pensioners and those who may 
 have suffered some injury, and egging them on to claims which 
 are often of the wildest kind. Others attend to the case 'by 
 writing from a distance, for it is a special recommendation when 
 the gentleman who thus writes in a purely private capacity has 
 himself at some time met with an accident as a workingman, a 
 fact which is particularly emphasized by addressing his communi- 
 cations to his "honored fellow sufferer." Such an individual 
 naturally knows the laws as thoroughly as he knows the wicked- 
 ness of the insurance carriers, and he is sure of an enormous 
 clientage. A private letter-writer of this type is living in one 
 of the German capitals who, in consequence of a nervous dis- 
 order caused by an accident, draws a pension for complete loss 
 of earning capacity, but who, nevertheless, if common report may 
 be believed, receives from this occupation an income of thousands 
 of marks annually. The exorbitant amounts which must often be 
 paid by the insured to this class of counsellors naturally constitute 
 a frequent basis of complaints of the great expense of obtaining 
 justice. Unfortunately, the generosity of the courts shows these 
 creatures a degree of consideration which is wholly undeserved; 
 individuals whom the smallest local courts and the youngest 
 associate justices would immediately show the door dare to 
 appear before the courts of arbitration as well as before the 
 highest court for workingmen's insurance, for the exclusion of 
 such elements, though contemplated by the law itself, is neither 
 generally accepted nor rigidly enforced. There are, in addition, 
 a great number of workingmen's syndicates, supported by the 
 
 53 
 
most divergent political organizations, and the secretaries of these 
 syndicates represent the insured without charge, and usually in 
 most unexceptional fashion. Yet the very fact that, to preserve 
 their own self-respect, they can not and do not accept each and 
 every case prevents many of those who have been insured from 
 entrusting to them the prosecution of their claims, this tending, 
 in its turn, to blunt the secretaries' sense of responsibility, and 
 again leading ultimately to an overburdening of jurisdiction. 
 
 The ignorance of those whose services underlie the whole 
 structure of insurance is a problem no less grave than the igno- 
 rance of those who are insured. It has already been implied 
 (above, page 18) that the members of the Trades Associations 
 are in many respects remiss in that active and conscientious rep- 
 resentation of their interests which is inherent in autonomy. 
 Conventions of the Trades Associations have long ceased, gener- 
 ally speaking, to attract the great attendance enjoyed, for example, 
 by festivals of choral societies, athletes, and bowlers, especially 
 as the Trades Association meetings carry with them no copious 
 drafts of beer. Only a very small minority of employers still 
 deem it worth while even to receive instruction in one of our 
 numberless clubs, and the theme of insurance is popular nowhere. 
 It has long been the regular custom for masters (whose example 
 is followed by many other employers, especially in the open 
 country) to pay the full contributions for the invalid insurance 
 of their servants, and not to subtract the half, as they may 
 optionally do; many employers are entirely unacquainted with 
 any other course of procedure, and others would doubtless be 
 absolutely ashamed to do differently. Insurance is regarded sim- 
 ply as a tax for a State institution which, as its many magnificent 
 offices, hospitals, and similar buildings prove, has more money 
 than it can spend, money intended simply and solely to free the 
 workingman from the anxieties of existence. How many great 
 and noble concepts of profound pedagogic value have been stifled 
 
 L by this false idea ! A tax might have been levied far more cheaply, 
 nor would it have required the huge army of officials, the intricate 
 mechanism of administration, or the costly system of vouchers, 
 
 \* and the like. Insurance was intended to be a right which the in- 
 sured was to help secure by his own efforts ; and in this way he 
 was to be educated to feel himself part of the nation as a whole, 
 to take part in the life of the State, and not to rely on the help 
 of others, but rather to provide for his own future. With a 
 purpose that was the fruit of ripe reflection, therefore, the origi- 
 
 54 
 
nal draft of the invalid insurance law enacted that the employer 
 was obliged to deduct from the wages paid half the sum of his 
 contributions to the insurance fund; but this time it was the 
 Reichstag that, unable to do enough in its benignity and its crav- 
 ing for popularity, changed the obligation into an authorization 
 which for wide circles remained only a dead letter. Nevertheless, 
 the concept itself is not yet entirely forgotten, and only recently 
 the Chamber of Commerce at Frankfort-on-the-Oder, opposing 
 a projected insurance law for private officials, has set forth in 
 detail how "overstraining State protection involves the grave v 
 peril of crippling more and more that feeling of personal re- 
 sponsibility which is so powerful an incentive to economic y, 
 activity." 
 
