NEW EMPLOYMENTS.

Thames Star, Volume VII, Issue 2579, 13 April 1877, Page 3

NEW EMPLOYMENTS.

The public does not seem to be fully aware of the noble work the accident insurance companies are doing. While private philanthropists feebly attempt to alleviate the distress of the unemployed poor by alms-giving, and the gratuitous distribution of soup tickets, the accident companies offer to furnish every man who really desires to work with easy and lucrative employment. Ah industrious workman is offered the choice of either undertaking a definite job for which he will receive a conspicuously high price, or of hiring himself out by the week at liberal wages. In all cases the work is easy, and the workman needs no long apprenticeship or exceptional skill in order to perform it. Surely the benevolent companies which are engaged in this wide and noble charity deserve admiration of all philanthropic men. . By a. recent report of one of these companies it appears that it has paid, and is now paying, remarkably high prices to men who are willing to meet with fatal accidents. It paid a Connecticut man who simply fell from a window no less than 5,000d01. Every one knows how simple a thing it is for any man to fall from a window, but few have hitherto had any idea that they earn 6,000d01. by so easy an athletic feat. Another man who performed the simple feat of exploding himself with coal-oil made I.OOOdoL, and the fact that he was a plumber show* that while kerosene holds out to burn the vilest sinner may make a small fortune out of ah accident insurance company. Liberal as are the rates paid for fatal accidents, men of industry and perseverance probably do even better by accepting permanent situations at large wages under the accident companies. The work is usually extremely light, and the workman is apparently at liberty to select any kind of industry, that he may prefer. The pay-roll of the particular company from whose report quotations have just been made shows a wonderful diversity in the occupations of its servants. A lumber merchant of Ontario, who was doubtless in distress in consequence of the dullness of the lumber trade, entered the service of the company and made $50 a week for 16 consecutive weeks by industriously falling down stairs. It is not mentioned how many times in each week he was required to fall down' stairs, but it is sufficiently obvious that if the stairs were short and the lumber merchant was properly padded,* he could fall down stairs fifty times a day without over fatiguing himself. Another lumber dealer, residing in Pennsylvania, was scratched by a cat for the liberal wages of $25 a week; and there are few persons who will not admit that his work was ridiculously light. The only wonder is that he did not keep it up longer than four weeks, but it ii possible that his cat died at the end of that time, and that the company refused to provide him with another. The ease with which one can roll off a log is proverbial, and yet a farmer in New York State was hired by this noble company to roll off a log for $15 a week, and was so charmed with his*situation that he kept it for fourteen weeks* Why Mr Townsend, of Gardiner,, Maine, chose so wearing, not to say dangerous, an occupation as that of being thrown down by a cow, most people will be at a loss to imagine, especially as he only made $10 a week by it, for he worked at it for twenty, six weeks, before he finally resigned his situation.—.New York Times