on the part of strangers. This contention may shortly be disposed of. The master's duty to warn the servant of dangers not naturally incident to the employment, including those arising from extraneous sources, and which the former should in the exercise of reasonable care and diligence know of, and of which the latter has no knowledge or notice, we consider settled. See 26 Cyc. 1165, 1172; 3 Labatt, Master & S. (2d Ed.) § 1146. See also Guirney v. St. Paul, M. & M. Ry. Co. 43 Minn. 496, 46 N. W. 78, 19 Am. St. 256; Galloway v. Chicago, M. & St. P. Ry. Co. 56 Minn. 346, 57 N. W. 1058, 23 L.R.A. 442, 45 Am. St. 468; Lane v. Minnesota State Ag. Soc. 62 Minn. 175, 64 N. W. 382, 29 L.R.A. 708; Id. 67 Minn. 65, 69 N. W. 463; Thomas v. Wisconsin Central Ry. Co. 108 Minn. 485, 122 N. W. 456, 23 L.R.A. (N.S.) 954; Baxter v. Roberts, 44 Cal. 187, 13 Am. Rep. 160; Bradburn v. Wabash R. Co. 134 Mich. 575, 96 N. W. 929; Landry v. Great Northern R. Co. 152 Wis. 379, 140 N. W. 75; Holshouser v. Denver Gas & E. Co. 18 Colo. App. 431, 72 Pac. 289; Kliegel v. Aitkin, 94 Wis. 432, 69 N. W. 67, 35 L.R.A. 219. 59 Am. St. 901; O'Connor v. Armour Packing Co. 158 Fed. 211, 85 C. C. A. 459, 15 L.R.A.(N.S.) 812, 14 Ann. Cas. 66. The law imposes this duty to warn on the master absolutely for the protection of the servant from injury, and he must either perform it personally or see that it is performed by a representative. 2 Dunnell, Minn. Dig. § 5868. That these blasting operations involved risks beyond those assumed by plaintiff, increased them, and rendered the performance of his duties extra-hazardous, is self-evident; and the extensive and protracted nature of the contractor's work, the measures taken by defendant to prepare for it, the frequency of explosions, and the extent to which débris was scattered thereby, must be held sufficient at least to sustain a finding charging defendant with notice not only of the operations themselves, but of the manner in which they were conducted. The court properly submitted the issue of negligence so made to the jury.

2. Were the proofs sufficient to uphold the finding of the jury that defendant's omission to warn plaintiff was the proximate cause of his injury? Defendant contends: "Plaintiff's work required him to be on or about the semaphore pole at the time of the accident.

A general warning would avail nothing. Had he been aware of the blasting, he would still have been obliged to rely upon being notified from time to time of the intention to fire a blast." proposition wholly ignores the fundamental basis of the duty to warn. In a recent Wisconsin decision it is said:

This

"There always may be latent dangers attendant upon the usual conduct of a business of whose existence it is the duty of the master to warn the servant so that the latter can decide for himself, after being so warned, whether or not he will assume them by remaining in the employment." Ruck v. Milwaukee Brewery Co. 144 Wis. 404, 129 N. W. 414. See also Boin v. Spreckles Sugar Co. 155 Cal. 612, 102 Pac. 937.

So in the present case, plaintiff should have been warned before being sent to this place of danger, in order that he might have elected whether to remain in or quit the employment. No such alternative was given him at any time. Had he received such warning its effect would have been material only upon assumption of risk or contributory negligence.

Plaintiff testified:

"Q. Had you known that the defendant company, or any of its officers, warned or notified you that they were using powder or dynamite down in that vicinity what would you have done?

"A. I would have went to those men and told them to notify me in case blasting was going to be done.

"Q. Had you known there was blasting going to be done there, would you have remained upon that semaphore pole?

"A. No, sir; I would not."

Upon this testimony, and mainly upon statements of principles excerpted from 2 Dunnell, Minn. Dig. § 7000, defendant insists that "plaintiff's injury was a direct consequence-not of his ignorance of the blasting operations in general, not of defendant's failure to warn him concerning the same but solely of the failure on the part of Baxter's men in charge of the blasting to notify him that the particular charge by which he was injured was about to be fired. And therefore defendant, though failing to warn plaintiff of the blasting, is not the cause of, nor answerable for, his injury." Thus,

in effect, we are asked to hold as a matter of law that defendant, notwithstanding its neglect of duty, is not liable, because plaintiff testified that, had he known of the blasting operations, he would have taken one of the obviously necessary steps to protect himself, assuming, of course, that he would not have quit the employment. Such a result would, as we have indicated above, have to be reached, if at all, under the doctrine of assumption of risk or contributory negligence, which, in view of the absence of any warning or notice to plaintiff from any source, cannot here be invoked. Would it not follow, by parity of reasoning, if defendant prevails in this contention, and plaintiff should subsequently sue the subcontractor, and on the trial testify that had he been warned by defendant he would have refused to go to the semaphore pole, defendant in that action. would be relieved from liability on the ground that this defendant's negligence was the proximate cause of the injury?

