But the organization of labor and the creation of elaborate machinery has destroyed this presumption of the common sense, and therefore in all civilized countries has destroyed this presumption of law.  When a railway train runs off the track because of a misplaced switch or a defective rail, there is no presumption that the engineer was careless or could have guarded against the carelessness of the switch tender or of the manufacturer of the rail.  When a fire breaks out in a room where scores of shirt-waist makers are confined at their work and a hundred and forty of them are burned to death, there is no presumption that the impossibility of their escape through narrow passageways and a locked door was due to their carelessness, or that they were to blame because the tables at which they were working were wood, not metal, or that they could have prevented the careless fellow workman from throwing his cigarette down in the inflammable material which surrounded them.  In fact, only a very limited number of modern accidents are due to the carelessness of the injured party; probably a somewhat larger number are due to the carelessness of some other employee; while a very considerable proportion are incidents of the trade and due to no definite culpability which it is possible to trace home either to the employer or the employed.

The Christian nations of the world have, with singular unanimity, recognized this change, and have changed their laws to meet the new conditions.  The change which they have made was indicated to them by their maritime laws, which in this respect have been alike in all civilized nations and from a very early period.  An accident occurring to a sailor on shipboard has always been regarded as an accident to the ship; and the ship has always been required to bear the burden of his care and keep and cure.  This right to be cared for does not rest on any assumption that the master of the ship has been negligent, nor is the seaman deprived of his right to care and keep and cure by proof that the accident was due in part, or even altogether, to his negligence.  He is not debarred from recovery by proof of his carelessness; he is not given larger damages upon proof of the negligence of the master.  His right to be cared for rests, says Mr. Justice Story, upon the fact that “seamen are in some sort co-adventurers upon the voyage.”  Modern jurisprudence throughout Christendom recognizes that under modern industrial conditions the workman in the railway, the mine, and the factory is a co-adventurer in the enterprise, and that the hazards incident to his employment should be borne, not by the individual, but by the industry.  This principle is now recognized and incorporated in their legal, systems by every country in Europe (including Russia but not Turkey) with the single exception of Switzerland.[76]