 If even the State has been unable to curb its complaisance 
 toward the "so-called poor man," the blind philanthropy of our 
 generation, which has already led to so many errors, and which 
 has become a favorite theme for the comic stage, can not, of 
 course, lag behind. In workingmen's insurance it speedily found 
 a new field for its activity, and neither before nor since has the 
 fine Latin proverb, "Facile est de alieno largiri" received such 
 brilliant demonstration. Many clergymen, physicians, and others 
 of all sorts and conditions offered themselves as advisers of the 
 insured, their lack of technical knowledge being compensated by 
 social sentiment ; and the petitions of these intruders often revel, 
 characteristically enough, in the maddest accusations against the 
 insurance carriers. Such charges read as though that envy of 
 the propertyless classes which is now proverbial had infected 
 wide circles, and as though workingmen's insurance were to be 
 made a means to wrest from the hated wholesale industries some 
 of their superfluity another echo of the conventions of our 
 theoretical socialists. Of grave significance, though in another 
 direction, was the position taken by our nation after the terrible 
 disaster in the Radbod mines, a position which was, moreover, 
 a bitter proof of the type of our social insight. The moral effect 
 of the horrifying fact that a large number of men in the prime 
 of life had there suddenly been killed, probably with the utmost 
 agony, was wholly obscured by the outpouring of an absolutely 
 senseless sympathy with the fancied financial needs of the sur- 
 vivors. In this regard too much could not be done ; the petitions 
 vied with each other in picturing the distress of the families of 
 the dead miners; but no one gave a thought to workingmen's 
 insurance, which at once intervened and expended lavish sums. 
 
 55 
 
There were, at most, only one or two political economy journals 
 that tardily found time and courage to refer to this shameful fact. 
 It is particularly lamentable that many of the very men who, 
 by reason of their profession, should be thoroughly familiar with 
 the matter are not free from that uncertainty regarding the aim 
 and object of accident insurance which is here criticized. Many 
 attorneys, for example, continue to liquidate claims according 
 to the general fee regulation, and submit stamped powers of 
 attorney regardless of special rules to the contrary. One of these 
 gentlemen recently came in person from the Rhine to Berlin 
 to plead a hernia case which, according to the system of juris- 
 diction recognized for many years, was hopeless; and he was 
 extremely astonished to hear the judge reprove a workingman 
 for ignorance of this jurisdiction. In the case of local magis- 
 trates the determination to help their fellow residents, combined 
 with the prevalent opinion that insurance has more money than it 
 can use, often tends completely to obscure, in amazing fashion, 
 the concept of right and the love of truth (see above, page 52). 
 Here again the Imperial Insurance Office affords a confirmation 
 which seems to become the more cogent the more tortuously it 
 is construed. As one of the reasons for the excessive increase 
 both in invalid and in agricultural accident pensions the Office 
 designates "the insufficient knowledge which still prevails in 
 every quarter regarding the principles which regulate the treat- 
 ment and the decision of pension cases." It is true that these 
 statements are to some degree extenuated by the promise with 
 which the legislator once recommended his results to the general 
 public, that workingmen's insurance would aid in lessening the 
 burdens of the poor. Curiously enough, very little is now heard 
 regarding this promise. Even the literature upon it is extremely 
 scanty, and is practically restricted to a theoretical discussion 
 as to how insurance should or can diminish the burdens of poor 
 relief; the extent to which this result is actually attained is, as 
 a rule, entirely ignored. The most recent and very careful 
 study in this field (by Zahn, in the Bulletin des assurances sociales \ 
 for 1910) seeks to prove, it is true, that this diminution of burdens 
 has actually been effected, and it is alleged that a similar admis- 
 sion is made by those engaged in poor relief and in the insurance 
 institutions. When, however, Zahn closes with the declaration 
 that "In reality expenditures for the poor have increased almost 
 everywhere, both as regards the number of those who are sup- 
 ported and as regards the degree of support which is given in 
 
