Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1912-02-09

| been made in cases where the emplOye
| CHANGED to be carrying a tool which
contributed to the accident, or where
| his employer directed him to take a
certain road, or to attend to this or
that on the way, and the like.
I'm 1886 the accidents reported were |
| 100,159, and damages were awarded in
10,540 cases; in 1908 these figures were
6G2,321 and 1895 respectively.
The law sought also to protect the !
workingman against accidents due to
carelessness and inattention, and it ac- !
cordingly authorized the employer to
frame prohibitions designed to obviate !
any possible dangers arising from this
cause. Acting on this principle, juris-
diction long maintained that a work
ingman who disobeyed such a prohibi-
ton which had been made properly eff
fective placed himself outside his in
dustry,' and accordingly lost all claim
to pension in case of accident. This
ruling has recently been abandoned.
1T is almost absurd to see how con-
siderations adopted in special cases TO
grant a pension under circumstances
that would normally exclude it, pene-
trate into the remotest corners and be-
come the common property of all pen
sion hunters. The imperial insurance
Office once decided that an accident
received while chopping wood should
be Unidentified because it was shown
that the wood in question was being
chopped to boil fodder for cattle.
Since that time-at least if the allie
CATION of claimants for pensions may
be believed cattle have never and
nowhere received fodder that was not
boiled, nor has wood ever been
; chopped except to boil such fodder.
Even in everyday life many sickly
persons are inclined to overrate and
: exaggerate their ills and aches. and
; ; the popular modern complaint of nerv-
BUSINESS has essentially fostered this
weakness in general Now insurance
furnishes a shockingly fertile soil for
this sort of nonsense, and here grows
: the evil and envenomed weed of pen
= sion hysteria, one of the most melan-
choly consequences of our working
= mems insurance. Whoever, in the
|
= injury, which may be of the most
trivial nature and which, as has al.
y ready been shown in the case of in
juries to the hand, would not disturb
Ii him in the least under other circum-
stances, guards it like veritable treas
ure and tends it like mich COW
From unconscious eXaggeratiOn to di
e rect invention, from neglect of the
{ treatment prescribed to the artificial
I keeping open of wounds, daily, and in
: the case of the majority of those in
jured, there is found graduation of the
, most diverse efforts to render their
condition suitable for the payment OF
1 a pension. Every sickness and injury
a man either has or ever has had is
i brought into connection with the acct
dent. the allegation beng either thai
the sickness or injury was caused OF
aggravated by the accident, or that il
is to be regarded as accelerating it.
own normal consequences. Frequently
an accident is deliberately invited, ant
| is then made to serve as a plea for {
| pension claim, in harmony with thu
| jurisdiction already described in cases
/ of combination of sickness and acci
| dent. Whether the injury is great o.
small makes no difference Improve
ment is the last thing ever to be &C
| knowledged. ANY thought of decreas
| ing a pension is normally answered
| with the assertion that the trouble il
| growing worse, if not with a demand
| that the pension be increased, and il
| this way an accident forms the start
l ing point of a series of suits which FIRE
! quently do not end even at the dealt
/ of the man injured, since pensione
| having other persons dependent upol
| him can scarcely die except as resul
| of an accident received in the cours
of his occupation, however long ag
| this accident may have occurred. an
| however remote it's cause, MEDICAL
speaking, from his last illness
Here again is manifested the Il
mentable phenomenon of the transfol
| nation OF reason into folly and of tn
| change of benefits intended into il
juries. There is an alarmingly larg
| number of the injured who are abs
L lutely unwilling to be cured. The reg
/ lation that the insurance carrier mus
l sustain the cost of cure gives them