future attention of the Supreme Court of the United States," and concluded with citations of the decisions of the various courts sustaining compensation laws and other decisions bearing on points of law of like nature.1

The Supreme Court of Illinois avoided the issue by declaring that the compensation law of that State was not an exercise of police power, but simply offered the parties concerned a method of settlement of cases falling within its purview. (Deibeikis v. Link-Belt Co.) The Supreme Court of Rhode Island, on the other hand (Sayles v. Foley), declared that the law of that State was a warranted exercise of the police power, taking modern industrial conditions into consideration.

It is obvious that a large part of the discussion presented in the preceding pages under the various heads relates to subjects that might be considered under this head of police power, and are summed up in this conclusion of the Rhode Island court. Indeed, it was conceded by the Court of Appeals of New York in its acknowledgment of the cogency of the economic and equitable reasons for the enactment of a compensation law, while declaring such a statute unconstitutional (Ives v. South Buffalo Ry. Co.). This fact is pointed out by the Supreme Court of New Hampshire in its statement that the opinion in the Ives case supports all the provisions of such a law as that enacted by the New Hampshire Legislature. (Wheeler v. Contoocook Mills.)

PARTICULAR PROVISIONS OF THE LAWS.

Besides questions of a more general nature, as the foregoing, numerous decisions have been made by the courts construing particular phrases and features of the laws, and determining their application to particular cases. Where industrial commissions and administrative boards exist, charged with the duty of deciding controversies under the acts, rulings, and opinions are formulated, and these also are available as setting forth the scope and method of the laws in their practical working. It would be both undesirable and impractical to attempt a complete survey of this field in the present bulletin, but inasmuch as the construction of a statute is of no less vital importance than its terms, some account will here be given of the action taken by the various courts and administrative bodies with reference to a number of the specific provisions of the laws.

INJURIES COMPENSATED.

As to the class of injuries compensated, the natural conclusion from the fact of the enactment of compensation laws to supersede

1 The case, State v. Mountain Timber Co., was argued before the Supreme Court in March, 1916, but was not decided. Reargument was ordered Nov. 13, 1916, Jan. 22, 1917, being subsequently set therefor, and for New York, New Jersey, and Iowa cases also before the court.

those governing the employer's liability would be that only injuries due to accident are covered by the acts. Indeed, in most of the laws this is specifically stated, and carefully chosen language is used in several with the obvious intent of excluding what are commonly known as occupational diseases and the results of cumulative processes as distinguished from the immediate results of single accidental occurrences. In a few jurisdictions, however, only the word " injury ” or the phrase "personal injury" occurs, and in such cases the field would seem to lie open for the inclusion of any physical disability occasioned by the nature and conditions of the employment, thus permitting awards for occupational diseases. The qualifying term "accidental" does not appear in the laws of California (as amended, 1915), Connecticut, Massachusetts, Ohio, the Philippine Islands, Texas, West Virginia, and the Federal statutes of 1908 and 1916. In Wyoming the definition is obscure, the words "injury and personal injury" being declared not to include "a disease except as it shall directly result from an injury incurred in the employment." This is obviously a definition in the terms of the thing defined, but it seems probable that the intent was to exclude other than accidental injuries. This construction is supported by the reports required when " an accident occurs causing injury "; also in some degree by the title of the State fund for insurance, i. e., "industrial accident fund."

As originally enacted, the California statute contained the word "accident," and was consistently construed on that basis, though the industrial accident commission by a vote of 2 to 1 granted compensation in a case of loss of vision through wood-alcohol poisoning occasioned by the inhalation of vapors by a workman who used considerable amounts of wood alcohol, and especially at a time just preceding the discovery of the serious consequences induced thereby. Dermatitis on the hands of a chambermaid in a hotel was regarded as an occupational disease, though not one usually arising out of the employment, and compensation was not allowed on the ground that it was necessary that there should have been a well-defined accident out of which the disability arose. By amendment, however, the word "accident" and the phrase "happening of an accident" have been stricken out and the word "injury " and the phrase "suffering of an injury" substituted therefor. While the intent of such amendments is doubtless to open the way for awards in cases of occupational disease, no ruling of the Industrial Accident Commission or of the courts of the State is at hand to support this conclusion, though the brief time that has elapsed since the amendments became effective (Aug. 8, 1915) easily accounts for this fact.

Accidents. The term "accident" can hardly be said to have any peculiar meaning in laws of this class, but for statistical purposes

the compensation commission of New York defines an industrial accident as one which causes loss of time from work or which requires medical aid, and orders that all such accidents be reported.

Whether sunstroke should be classed as an accidental injury is considered by the administrative authorities of several States, the California Industrial Commission saying that as a general rule injuries suffered from so-called acts of God, such as sunstroke, freezing, lightning, wind, etc., are not compensable, since they are risks which the whole citizenry takes; circumstances in the instant case were held to warrant an award for sunstroke, the workman having been engaged in removing cement from a warehouse with an iron roof and no windows, the thermometer standing at 105°. The Illinois board gave compensation to a laborer digging in a trench and overcome by heat, stating that a rational and reasonable conclusion is that the prostration would not have occurred had he not been so employed. This board took the same view of the case of a stationary engineer, whose death was reported due to heat prostration, he having worked in a poorly ventilated room, with a temperature of about 120°. The Iowa board ruled in one case that heat prostration was not an injury within the act, there being no extraordinary hazard or exposure to heat on account of the laborer's employment; but ruled in another case that "where the employee sustains such injury when put to work at a task which peculiarly exposes him to such injury, he should be paid the compensation provided for in the act." The commissioner of labor of Minnesota, in passing upon this question, reaches the conclusion that where heatstroke or sunstroke is due to the conditions of employment rather than to physical weakness on the part of the injured person, it is an accident within the provisions of the compensation law. The industrial commission of Ohio awarded compensation for heat prostration of a roller in an iron mill, holding that it was an injury within the meaning of the act, though it was held that sunstroke, in the absence of special conditions artificially produced, would not support an award.