 56 
 
individual cases," it is scarcely possible to avoid the inference 
 that this is yet another of the blessings of insurance which have 
 utterly failed to be realized ; and the absolute silence of the Im- 
 perial Insurance Office regarding this matter is highly significant. 
 Attention has already been drawn (above, page 49) to the 
 difficult situation of the physicians, who stand between the insured 
 who wishes to retain his pension and the insurance carrier who 
 wishes to cancel it. The struggles of the physicians with the sick 
 funds already constitute almost a standing rubric in our news- 
 papers, and both together are amply sufficient to show the danger 
 which confronts this noble and important profession the danger 
 of forfeiting both their own self-respect and the esteem of the 
 public; and this danger is gravely increased in yet other respects 
 by workingmen's insurance. Naturally the social zeal of the day 
 casts its spell over many physicians and leads them to play the 
 role of benefactors of the poor of course, at the expense of the 
 Trades Associations. Many expert opinions, even by recognized 
 authorities, by men who, standing in the limelight of public life, 
 ought rightly to estimate the importance of their tasks and the 
 limitations of their special knowledge, read like partizan screeds ; 
 and their authors, abandoning the domain of their own profession, 
 revel in legal arguments which, however, as is proverbially the 
 case, almost invariably conclude unfavorably to jurisprudence. 
 Yet it is only in the most sporadic instances that there is demon- 
 strable evidence of conscious prejudice in favor of the pension 
 claimant personally, or even against the purse of the insurance 
 carrier. Nevertheless, it is occasionally possible to see, by dint 
 of long practice, that a certain expert opinion has been colored 
 in the interests of political partizanship or because the plaintiff 
 is a fellow countryman of the physician in question; and the 
 fact that the services of a particular physician are invoked with 
 peculiar frequency by those who are insured often serves as an 
 indication of his trustworthiness. A physician who has the 
 reputation of being "generous" in his diagnoses of those who 
 have been injured by accidents is certain of a host of patients, 
 and the courts of honor of the medical profession have repeat- 
 edly been forced to interfere, since this generosity has led to a 
 suspicious disturbance of scientific knowledge. A melancholy 
 counterpart is furnished by the numerous cases in which a 
 physician of probity renders an expert opinion unfavorable to 
 the pension claimant, begging that the claimant in question be 
 kept in ignorance of this opinion, since otherwise the physician 
 
 57 
 
concerned would lose his practice, while his neighborhood would 
 be made too hot to hold him. 
 
 It is practically undeniable that there is some internal con- 
 nection between the excessive benevolence of the jurisdiction, 
 the untruthfulness of the pension claimants, and the ignorance 
 of the general public, however divergent these factors may be 
 deemed, especially in their ethical aspects. The root of the entire 
 evil is that the legal character of the whole system of working- 
 men's insurance, though primarily developed in exact detail, has 
 not become a vital force, and the almost senile trait of indolence, 
 so characteristic of our age, has allowed a perilous development 
 of the germ latent in this root. No estimate of the practical 
 efficiency of workingmen's insurance can altogether ignore the 
 ethical intentions regarded by the legislator as a necessary com- 
 ponent of his task, even though precise valuation of these inten- 
 tions perhaps falls less within the scope of technical knowledge 
 than within that of feeling and political insight. Not only are 
 the ethical effects inextricably confused with the material, as has 
 already repeatedly been shown in the course of the discussion, 
 but the hope of favorable results within the ethical sphere itself 
 was, in the last analysis, the strongest incentive to make the 
 great hazard and, to adopt the phrase of the time, to take the 
 leap into the dark. One of these effects was to be a reconciliation 
 of social antitheses and a restoration of internal peace. The 
 actual result in this respect has been, unfortunately, utter failure. 
 Those who are insured refuse to recognize the protection and 
 assistance afforded them by the insurance laws. Again and again 
 the speeches of their leaders and that portion of the press 
 which ostensibly represents their interests repeat the insults 
 with which the Sozialdemokrat once hailed Bismarck's great 
 work of reform; yet it is in itself a high compliment to 
 characterize as an "improved poor relief" a legislation intended 
 and adapted expressly to protect the financially weak against 
 the humiliation of poor relief. And while in workingmen's 
 insurance we have before our eyes, in daily, blissful opera- 
 tion, the most towering structure of the inequality of the law 
 as may be learned simply from the section on promotion of 
 welfare in the report of the Imperial Insurance Office the idiotic 
 charge of "robbery of the people's rights" pursues its way un- 
 checked. There is an element of tragedy in the bold public 
 declaration of the Secretary of State for the Interior on February 
 18, 1910: "It has proved impossible for us to bridge the deep 
 
