AMEEICAN SOCIAL PROGRESS SERIES SOCIAL INSURANCE A PROGRAM OF SOCIAL REFORM BY HENRY ROGERS SEAGER PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL ECONOMY IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY THE KENNEDY LECTUKES FOR 1910, IN THE SCHOOL OP PHILANTHROPY, CONDUCTED BY THE CHARITY ORGANIZATION SOCIETY OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1921 AJU rights reserved COPTBIOHT, 1910, BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and clectrotypcd. Published June, 1910. J. 8. Cashing Co. Berwick A Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U. S. A. PKEPACB THE chapters which follow reproduce, with slight modifications, six lectures delivered on the John Stuart Kennedy Foundation in New York in Feb ruary, 1910. Addressed to students of the School of Philanthropy, they treat of problems that in terest particularly workers among the poor. The policies which they advocate are new and untried only in the sense that they have not yet been intro duced in the United States. Most of them are in actual operation in other countries, and every year adds to the available information in regard to their tendencies and effects. It has seemed to me that the time was oppor tune for bringing these policies together into a constructive program of social reform. The evils to which they relate are of growing importance in the United States. If we can cope with them along the lines suggested, not only will much misery and suffering be averted, but the time, thought, and money that are now expended in trying to PREFACE relieve this misery and suffering will be available for other purposes. It was with the hope that they might contribute something toward this end that the lectures were first conceived, and in the same hope they are now offered to a larger public, NEW YORK, March, 1910. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGB I. THE COMMON WELFARE .... 1 II. INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENTS, ILLNESS, AND PRE MATURE DEATH PREVENTION . . 24 III. INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENTS, ILLNESS, AND PRE MATURE DEATH COMPENSATION . . 53 IV. UNEMPLOYMENT CAUSES AND REMEDIES . 84 V. PROVISION FOR OLD AGE . . . .115 VI. NEXT STEPS IN SOCIAL ADVANCE 1 . . 146 SOCIAL INSURANCE CHAPTER I THE COMMON WELFARE AMONG the many characteristics which foreign observers have ascribed to Americans are two about which there has been little difference of opinion. We are good-natured, and we are indi vidualists. Sermons have been preached against our good nature, so I need not dwell upon it. Much more important is our individualism, our absorp tion in individual interests and our reluctance to undertake things in combination with our neighbors or through the government. That individualism is an American characteristic is proved by a number of familiar facts. Thus, the phrase, social re form, w r hich, in other countries, suggests compre hensive plans of state action, is still usually associated in the United States with the welfare departments of private corporations, privately endowed schools of philanthropy, or such splendid examples of private beneficence as the Russell Sage in SOCIAL INSURANCE Foundation. Again, the cooperative movement, which has made such signal progress in Europe, is in its infancy here. Finally, socialism, the extreme antithesis of individualism, numbers fewer converts relatively to the population in the United States than in any other country of the Western World. Like every other national trait, this characteris tic may be traced to definite causes in our history. If individualism is not the normal attribute of a new country, 1 it is at least a natural consequence of the process by which this particular new country has grown up. The population of the United States is practically all of foreign origin. Generally speak ing, only self-centered and self-reliant characters break the social bonds that hold them at home, leave neighbors and friends, and stake everything on the doubtful venture of emigrating to a new land... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.