NOTES AND MEMORANDA.

GERMAN ACCIDENT STATISTICS.-An exceedingly interesting volume, representing the results of a great deal of intelligent labour, has quite recently been issued by the Imperial Working-men's Insurance Department of Berlin, giving a return of workmen's disablements coming under the Workmen's Accident Insurance Law within the year 1897. The inquiry reported upon in this book is the most complete and discriminating yet made in Germany, as will appear from the fact that about three times the number of cards for collecting information were issued as compared with the issue of 1887, viz. 45,971 in the place of 15,970. The earlier inquiry (of 1881) was tolerably comprehensive, but was, of course, only preparatory to the legislation now coming into question.

The results reported ought to prove interesting to ourselves, as bearing upon the problems only very partially dealt with in our own more recent legislation. In respect of some important points they dispose very conclusively, as will appear by the light of experience, of some false impressions still entertained in this country.

Incidentally, the return shows to what extent industrial activity has expanded in Germany within the decade to which the inquiry refers. The number of industrial establishments reported upon is given as 455,417, as compared with 319,453, marking an increase by 18.93 per 10,000 population. For such increase-so it is explained-the remarkable extension of building operations is in a large measure responsible. Unfortunately, the number of disablements reported once more shows a striking increase, an increase not to be accounted for only by the larger number of establishments now coming under review. In 1886, being the first year in which the Accident Insurance Law was in operation, only 2.80 disablements were reported per 1000 persons employed. Since then every year has marked a distinct increase upon the figures of the preceding one, and in 1897 we actually arrive at 6.97 disablements per 1000 persons. As compared with 1887, that represents an increase by 2.83. Of course, it does not follow that because more accidents are reported more actually happen. In the early years statistics were notoriously incomplete, and as time advances

they become more complete. In the trades in which returns are most easily collected, because all that happens is bound to be observed, the increase since 1887 is shown to be very slight indeed. Thus, accidents reported in quarry work have gone up only by 0.54 per 1000 employed. The rise is not very much more marked in textile industries, leatherdressing, shoemaking, etc., and the clothiery trade. On the other hand, there is a heavy increase in the carrying and warehousing trades, viz. by 7.21 and 7-11 per 1000. Among the admirably prepared coloured tables bound up in the volume, which in their graphic way give a remarkably clear view of the results obtained, the two showing the distribution of accidents over the empire are particularly instructive. Of course, accidents are absolutely more frequent wherever industry is most fully developed. However, as calculated per 1000 persons employed, they bulk heaviest in agricultural districts, presumably because there industrial work is least advanced, and carried on with least care. In conjunction with this it appears worthy of remark that the much-maligned machinery is not answerable for proportionately anything like the largest number of accidents, fatal or otherwise. The employment of machinery has been extended largely in Germany of late years, but accidents arising from its employment have not increased in proportion. Safeguards adopted, careful inspection, and, above all, the growing intelligence and caution exhibited by the persons who work the machinery and come into contact with it, and who are by no means as indifferent to their own mutilation as pessimists in this country are in the habit of assuming, sensibly reduce the danger incurred. It is tumbles, bruises, contusions, objects falling upon workmen, and like mishaps, which most largely swell the catalogue of accidents, being accountable for full 94.73 per cent. of all disablements which occur. Accidents are very frequent in employment carried on underground, such as mining and quarrying, and again in shipping, which is accountable for actually the largest proportion of deaths (nearly 3 per 1000 men employed, and about 30 per cent. of all accidents occurring in the calling). However, it is building, carrying, warehousing, corn-milling, which have most astonished the German authorities by the large number of accidents to which they give rise, and thrown them to some extent out of their reckoning. In view of our exemption of small building operations from liability to pay compensation-a most questionable proceeding, censured by nobody more than by employers in the building trade themselves-it deserves to be pointed out that it is just such small building work, carried on, as a rule, with imperfect appliances, which has added most, beyond what was calculated, to the German death and disablement roll.

Frequent as accidents are, after all they affect only a small proportion of the entire national industry, namely only 5·32 on an average of all industrial establishments. In 1887 the proportional figure was lower still, and stood only at 3.20. The returns also show that the danger of what our insurance companies call "catastrophe risks" is not very appreciable. The number of persons disabled or killed by the 45,444 accidents reported was 45,971. In all but 338 cases-that is, 0·74 per cent. of the total number of accidents-every accident claimed only one victim. And it is not mining or quarrying, but shipping, dredging, raft-work, and the like, which contribute most largely to the number of victims. The number collectively affected by one accident has in 1897 never exceeded twenty-eight. There was one case of twenty-eight affected in shipping, a catastrophe accident of twelve in chemical industry, and one of ten in mining. Accidents have shown themselves most apt to prove fatal in shipping, railway employment, mining, and quarrying. However, of these quarrying is shown to be accountable for only less than half of what shipping has brought about, proportionately speaking. And it is a fact worth considering, more particularly by those working-men who are in this country clamouring for State purchase of the railways, that employment has in Germany proved safer on private lines than on State-managed. Fatal accidents on the former compare as 0.92 per 1000 men employed with 1:32 per 1000 on the latter. Curiously enough, the number of slight disablements rises in different callings in an inverse ratio to deaths. Those callings which return fewest deaths report the largest number of slight disablements. In this respect the butchers' trade stands at the top of the list. The proportion of accidents affecting workmen's eyes, and also those causing ruptures, has rather sensibly decreased, as also the proportion of deaths resulting from accidents to workmen's legs, viz. from 4.635 to 2·123 per cent. of all accidents occurring. That is owing to more careful surgical treatment now provided by the employers' corporations. The proportion, nevertheless, continues to stand high. It is curious to observe that although the proportion of fatal accidents varies widely as among different callings, there appears to be not one group of employments which has escaped altogether without fatal accident.

