MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED THE MACMILLAN COMPANY DALLAS. SAN FRANCISCO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. TORONTO J. H. TAYLOR, M.A., M.B., Ch.B. WITH A PREFACE BY THE RIGHT HON. D. LLOYD GEORGE, M.P. FOURTH EDITION MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED COPYRIGHT. First Edition, February, 1912. Third Edition, July, 1912. PREFACE IN the National Insurance Act it has been our aim to provide as far as may be for every worker some kind of shelter against the slings and arrows of fortune. In doing so we have not, I think, laid any real additional burden upon the wealth and productive activity of the nation. We have substituted for tardy relief provision made in anticipation of need, no more costly, but infinitely more effective and more kindly in its operation than distress funds or the Poor Law. Some remain, for the moment, wholly or partly outside the operation of the scheme. We have not even yet been able to reach the lowest deeps, to grasp the utterly incapable, the loafer, or the wastrel, and set him, too, on the firm ground of self-respecting manhood fit to withstand all the shocks of adversity, but we may claim to have established barriers to prevent men falling into that abyss of human despair. We have in one great measure swept into the V |