CHAPTER IV. WORKMEN'S INSURANCE IN FRANCE. INTRODUCTION. As is shown by statistics of occupations of the French people in 1901, agriculture claimed 41.5 per cent of the population gainfully employed, manufacturing and extractive industries (including mining) 30.9 per cent, commerce 9.2 per cent, transportation 4.2 per cent, and personal and domestic service 5.2 per cent. The earlier methods of compiling occupational statistics were so different that comparisons are not entirely satisfactory, but in 1891 agriculture and industry seem to have held about the same position as ten years later. According to the earlier census the number of salaried employees was 899,099, of wage-workers 7,104,949, and domestic servants 1,609,432, making a total of employed persons of 9,613,480. In 1901 there were 10,359,665 employed wage-workers and salaried employees, and 314,530 unemployed ones, making the total number of wage-workers and salaried employees 10,674,195. The increase by over one million is mainly due, however, to the inclusion of the army and navy among the employed in 1901. With the exclusion of these groups, numbering over 600,000, the total increase in ten years is only from about 9,600,000 in 1891 to 10,000,000 in 1901. But even this smaller number is over one-half of all persons in gainful occupations, and over one-fourth of the total population of France. Within the last 15 or 20 years the activity of France in social legislation has been quite remarkable. Scarcely a year has passed without some important enactment for the protection of the interests, or the fostering of the welfare of the wage-workers. The importance attached to such measures in France may be gauged by the existence since 1906 of the Ministry of Labor and Social Providence (Ministère du Travail et de Prévoyance Sociale) with separate bureaus of labor, of social insurance, and of mutual institutions, and the following consultative bodies: A superior council of labor, superior council of statistics, superior commission of industrial labor, commission for codification of labor laws, commission on industrial hygiene, commission on unemployment funds, superior council of cheap dwellings, superior commission of savings banks, superior commission on the National Old-age Retirement Fund, superior commission of the national life insurance and accident insurance funds, consultative 677 committee on industrial accident insurance, consultative committee on life insurance, superior council of mutual benefit societies. Discussion of the various problems embraced in the comprehensive title "social insurance" and legislative proposals date back to the end of the eighteenth century, the period immediately following the great revolution. But effective work began much later. The period since 1850 may be divided into two well-defined periods, that of encouragement of voluntary effort, which lasted until the beginning of the nineties, and the last 20 years, during which the compulsory principle has expressed itself in many enactments. The act of July 15, 1850, concerning mutual benefit societies, supplemented by the decrees of March 26, 1852, created the so-called recognized and approved societies, conferring various privileges upon them. The National Old-age Retirement Fund was established in 1851 in virtue of the act of June 15, 1850. This institution was to encourage voluntary old-age insurance by providing a safe institution for such insurance. These were the two main contributions to the problem of popular insurance in the period known as the Second Republic (1848-1852). The following period of the "Second Empire" (1852-1870) was rather fruitless in the line of social legislation; only toward its close (1868) were the funds for voluntary insurance against death and against accidents created. The results of this earlier legislation were rather meager, with the possible exception of the National Old-age Retirement Fund which, however, was taken advantage of by an economic group other than that for which the institution was originally intended. Very little was accomplished in the special field of social insurance during the following 25 years. The only legislative enactments worth mentioning in this connection are the act of April 11, 1881, which materially improved the conditions for retirement of registered seamen, a group numerically unimportant, but with a very high accident and invalidity rate, and the act of July 20, 1886, which effected a financial reorganization of the National Old-age Retirement Fund. With the enactment of the law of June 29, 1894, concerning compulsory sick and old-age insurance for miners an era of activity in legislation was begun. Within the last 15 or 16 years at least 18 important acts may be mentioned; and the very short time elapsing between separate acts, often of a few days only, shows that many important problems of social insurance have been carefully studied simultaneously. This rapid succession may obscure the fact, which must be emphasized, that many years of study, parliamentary consideration, and expert investigation have preceded each of the more important acts. On December 27, 1895, an act for the regulation and control of the voluntary establishment funds for retirement of employees was adopted, and only four days later the act of December 31, 1895, concerning the National Old-age Retirement Fund, which established a system of subsidies to old-age and invalidity pensions voluntarily acquired. The close of the session of the National Assembly in 1898 was marked by a series of important measures. On April 1, 1898, the new law concerning mutual benefit societies was adopted after nearly 17 years of discussion. This facilitated the organization of such societies and increased the government subsidies. April 9, 1898, the general accident compensation law was adopted, and on April 21, 1898, the accident insurance fund for seamen was created. While the first of these three acts was one relating to voluntary insurance only (though including the principle of government subsidy) the last act established a fund for compulsory insurance and the act of April 9, 1898, introduced a system of compulsory compensation with so many encouragements of insurance as to be classified as a compromise between voluntary and compulsory insurance. After the legislation of 1898, an interval of several years followed during which the new laws were being tried and an adjustment to the new conditions was taking place. The act of June 30, 1899, defining the limits of application of the accident compensation law to agricultural establishments, and the act of May 15, 1899, permitting the national accident insurance fund to issue insurance under the act of April 9, 1898, were measures of secondary importance. On March 22, 1902, a new act introduced certain minor modifications in the compensation system, mostly strengthening the rights of the injured persons. On March 31, 1903, the provisions for compulsory old-age insurance of miners were materially improved, the Government voting an annual subsidy of 1,000,000 francs ($193,000) for the increase both of the current and future pensions, and only one-third of this contribution was exacted from mine owners by means of increased taxation; so that the principle of state subsidy to old-age pensions was extended to miners. On April 22, 1905, the first important step in the field of unemployment insurance was taken. One hundred and ten thousand francs ($21,230) were appropriated by the legislature to be distributed under certain conditions as a subsidy to unemployment funds. Thus France was the first country to apply the so-called Ghent system of unemployment insurance on a national scale. The year 1905 was very fruitful in enactments concerning insurance. The accident compensation law was further revised on March 31, 1905. As a result of a discussion for over 15 years of the oldage problem, and being unwilling as yet to introduce a compulsory system of old-age insurance, as demanded by many, the National |