The justice and importance of this reform have been recognized by such statesmen as the President of the United States and his predecessor in office, by such lawyers as Elihu Root, by workmen who desire some better insurance against accident than is furnished them by a right to sue their employers, by employers who desire to be protected from vexatious lawsuits and the peril of verdicts for great sums, and by about half a dozen states, including Kansas, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and New York, all of which have passed Workmen’s Compensation Acts.  Such an act, shifting the responsibility for the risks which are incident to the trade in organized industry from the individual to the organization, the New York Court of Appeals declares no state in the Union has authority to enact, because the Constitution of the United States forbids its enactment.  The Court recognizes the need for a change in the Law.  “We desire,” says the Court, “to present no purely technical or hypercritical obstacles to any plan for the beneficent reformation of a branch of our jurisprudence in which, it may be conceded, reform is a consummation devoutly to be wished.”  It presents forcibly, appreciatively, and apparently with entire approbation, the arguments which have brought about this reform in other lands:  “There can be no doubt as to the theory of this law.  It is based upon the proposition that the inherent risks of an employment should, in justice, be placed upon the shoulders of the employer, who can protect himself against loss by insurance, and by such an addition to the price of his wares as to cast the burden ultimately upon the consumer; that indemnity to an injured employee should be as much a charge upon the business as the cost of replacing or repairing disabled or defective machinery, appliances, or tools; that under our present system the loss falls immediately upon the employee, who is almost invariably unable to bear it, and ultimately upon the community, which is taxed for the support of the indigent; and that our present system is uncertain, unscientific, and wasteful, and fosters a spirit of antagonism between employer and employee which it is for the interest of the state to remedy.”

To these considerations the Court suggests no reply, and upon them it offers no criticism.  On the contrary, it in terms concedes “the strength of this appeal to recognized and widely prevalent sentiment.”  It declares that “no word of praise could overstate the industry and Intelligence of the Commission” which prepared the New York law, and it apparently agrees with the conclusion of the Commission, based on “a most voluminous array of statistical tables, extracts from the works of philosophical writers, and the industrial laws of many countries”—­the conclusion that “our own system of dealing with industrial accidents is economically, morally, and legally unsound.”  But all these considerations of public policy, social justice, and world-wide conviction