for negligence is generally an inadequate remedy for the person injured, while it often causes altogether disproportionate annoyance to the employer.  The law should be made such that the payment for accidents by the employer would be automatic instead of being a matter for lawsuits.  Workmen should receive certain and definite compensation for all accidents in industry irrespective of negligence.  The employer is the agent of the public and on his own responsibility and for his own profit he serves the public.  When he starts in motion agencies which create risks for others, he should take all the ordinary and extraordinary risks involved; and the risk he thus at the moment assumes will ultimately be assumed, as it ought to be, by the general public.  Only in this way can the shock of the accident be diffused, instead of falling upon the man or woman least able to bear it, as is now the case.  The community at large should share the burdens as well as the benefits of industry.  By the proposed law, employers would gain a desirable certainty of obligation and get rid of litigation to determine it, while the workman and his family would be relieved from a crushing load.  With such a policy would come increased care, and accidents would be reduced in number.  The National laws providing for employers’ liability on railroads engaged in interstate commerce and for safety appliances, as well as for diminishing the hours any employee of a railroad should be permitted to work, should all be strengthened wherever in actual practice they have shown weakness; they should be kept on the statute books in thoroughgoing form.

The constitutionality of the employers’ liability act passed by the preceding Congress has been carried before the courts.  In two jurisdictions the law has been declared unconstitutional, and in three jurisdictions its constitutionality has been affirmed.  The question has been carried to the Supreme Court, the case has been heard by that tribunal, and a decision is expected at an early date.  In the event that the court should affirm the constitutionality of the act, I urge further legislation along the lines advocated in my Message to the preceding Congress.  The practice of putting the entire burden of loss to life or limb upon the victim or the victim’s family is a form of social injustice in which the United States stands in unenviable prominence.  In both our Federal and State legislation we have, with few exceptions, scarcely gone farther than the repeal of the fellow-servant principle of the old law of liability, and in some of our States even this slight modification of a completely outgrown principle has not yet been secured.  The legislation of the rest of the industrial world stands out in striking contrast to our backwardness in this respect.  Since 1895 practically every country of Europe, together with Great Britain, New Zealand, Australia, British Columbia, and the Cape of Good Hope has enacted legislation embodying in