Mr Longdill’s Offer.

Gisborne Times, Volume VI, Issue 162, 20 July 1901, Page 3

Mr Longdill’s Offer.

(To the Editor of the Times.)

Silt, —A good many employers of !abo r here—and I presume tho same sentiment is wide spread among employers of labor throughout the colony —resent tlie new

burden of insurance imposed upon them by the coming into force of tho “ Workers' Compensation for Accidents Act, 1900,” and I am imfortned, propose starting an agitation with a view to the repeal of tlie Act. I have therefore worked out an en-

tirely original system of administering the Act so as to provide a fund out of which to compensate workers meeting with accidents, without imposing the heavy burden of accident insurance upon employers, and at tho same time doing away with tho necessity of insurance agents, and thus collecting tlie money necessary to provide the workers’ compensation fund at tho minimum cost. But ns it is puroly' a matter of X' s. d. resulting in a great saving to employers, I do not seo why I should give this idea gratis for others to reap a benefit, while I receive

nothing. I maintain, with Herbert Spencer, that valuable ideas should bo considered as much tlie property of the originator ns an invention which, on account

of its saleable nature, call he patonted. It is not generally known, perhaps, that the Premier lias constructed his State Fire Insurance Bill upon exactly tho lines outlined in a letter I wrote a few years ago to n Wellington paper, and which idea was quite original. Thus one man sows and others reap. Ido not see, therefore, why [ should make my idea for revising the system of insurance against accidents known for nothing. But I am quite prepared to do so if I am guaranteed some reward if tlie idea is snapped up and mado law.—l am, etc., C. P. W. Loxudill.