tat it did much to avoid misunderstandings, and contributed a great deal towards sane and safe legislation.  There is not known any instance of this plan being adopted in any other state of the Union.  The fruit of this sensible procedure is that there are no laws in Ohio that hamper industry, impede business or endanger property interests, and at the same time the state is foremost in legislation that promotes social welfare, gives labor its due, and helps the weak and needy.

“A man who has occupied this position without interruption during three administrations would be a failure at the very outstart if he resorted to devious conduct or political duplicity.  He has but one master—­the people at large.  To reach this position he had to have courage, be truthful, exercise sound and practical business judgment, and at the same time have a vision looking to the betterment of the condition of his fellow-man.”

The cornerstone of the labor legislation is the Workmen’s Compensation Law, the story of which is told in the state archives, in the messages to the Ohio General Assembly.  At the beginning of his first term as Governor in 1913, Governor Cox said: 

“It would certainly be common bad faith not to pass a compulsory Workmen’s Compensation Law.  No subject was discussed during the last campaign with greater elaboration, and it must be stated to the credit of our citizenship generally that regardless of the differences of opinion existing for many years, the justice of the compulsory feature is now admitted.  Much of the criticism of the courts has been due to the trials of personal injury cases under the principles of practice which held the fellow-servant rule, and assumption of risk and contributory negligence to be grounds of defense.  The layman reaches his conclusion with respect to justice along the lines of common sense, and the practice in personal injury cases has been so sharply in conflict with the plain fundamentals of right, that social unrest has been much contributed to.  A second phase of this whole subject which has been noted in the development of the great industrialism of the day has been the inevitable animosity between capital and labor through the ceaseless litigation growing out of these cases.  The individual or the corporation that employs on a large scale has taken insurance in liability companies, and, in too many instances, cases which admitted of little difference of opinion have been carried into the courts.  The third injustice has been the waste occasioned by the system.  The injured workman or the family deprived of its support by accident is not so circumstanced that the case can be contested with the corporation to the court of last resort.  The need of funds compels compromise on a base that is not always equitable.  Human nature many times drives sharp bargains that can hardly be endorsed by the moral scale.  In the final analysis the cost of attorney fees is so heavy that the amount which finally accrues in cases