compensation for accidents sustained by a workman arising out of and in the course of employment. The workman is free to claim compensation under the Act, or under the Employers' Liability Act, or at common law. The limitations of the common law, already done away with in the earlier Acts, are still excluded: "Contracting out," as practised in respect to the Employers' Liability Act of 1880, is, as before, prohibited except under similar conditions as obtained under the Act of 1897, the relative amounts of compensation and the minimum and maximum payable to the dependants of a deceased workman, and the relative amount of the weekly payments in case of incapacity, are, with few exceptions, unaltered. The most important innovations relate to: Occupations included under the Act, period during which no compensation is payable, misconduct, time limit for claims, amount of compensation and contracting out schemes, sub-contracting, provision in case of bankruptcy of employer, remedy against strangers, seamen, industrial diseases, persons in the service of the Crown, etc. D. OLD-AGE AND DISABLEMENT INSUR ANCE. Austria. The Act to regulate the pension insurance of employees in private service, and of certain employees in public service, dated December 16, 1906 (which goes into effect January 1, 1909), extends the system of social insurance to employees and officials in private service, and thus forms a sort of link between the Workmen's Insurance Acts and the Acts regulating the pensions of State officials. The following table showing the monthly premiums and the most important benefits payable in the six classes into which employees are divided according to salary gives a general idea of the principles adopted in the Act: 1 The figures in parenthesis denote the monthly contribution of persons insured (one-third or one-half), the remainder (two-thirds or one-half respectively) being paid by the employer. The insurance benefits take the form, in the first place, of disablement and old-age annuities for the insured himself; and, in the second place, of benefits for the dependants of the insured, widows' annuities, or, if necessary, maintenance grants for the children, provision being made in certain cases for a final settlement of the claims of widows or children. The act requires 120 months' contributions to have been paid before a claim to benefits can be upheld; this condition is waived only "if the incapacity or death of the person insured supervenes from an accident occurring in the course of his work and connected with such work." Disablement annuities consist of a fixed part and increments. The former is determined according to the salary class in which the person insured is included on the conclusion of 120 months, and the increments are the amounts by which an annuity increases annually after 120 months. Old-age annuities are merely disablement annuities claimed after contributory payments have been made during a period of 480 months. Widows' annuities amount to one-half of the annuity drawn by the deceased husband or of the benefits to which he has acquired a right at the time of his decease, as the case may be. The cost of insurance is met by fixed premiums payable monthly. MASSACHUSETTS LABOR BULLETIN. ISSUED BY THE BUREAU OF STATISTICS OF LABOR, STATE HOUSE, BOSTON. Carroll Davidson Wright died after a brief illness at his home in Worcester, February 20, 1909, aged 69 years. I was the second Chief of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, and in his 15 years' service in this capacity, from 1873 to 1888, placed what had been a struggling and inadequately equipped department upon a substantial and enduring foundation. In 1885 he became the first Commissioner of the United States Department of Labor, which he had been called upon to organize, resigning in 1902 to become president of Clark College, in which position he was serving at the time of his death. We shall hope at some later date to prepare for permanent preservation in the reports of the Bureau a review of Colonel Wright's career which shall form a suitable record of his great services to the cause of economic and statistical research. For the present we can offer no more fitting tribute to his memory and no better recognition of his ideals and his achievements than was paid by the Rev. Dr. Samuel A. Eliot at the funeral services, in the Church of the Unity, Worcester, February 24. ADDRESS OF REV. SAMUEL A. ELIOT, D.D. We have often been told that we Americans are interested only in money getting; that we worship no God but the God of the market place; that we pay our homage primarily to men with large powers of acquisition. How utterly false is that estimate of the American spirit! This gathering, representative of the best life of the Commonwealth, testifies to the fact that what Americans primarily honor is public serviceableness. What a rich and varied life it was! How many the points of contact with the crowded activities of an eventful age! What rare adaptation to a career of manifold usefulness! What rounded completeness of achievement! Other friends we have had who attracted us through some peculiar gift or faculty, or the possession of some special virtue, but in Colonel Wright it was the whole. individual that won our love and admiration. Here was a man who took life in a large way, unvexed by disappointments, unspoilt by successes, giving wholesome energy to many enterprises. The champion of many good causes he escaped the narrowness that comes from devotion to a particular cause. I cannot begin to enumerate all the duties done or trusts discharged or honors modestly rn. Soldier, lawyer, teacher, head of the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, United States Commissioner of Labor, Director of the Eleventh Census, arbitrator of industrial disputes, author and lecturer, officer and trustee of many educational, philanthropic, and religious institutions, college president. In almost all of the many different occupations in which he engaged he began at the bottom, doing his duty in a humble place, and by proved capacity rose to the top. A boy of twenty-one, he enlisted as a private in the army of the Union and came out at the end of the war the colonel of his regiment. He began teaching in a district schoolhouse and ended a college president. He began professional life as a boy in a lawyer's office and rose to be our most distinguished economist and statistician. The son of a New England country minister, he began his connection with religious affairs at the very entrance of the Sunday-school and he ended as the president of a great national conference. In domestic or professional life, in civil, military, educational, and religious affairs he displayed the same consistent traits of mind and heart. He was honorable and true, just and generous. He had firm convictions and moral courage. The armor of his honest thought sufficed to shelter him from the seductions of mere conformity. His tastes were democratic, his speech plain, his sense of humor keen, his temperament optimistic. He hated bigotry and hypocrisy and was readily won by sincerity and directness. His spirit was that of consecration to duty without saying much about it. From the mere passing impression which he made on casual acquaintances one discovered the sterling quality and symmetry of his character, his rational confidence in American institutions, and the abiding sense in his soul of the reality of the things which are not seen and eternal. Devotion to the public. good and obedience to the call of his country were his distinguishing characteristics. His public life was long and unblemished, and the confidence of the nation rewarded his unmistakable devotion to the public welfare. His career afforded to his powers large opportunities for exercise, growth, and suc |