The writer is strongly of opinion that this radical reform is, so far as constitutional, the end to be aimed at.  The immense expense and waste caused by present litigation, the complete uncertainty both as to liability and as to the amount of damages, the general fraud, oppression, and deceit that the present system leads to, and finally its hideous waste and extravagance, are all reasons for doing away with it entirely.  He believes that for the employer’s own benefit if there were a statute with a definite scale of damages, providing definitely, and as part of the employment contract if necessary, with a certain small deduction from the wages, that there should be insurance, that the master should be actually liable on a fixed scale for all injuries suffered while in his employment not in disobedience to his orders or solely and grossly negligent, it would be far better both for employer and employee.  To-day it is possible that in many cases the employee gets no damages or is cheated out of them, or they are wasted in litigation expense (the Indiana Bar Association reported this year that only about thirty per cent. of the damages actually recovered of the employer reaches the party injured); while on the other hand the master can never know for how much he is going to be liable, and in the rare cases which get to a jury they are apt to find an excessive verdict.  It is the custom with most gentlemen to pay a reasonable allowance to any servant injured while in their employ, unless directly disobedient of orders.  There is no practical reason why this moral obligation should not be embodied in a statute and extended to everybody.  The scale of damages should of course be put so low as not to encourage persons to expose themselves, still less their own children, to injury in the hope of getting monetary compensation.  But although in India we are told the natives throw themselves under the wheels of automobiles, it is not probable that in American civilization there would be serious abuse of the law in this particular.  Five thousand dollars, for instance, for loss of life or limb or eye, with a scale going down, as does the German law, to a mere compensation for time lost and medical attendance in ordinary injuries, would be sufficient in equity and would surely not encourage persons voluntarily to maim themselves.

The next great line of legislation concerns the mode of payment of wages.  The amount, as has been said, is never regulated; but it has been customary for nearly a century for the law to require payment in cash, or at least that it be not compulsorily made in goods or supplies, or still worse in store orders.  This line of legislation is commonly known as the anti-truck laws and exists in most States, but has been strenuously opposed in the South and Southwest as interfering with the liberty of contract, so that in those more conservative States the courts have very often nullified such legislation.  It may be summarized as follows: