The Birmingham age-herald., 1922-12-24
CONlPENSA 7ION LEGISLATION
 PAST AND PRESENT IN IOWA
Laws Much Improved Over Early Enactment in General Efficiency and Workable Provisions-lnterest Centers on Efforts to Amend Ala bama Law at Coming SeS- sion of Legislature

At present much interest is being shown in the question of workmen's compensation laws, and especially the Alabama law. At the coming session of the legislature the Jef- will work with the purpose in view of changing the Alabama law that it may give relief not now given.
 Lewis Bowen, secretary of the Ala bama Federation of Labor. submits the following article on compensation legislation by A. B. Funk. indus- trial commissioner worlmen's com pensation service of Iowa:
 For some reason past ordinary comprehension, the average citizen is inclined to regard workmen's com pensation quite as abtruse and in- scrutable as the mysteries of godli- ness. The average legislator Is merely the average citizen clothed with at little authority. He might have tackled the inscription on the Rosetta Stone with some degree of enthusiasm. but workmens compen- satlon he is disposed to pass up as too obscure and, perhaps withal, hardly worth while. The development of this service in legislation has been sort of proyidential and the average legislator well might find fitting ex- pression in the words of the familiar chant, "He leads us on by paths we did not know; upwards He leads us. though our steps be slow" Compen- sation was conceived in doubt and brought forth in apprehension. Elm ployers witnessed the installation of its flexible terms and loosely fet- tered provisions with grave mis- giving Workmen were 10th to abandon the tempting lure of the big damage judgment. All hesitated .n assuming to "fly from the ills We had to those we knew not of" The wonder is that compensation got any start at all the greater wonder that, once installed, it has never been abandoned by legislative order.
 It is the imperative 'duty--it should be the unfllnehing purpose--ef ad- ministration everywhere jealously to guard Jurisdiction. Workmen's com pensation is more a service for the establishment of simple justice be- tween the unfortunate victims of in- dustrial accident and the promoters of industrial enterprise than a sys- tenn for the exemplification of seien- tlfic or technical Jurisprudence It is well provided that an appeal to the courts may be invoked to insure the exercise of trained Interpretation of points of law and to make impos- sible the abuse of arbitrary au- thority. But the courts should never be permitted to assume Jurisdiction as to department finding Of fact where fraud is not involved and when competent evidence is the basis Of department finding. In most Jurisdictions the courts, from the proceedings in the department files, may catch the spirit and purpose of practical justice established by simple process tempered by humane consideration.= They are not prone to reverse compensation authority exercised with common consistency and interpreted in plain and ample terms in compensation opinion. While the courts may be. usually the courts are, a very important and valuable factor in workmen's compensation through appeal provisions of the statute, compensation can never reach its best estate where the courts are clothed with original Jurisdiction in cases of controversy. Where such administration exists, 1t has its inception and support in dis trust of complete application of Fundamental principles and policies distrust which finds unfortunate ex- pression in proceedings more or less warped and dwarfed, which create an atmosphere in which symmetrical development can not occur.
 Of course, the basis of administra- tion is legislation; therefore, it be- hooves us to guard well and success fully against assault upon the essen-