 58 
 
gap rent by the economic struggles of recent decades." Un- 
 fortunately, we may go still further, and, in harmony with the 
 monograph of Ritter to which allusion has already been made 
 (above, page 18), the Denkschrift des Verbandes deutscher 
 Baugewerks-Berufsgenossenschaften zur Jubelfeier der Unfall- 
 versicherung, and many other expressions of opinion, we must 
 hold workingmen's insurance guilty of essential aggravation of 
 the general unrest. No law can help all who desire its aid, not 
 even all who rightly desire such aid; nor can any law exclude 
 all who are unworthy. If, in addition to all this, insurance juris- 
 diction is liable, as has been shown, to the influence of vague 
 subjective considerations, the granting, denial, and cancellation 
 of pensions only contribute, in countless cases, to the shattering 
 of the faith of the honorable and the dishonorable alike, both 
 in the justice and in the efficiency of our State institutions. Nor 
 is this all. By virtue of the marvelous self-equalization inherent 
 in the universe, every exaggeration produces a corresponding 
 counteraction. Even the most benevolent minds, firmly con- 
 vinced that all that is done by way of social protection is done 
 for conscience' sake and as a Christian duty, are beginning to ask 
 whether the ends which have demanded such great sacrifices of 
 freedom, toil, and money have really been attained. If, then, 
 the answer is "No," they begin to be weary of the excess of pro- 
 tection that has been lavished on the insured, and they begin to 
 think, "We, too, are still here." They compare their position 
 with that of the workingmen, and find that they can not pamper 
 themselves with such magnificent medical aid or such expensive 
 nursing, nor can they look forward to the future and its vicissi- 
 tudes with an equal degree of unconcern. They next find these 
 heavy expenditures irreconcilable with the repeated promises 
 of protection for the middle classes, and they accuse the Govern- 
 ment of untrustworthiness, thus strengthening the sullen discon- 
 tent which is so perilous for the State since it cripples many 
 forces of great value; and sometimes, with a perversity that is 
 only too common, they even become supporters of Social De- 
 mocracy. In any event the party of revolution is here again helped 
 to victory by the very institution created to combat it. Unhappily, 
 neither the way of escape from this vicious circle, which has 
 already repeatedly been mentioned, nor the method which should 
 be employed to attain the lofty end desired is obvious. Especially 
 deep and this is the last point is the silence which broods over 
 a concept frequently expressed in essential portions of the insur- 
 
 59 
 
ance laws if the State protects its citizens against anxiety and 
 want by assuring them an ample livelihood, it is also justified in 
 opposing with a double measure of decision all attempts at 
 revolution. That in affording this protection the State has done 
 all that is humanly possible, and that nowhere else on earth has 
 this degree of protection been even distantly approximated, is 
 too evident to require demonstration here. On the other hand, 
 there is no record that it has ever made any use whatsoever of 
 its right of self-defence. 
 
 On the basis of a service of more than twenty years in the 
 governing board, I have sought to set forth the operation of our 
 workingmen's insurance, not, as it might appear to the super- 
 ficial observer, as its juristic, economic, or political foe, or even 
 as the blind fool who fails to recognize that the blessings of 
 this insurance can not be adequately described even by the usual 
 phrases of unconditional laudation. But I have been faithful 
 to the concept which has become a part of me, which I have 
 retained from my service as a judge, and which I have repre- 
 sented unwaveringly from the beginning to the end of my activity 
 that justice should not be subordinated to mere kindly feelings ; 
 and I have written in the hope that I might render, even now, 
 some aid, even though it be but small, to this great achievement 
 to which I once devoted myself with joy and with enthusiasm. 
 