Of the 45,971 persons injured, 44,083 were men and 1888 women. Since, in all, 5,064,579 men come under this kind of insurance, as compared with only 1,494,045 women, it appears that the risks of disablement incurred severally by men and by women stand relatively, in the same order, as 0.870 to 0·126. Only 570 of the persons injured were foreigners. The frequency of accidents is shown to be proportionate to the number of hours worked. That is, in spite of frost, and

snow, and cold, and darkness, it is least in the winter months and greatest in the summer months. The minimum figure (0·92) occurs in January and February, the maximum figure (1-10) in July. Monday is out and out the most dangerous day, more particularly between the hours of 9 a.m. and 12 a.m. But, Saturday, oddly enough, runs it a very good second, in the hours of from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., which may appear as an additional argument in favour of early closing.

HENRY W. WOLFF.

"THE RUSSIAN JOURNAL OF FINANCIAL STATISTICS."-This may be called No. -2 of a new quarterly. It and No. -1, to be published in May, are presented gratis to intending subscribers on application to the Editor at the office (Millionaia, 23, St. Petersburg). No. 1 will be published in September.

We rub our eyes when we see "Blunders, official and others," at the head of the list of contents on the front cover, and the imprint "St. Petersburg: Printed by W. Kirshbaum," at the bottom. But the puzzle is solved when we discover that the official blunders are not those of St. Petersburg, but those of other capitals, particularly London and Washington. The splendour of the paper and print, and the generosity of the gift of two free numbers, suggest the semi-official publication. If it is semi-official, I can only say that I wish every Government had in its service as bright and amusing a writer as "G. B. V.," the most important contributor to the new journal.

"When statistics relating to Russia are given in English," he tells us, "they have been obtained by English or American authorities by the worst possible process, viz. that of filling up special forms and lists of questions. The same questions are sent to all the countries of the world. Both the Hague and St. Petersburg, for instance, will receive a copy of the same blank form, with a request to insert in the column 'meteorology' the mean annual temperature of the country."

Was it Washington or Whitehall that wanted to know the mean annual temperature of the Russian empire? G. B. V. does not tell us, but he soon gives us chapter and verse for official blunders. The American official journal stumbles terribly over the production of gold!; the Bulletin du Ministère Français de l'Agriculture makes wheat exported from Russia to England 3s. a hundredweight dearer at the port of departure than at the port of arrival; and our own Board of Trade in statistics about alcohol makes a mistake of 15 per cent. run through seventy-two columns. After this it is only a trifle that a

French bulletin should make a mistake of £102,000,000, owing to translating darunter into en outre.

Finishing for the moment with the official blunders, G. B. V. comes to the Economist, which has accused the Russian Minister of Finance of imposture on the strength of a complete misunderstanding of the term "free balance" (a translation of disponibilités), and that in spite of having received an elaborate explanation of the term three years before. But, says G. B. V. compassionately, "If an English journalist, in order to discuss Russian finance, is obliged to know what has been published in St. Petersburg, then the profession of critic is far too tiresome."

"The Russian State is the greatest landowner, the greatest capitalist, the greatest constructor of railways, and carries on the largest business in the world," and it must consequently "have a budgetary legislation more able, more complex, less primitive-to put it plainly— than that of the United Kingdom," and "its control must be organized with a perfection and detail unknown elsewhere." I doubt if G. B. V. does justice to the complexity of British national accounts, but I shall not quarrel with his suggestion that they are "primitive." The expenditure of the Russian Government in 1898 amounted to about £186,000,000. Let not our readers hold up their hands in horror and ejaculate something about bloated budgets. First, let them observe that more than £32,500,000 of this total is capital expenditure, and next that nearly £28,000,000 is spent by the ministry of ways and communications chiefly in railway working expenses. Further, they must notice that in a British budget only a portion of the £9,500,000 which Russia sets down for extraordinary shipbuilding would be charged on the first year. When these deductions are made the total is reduced to a sum not very much above the expenditure of the United Kingdom before the present war, and very much less than what that expenditure is likely to be after the war. The army cost. £34,000,000, and the navy about £7,000,000, exclusive of the extraordinary expenditure already mentioned, which compares very favourably with our own £24,000,000 for the army, and £27,600,000 for the navy. The increase in expenditure on the two services taken together has been about equal in the two countries, namely, about 50 per cent. in ten years. If this rate of progress could be maintained, the military and naval expenditure of the United Kingdom a century hence would amount to about four thousand five hundred millions (£4,500,000,000) per annum in time of peace. Yet this rate is not rapid enough for some people!

EDWIN CANnan.