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Show Hj ' PROGRESSIVES NOT DREAMERS. B ' ! "The point is," says the Saturday Evening Post, "that we are H j j the most conservative people on earth. Our radical doctrines are H called conservative in most other countries ' B ' Do you get the full meaniug of that, asks an eastern writer. In H t 'J the matter of social legislation, of making the government of use to ius, we are mossback conservatives in the United States. Take the parcels post, for instance. For years Great Britain and the most of the nations of Europe have had a system far more. fl liberal than' the one this country will begin timidly experimenting Hv j with next January. The postal savings bank was an old institution, K j accross the Atlantic before the United States established it. K l Some persons have referred to the social program of the Pro- B gressive party as full of radical innovations. That is because they H' are ignorant. They do not know what is going on in the world. H Consider the question of industrial accidents. Dr. R. R. Seager, 1 an expert, reports that as regards occupations generally accidents f j are nearly twice as common in the United States in proportion to the Hk ' ' number employed as they arc in the United Kingdom and Germany, ' and as regards railroads, they are nearly three times as common. Kf i i The number of industrial accidents abroad has been reduced by H ' governmental supervision, such as is proposed in tho Progressive H' j platform. w . In most states of the Union an injured workman must still go Hj j through the uncertainty of an expensive lawsuit to recover damages. H ' Only a few of the states have enacted workmen's compensation laws HTj , under which the injured man is paid at once and automatically a sum K, of money for the accident, without the intervention of a lawyer. m But as far back as 1884: Germany substituted for employers' lia- r' i bility compulsory insurance under which workmen arc entitled to " I indemnity whatever the cause of the accident. Germany's example M ' was followed three years later by Austria. England enacted a work- H i men's compensation law in 1897 ; France and Denmark in 189S ; Italy H ' ! and Belgium in 1903, and Russia in 1903. Even Russia I 1 In twenty-eight years more than twenty countrios adopted some 1 jform of compensation to transfer the cost of industrial accidents H from the workmen to the industry. Hl I ! Yefc tue United States has been so negligent that the advocacy HiT j i "workmen's compensation legislation is a prominent part of the Progressive program. rf, H( ' Involuntary unemployment causes vast amount of misery .among families of workers. Germany long ago established a chain H o co-operating labor bureaus throughout the empire. In addition various German cities have worked out a system of insurance against unemployment. In Switzerland, Holland, Belgium and Denmark much progress has been made along these lines: England has re- cently enacted an elaborate act for the insurance against unemployment unemploy-ment of about 2 1-2 million workmen in trades that suffer most from fluctuation';. This is smother problem that the Progressive program deals with. In providing against the exigencies of old sige other countries have gone much furl her than the United States. Germany introduced intro-duced compulsory old age insurance in 1SS9 Denmark enacted a similar law two years Inter. New Zealand undertook old age pensions pen-sions in 189S and ten years later the entire Australian commonwealth introduced the system. In the same year the old age pension plair was adopted in England by the Liberal government. Today not even the Conservatives attack it. This country has had to wait the organization the Progressive Progres-sive party to deal with the question. rinimum wage legislation was introduced into Australia sixteen six-teen years ago. it found its way into the laws of the mother country coun-try in the Trade Buards Act of 3909. The Progressives are now calling the attention of the country to the problem of the living wage. The Progressive program for social and industrial justice marks a tremendous advance toward better conditions. Much of it is rcln-Ihely rcln-Ihely novel in this country. But not a single proposal is made in the Progressive platform that has not been tried out and found toi promote the common good, either in some one of the states or in one of the great industrial nations of the Old "World. In the lighL of experience abroad, the Progressive proposals are of the most conservative type. There is nothing experimental about them. It is only people who arc living still in the middle of the last" century, and have no idea what the world is doing, who call them "radical." |