 It has been felt by many to be a faulty feature of my study that 
 I have not entered upon the question of what is next to be done, 
 and how the unhappy features whose existence is tacitly granted 
 by every one may be abolished. Though the answer falls, strictly 
 speaking, outside the scope of my article, a few words may, 
 nevertheless, be devoted to the problem. This question has only 
 too much justification so long as the Pandora's box of social poli- 
 tics is unexhausted, which is by no means the case. Unceasingly 
 resounding, and an especial favorite as a bid for votes, the demand 
 for "perfecting insurance" the insurance of survivors is an 
 old promise of more than one party; the insurance of private 
 employees is as enthusiastically desired in some quarters as it 
 is emphatically repudiated in others; and the fair Utopia of in- 
 surance of the unemployed is pressing hard upon the municipal 
 communities. In addition to all this, labor has long been ex- 
 pended on that great Imperial Insurance Regulation from which 
 optimistic souls expect the fulfillment of every wish within 
 this sphere. Whatever portion of these plans succeed or fail, 
 first of all the organization must be simplified, and simplified 
 
 60 
 
essentially. Only the smallest minority have even the faintest 
 concept of the absolutely enormous machinery which insurance 
 maintains. In addition to the Imperial Insurance Office there 
 are eight District Insurance Offices, which, with a delimitation 
 of functions that is by no means always clear, supervise 66 indus- 
 trial Trades Associations with 14 insurance institutions, 48 agri- 
 cultural Trades Associations, and 209 Imperial and State ex- 
 ecutive committees, as well as 545 municipal executive com- 
 mittees, which the district central authorities have declared com- 
 petent to assume the burdens arising from accident insurance ; 
 besides which invalid insurance has 31 insurance institutions and 
 10 funds. It may readily be imagined what an army of officials 
 of the most various ranks is required by this organization, and 
 what mountains of paper and oceans of ink are conquered by 
 such a host. Even this is not all, for there are still the innumer- 
 able sick funds and the officials employed in these tasks by the 
 State and municipal authorities. To remedy this condition of 
 affairs appears to me to be the most important problem of all, 
 especially as this would perhaps realize the desire of the Imperial 
 Insurance Office to be relieved of the burden of jurisdiction, and 
 also Rosin's idea that accident insurance is really superfluous. 
 This does not imply that the Trades Associations should be abol- 
 ished. That would be the most serious mistake that could be made, 
 for if anything has stood the test, it has been the Trades Associa- 
 tions, and they are indispensable as being the most appropriate 
 representatives of circles which now, despite all juggling with 
 figures on the part of their opponents, bear by far the greatest bur- 
 den of the expenses of insurance. But will "the legislator" have 
 the courage to resort to measures that shall be really incisive? 
 And will the reform that is desired not be ruined, as so many other 
 projects have been, by the curse of the parliamentary craze for 
 making law ? It would seem so, and yet no tears should be shed 
 for that. It is better to labor on with the old laws, faulty though 
 they be, and with the old organization, despite its clumsiness, than 
 to experiment anew with creations still more awkward, and 
 devoid of a uniform guiding concept. Yet, after all, practical 
 results are the main thing; with the best of laws they can work 
 calamity, and with the worst of laws they can fulfill their pur- 
 pose. Here we would again reach the conclusions with which 
 I have already (above, page 58) summarized the results of my 
 criticisms. The source of the trouble lies, when rightly con- 
 sidered, within the political sphere, on which it is neither the 
 
 61 
 
province nor the purpose of my task to enter. Even in this 
 respect I have doubtless made my position sufficiently clear, and 
 it is only to avoid all suspicion of cowardice that I state it once 
 again : workingmen's insurance can be truly beneficial in its 
 operation only when, free from all exaggeration and excess, and 
 especially from conscious or unconscious subservience to the 
 lower classes, it works as an institution of the State, as impartial 
 as every other kindred institution. 
 
 In an age which, in Prince Billow's words, can not abase itself 
 low enough before "King Mob," this judgment has scant pros- 
 pect of success. This was self-evident to me from the very 
 instant that I began my task, yet I deem it a deed well done to 
 have called attention once again to the all-pervading cancer that 
 is destroying the vitals of our State. 
 
 Full boldly have I dared, 
 And I repent me not! 
 
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