The rule as to injury by freezing or frostbite would naturally be the same. A compensation commissioner of Connecticut ruled that a collector driving long distances in very cold weather was exposed to such hazard as to warrant an award for freezing followed by erysipelas and death. This was affirmed by the supreme court of the State. (Larke v. Insurance Co., 97 Atl. 320.) The same commissioner, however, denied the claim of a night watchman who suffered frostbite of a toe while bringing coal from a storage shed into the boiler room of the establishment. The Massachusetts Industrial Accident Board made awards for freezing where outdoor employment led to the exposure of the employee, and the supreme court of the State 42704°-17-13

affirmed an award in favor of a longshoreman whose hands were frozen while at work at a wharf, the view being adopted that he was exposed to materially greater danger of freezing than the ordinary outdoor worker. (In re McManaman, 113 N. E. 287.) The industrial accident board of Montana took a similar position, saying that where an accident is due to forces of nature which might have been anticipated or foreseen there must be present some aggravation of the hazard whereby the workman is more exposed to danger as a result of his employment than is the ordinary man; but if the employment entails such unusual degree of exposure there is liability for the injurious consequences.

The compensation commission of New York took a similar view in the case of a loader of logs in the woods, and also in the case of an ice harvester. The latter award was made prior to the ruling in the Aylesworth case (p. 209), after which an award in that employment could not have been made until the amendment of 1916, which names ice harvesting as an occupation to which the act applies. The Wisconsin commission lays down the rule as to frostbite in practically the terms used by the Montana board.

That there was no ground for an award was the opinion of the commissioner of labor of Minnesota in a case in which there was an abscess due to ink or metal poisoning where there was no break or infection due to accident, the commissioner saying that "If there was no breach of the surface of the body due to accident and through which the infection or poisoning takes place, it does not come within the meaning of the act." Likewise adverse was the ruling of the compensation commissioner of West Virginia in a case where a coal miner was overcome by smoke on account of returning to his working place too soon after the firing of a shot; and the law of this State was held not to cover the case of a miner suffering from an abraded bunion infected by the poison of bank water in a mine, though claims were allowed for ulcerated eyes caused by the splashing of such water into the eyes of a miner while pulling down coal, and where carbolineum used to preserve the crossarms of a telegraph pole got into a lineman's eyes and face, causing abscesses. The compensation board of Pennsylvania also allowed compensation in a case where a workman was poisoned by sumac in a skin which he was handling, dermatitis and disability resulting. The board ruled that the injury was sudden, not a disease and not a secondary result, but due to a cause proceeding from without and encountered in the course of service.

The condition of a breach of the surface of the body prescribed by the labor commissioner of Minnesota seems to have been met in a case passed upon by the industrial commission of Ohio in which an employee handling goods claimed to have incurred blood poisoning

by scratching her face with her fingers, this being held not to be an occupational disease, but an accidental injury. That lesion is not required by the industrial commission of California as a basis of awards appears from favorable rulings in two cases passed upon by that body, one being that of a man who appeared to be suffering from nervous shock due to efforts to rescue fellow workmen from suffocation in a septic tank, two having been killed and the superintendent nearly so. It was said that the risk of such experiences was involved in any employment and should be compensated if it directly causes injury. In the other case there was no apparent serious injury, but an apparently sincere belief of incapacity, which was held to entitle the claimant to compensation until the restoration of mental balance. As to such cases it must be said that there is an abundance of experience to show that a final determination, whether favorable or adverse to the claimant, is very generally followed by prompt recovery. (See pp. 249 and 250, and footnote.)

What can hardly be looked upon as other than a border-line case is one in which the compensation commission of New York allowed a claim where a man had been at work for 21 hours, with a total of 14 hours out for meals, during which time he was on his feet almost continuously and climbed 216 steps three times. About half an hour after stopping work he was found sitting dead in a chair. Death was said to be due to angina pectoris, brought on by overexertion and exhaustion.

An entirely different phase of the term "accident" is presented when an intentional assault is committed on an employee, several such cases being noted under the head, "Arising out of and in course of employment" (p. 227). A very late opinion on this point is that of the Supreme Court of California (Western Metal Supply Co. v. Pillsbury, 156 Pac. 491), in which a night watchman was shot by a burglar, the court ruling that as to the injured man there was an accident, even though there was intention on the part of the person inflicting it, citing Western Indemnity Co. v. Pillsbury (p. 232), where a foreman was assaulted by a discharged workman. The statute of Washington, as construed by the supreme court of that State (Stertz v. Industrial Insurance Commission, 158 Pac. 256), does not require that the injury arise out of the employment, so that a man shot by a discharged workman is within the protection of the act in any case if on the employer's premises, and if in course of employment when off the premises.

Hernias as injuries have been the subject not only of much discussion by courts and commissions, but special sections have been devoted to them in some of the more recent statutes. Questions of preexisting condition and proximate cause are involved, as well as of the proper treatment to be applied and the right of the employee