The Daily News. FRIDAY, APRIL 19, 1912. THE INJURED WORKER.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 248, 19 April 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. FRIDAY, APRIL 19, 1912. THE INJURED WORKER.

In earlier days, should a worker receive permanent or temporary injury, he was at once reduced to pauperism, unless (1) he had private means; (2) had a private accident insurance policy; (3) a very unusual employer who compensated him out of charity. To-day, happily, things have changed. The Compensation for Accidents Act has made it necessary for provision, to be made for possible contingencies. No one questions the value, the necessity or the justice of compulsory insurance against accident. The Trades Councils' Conference, sitting in Christchurc'h, will do a very fine thing if it can induce the Government to eliminate accidents to workers as a source of income to private insurance companies. A private company operates not as a benevolent institution, but as a business designed to pay the highest possible dividend to shareholders. It is in the interest of shareholders that a company shall use every possible legal quibble to escape payment of compensation. The Act was specifically devised to meet a great need and to make it impossible for an injured worker to be pauperised through no fault of his own. There have been numerous cases heard in New Zealand where, although the party concerned had paid his premiums up to ths time of the accident, had .been deprived of Mr compensation by the successful quibble of a company. In the case of the death of an insured worker "by accident, it frequently happens that the just claim of his widow remains unheard, and distress results. Wfe quite agree with the remark of the president of the Trades Councils' Conference that it is the Government's special duty to take over the compensation for accidents business wholly. There seems to be no reason at all that a 'beneficent Act should be used as much for a boon to private insurance companies as to injured workers. There is no reason why a private company or the Government should make profit out of the death or injury of a worker. Quite naturally the private insurance companies opposed the idea promulgated in Parliament that workers should not be insured in these companies, but there can be no just opposition to such a notion, especially as the companies seemed to get along very well before the Act was passed. The idea that an injured man may be dej prived of an income by the guile of a private company which offers him a small lump sum in place of periodically paid compensation is an unsettling one Iff the Government controlled the whole I business the idea of gain could not enter

into these transactions, and it would be impossible for an injured worker to sea the boon for which he bad paid bis premiums. The reduction of premiums would naturally follow on the resumption by the Government of all policies now privately held. This in itself would be a distinct boon. The. value of the benefit to the worker is lessened by making operations of benefit to private corporations, in allowing quibbling, in permitting frequent defeat or partial defeat of claimants and in making it easy for guile to overcome the injured one. Under present conditions, it is impossible for workers to enjoy the full benefit of an Act specially -devised for them and to wliich no objection can be taken. The State, in taking over the whole business, would at once give a feeling of security to every worker. The State would be as well able to discriminate between the true and the false elaim as the private insurance company, and the machinery could be easily and inexpensively devised and worked in the same department as the State Fire Insurance. The success of State Fire Insurance is a fair guide to the probable success of State insurance under the Compensation for Accidents Act. It would have no deleterious effect on any producing industry, would not rob the country of a single penny, would give a larger measure of justice, to the people, and would be welcomed, by all classes—except private insurance companies' shareholders —with satisfaction and relief. At present many pitiable cases are unnecessarily prolonged for trifling reasons, and it is time the circumlocutory methods were made plainer and less, irritating. If when it is moved in Parliament that the State shall take, over this business Parliament refuses to favor the private insurance companies at the expense of the people, the amendment of the Act will get on to the Statute Book. It is a matter of ordinary justice that it should get there.