Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 February 1917 — 36,176 Accidents in Indiana During Year Ending Aug. 31 [ARTICLE]

36,176 Accidents in Indiana During Year Ending Aug. 31

The annual report of the state industrial board for the year ending Aug. 31, 1916, was completed Wednesday and it shows that 45,000 employers operate under (the liability law and that the board received reports of 36,176 accidents during the year. Cases involving approximately $900,000 were disposed of. Since farm labor is not included in the list 01' occupation, it is probable that .there were 75, 000 or more accidents within the year that afforded loss of time tc employed persons. 'The liability law is faulty in the important particular that it does not give any protection for the first two weeks of enforced idleness in consequence of accident with living as high as it is now the average wage earner is badly crippled financially when he loses two weeks’ wages. Knowing this the employer feels obliged to pay the wages or a considerable part of them although the insurance companies which sell liability insurance furnish protection only to the extent of the law. In order to avoid loss it then becomes necessary for employers or the workers themselves to purchase accident and sickness policies and a great many of these aye effective over the state. During the past few weeks there have ben a number of accidents in this county and some of them quite severe and causing great loss of time and expense for surgical and hospital attention. Very few of these cases were covered by insprance. Many persons who take out policies of this kind begin to feel after a few months or years that they do not need the protection and abandon payment and it not frequently happens that within a few months they suffer some illness or accident that causes them to regret their fiction. With as many as 36,176 cases reported to the industrial board the first year after the employers’ liability law became effective it is sufficient to make every person seriously consider tht advisability of this simple form of protection to augment the insufficient operation of the employers’ liability law. ' There were only 3,125 employers in the state who rejected the law, thereby throwing themselves liable to suits that might prove much more expensive than the law covering liability and should a serious accident occur to one or more employes of a concern that refused to protect itself with insurance the proprietor might find himself at a disadvantage for life, as he would be responsible for 55 per cent of the wages of the employee for the extent of the injury up to 500 weeks.