Atlanta semi-weekly journal. (Atlanta, Ga.) 1898-1920, 1917-09-11

Norway and. Denmark have national unemploy-
ment insurance by means OF insurance subsidies
to workingmens organizations. The idea and prac-
tice is spreading to many large European cities.
Great Britain has recently established the first
compulsory unemployment insurance system on a
national scale.
national system of widows and orphans pen
sions is being established and worked out in Ger
many.
Within the lifetime of the present generation,
most of the industrial countries of the world have
enacted laws providing some compensation for
wage workers injured in the course of their EN-
poyment. At first it customary to empha-
size the principle of what termed employers
liability. This limited the obligation of the man
hiring others to the expressed terms of the con-
tract, that is, to the Specification of the DAM
ages" that could be recovered This has now
given place to the altrustic principle Of
'workingmen's compensation, which sets down hui
man injury as the and tear of the machinery
and assesses the entire damage the employer.
Great Britain and Germany have had an indus
trial development which has proceeded farther
than that of any other nation. They have worked
out social insurance methods and programs most
comprehensively, and their national systems are
models of completeness.
If the individual is secure from exceptional
risks he will be better able to meet the ordinary
demands and thus become a more efficient mem
Der of the community. In Germany, where social
insurance is Oldest it is the opinion that by free
ness infirmity and accidents, their condition of
life has been materially bettered. Labor and in
dustry therefore tend to become stabilized. From
the employers standpoint, the contributions made
admitted widely to be excellent investment
There is even official testimony to the fact that
the great war has positively proven the benefit of
the national insurance system to the German
masses.
Up to generation ago. social insurance existed
only in the most rudmentary forms. Its begin
N
efts paid for out Of taxes the result of which is
to increase and preserve national welbeing, such
the various forms of public sanitation, food in
specton, free hospitals and other methods of COM
munity hygiene. The idea has had rapid though
even development.
Social insurance operates as protection for a
wide range of of trouble. Some learned econ
omist has put it this way: ID Temporary impair
ment Of capacity to work, and with this, Of the
earning power, through sickness (sickness insur-
ance); through accident (accdent insurance);
through childbearing and what follows (maternity
insurance.; through adverse conditions of the la
Dor market Unemployment insurance.; Cd Per-
manent impairment either partial total of the
working and earning power; through the after
effects of sickness or accident Gnvalidity insur-
ance); through advanced years (old age insur-
ance); go Complete destruction of the personal
ity, that is when death results in financial loss
to some survivor; a result of the cost of burial
(burial money insurance.; for the survivor ovid
owls insurance.; for the survivors children
(orphan insurance..
The has put everything that fondly
thought fixed and permanent into the melting
pot. Just what changes and extensions Of the So
cial insurance programs of the world will be made
in the next few years. it is impossible to say, but
such changes will doubt be radical and far
reaching