A holding in accordance with defendant's contention would emasculate the doctrine of duty to warn, and in the present case this would be done upon purely conjectural grounds. Plaintiff says he would have arranged for warning. What else would he have done? What kind of warning would he have demanded? Who can say that the same result would have followed had he actually conferred with the subcontractor, or that in such case he would still have been injured? Indeed, is there anything in the record reasonably tending to show that plaintiff, if he had been fully warned by defendant, would not have even quit the employment or else have refused to go to the semaphore pole in question? It should be remembered that the master's duty is not merely to advise the servant of existing conditions, but to see to it that he comprehends the risk and understands the danger. 3 Labatt, Master & S. (2d Ed.) § 1147; 1 Street, Foundations of L. L. 166-169. As said in The Magdaline, 91 Fed. 798, 800, quoted with approval in Thomas v. Wisconsin Central Ry. Co. 108 Minn. 485, 489, 122 N. W. 456, 23 L.R.A. (N.S.) 954:

"A master may not place his servant at a work made dangerous by the nature of the work of other servants, or persons performing work under contract, without due effort to furnish adequate protection, and, when injury arises, escape upon the plea that, but for the

negligence of a coservant or third person employed on the premises, the injury would not have happened. A servant may expect that his master will not surround him with dangerous agencies, or expose him to their operation, whether they are in charge of the master's servants or of any independent contractor."

The case under consideration is analogous to one involving violation of a statutory duty as negligence, of which it has been said:

"Where a statute or municipal ordinance imposes upon any person a specific duty for the protection or benefit of others, if he neglects to perform that duty he is liable to those for whose protection or benefit it was imposed for any injuries of the character which the statute or ordinance was designed to prevent." Perry v. Tozer, 90 Minn. 431, 438, 97 N. W. 137, 140, 101 Am. St. 416.

No distinction can be drawn between the effect, in this connection, of breaches of common law and statutory duties, and an imputation of causal connection in such cases cannot be destroyed by mere speculation or conjecture. Aside, then, from the question of whether the subcontractor's negligence is to be deemed an independent, intervening cause, we think it clear that the jury were justified in finding plaintiff's injury to be a consequence which followed in natural sequence from defendant's negligence, which latter, therefore, must be held to be the proximate cause thereof. Christianson v. Chicago, St. Paul, M. & O. Ry. Co. 67 Minn. 94, 97, 69 N. W. 640; Wallin v. Eastern Ry. Co. of Minn. 83 Minn. 149, 157, 86 N. W. 76, 54 L.R.A. 481.

3. Were plaintiff's injuries due to the interposition of an entirely independent and unrelated cause, sufficient of itself to stand as the cause of the mischief? See 2 Dunnell, Minn. Dig. § 7000, relied on by defendant. Such a cause must be one which not only comes between the original cause and the injury in point of time, but must turn aside the natural sequence of events and produce a result which would not otherwise have followed. City of Winona v. Botzet, 169 Fed. 321, 329, 94 C. C. A. 563, 23 L.R.A. (N.S.) 204. Or, as stated by Gilfillian, C. J., in Purcell v. St. Paul City Ry. Co. 48 Minn. 134, 138, 50 N. W. 1034, 16 L.R.A. 203:

"The new, independent, intervening cause must be one not produced by the wrongful act or omission, but independent of it, and

adequate to bring about the injurious results. Whether the natural connection of events was maintained or was broken by such new, independent cause, is generally a question for the jury." See also Illinois Cent. R. Co. v. Siler, 229 Ill. 390, 82 N. E. 362, 15 L.R.A. (N.S.) 819, 11 Ann. Cas. 368; Milwaukee & St. P. Ry. Co. v. Kellogg, 94 U. S. 469, 24 L. ed. 256.

How can it be said that failure of the excavation workmen to notify plaintiff interrupted the natural sequence of events beginning with defendant's neglect of duty or checked the causal momentum of its negligence? Did the intervening circumstance produce a result which would not otherwise have followed? Plaintiff would have been injured just the same, if the excavation workmen had been ignorant of his presence. How, then, can their knowledge and futile attempt to warn him constitute a breaking of the causal sequence? True, he might not have been injured had he received. warning of the particular blast in question; but this, at most, would bring the case within the rule relating to mere incidents in the natural sequence from the first wrongful act, or else within the doctrine of concurrent negligence, neither of which would relieve the original wrongdoer. See Baltimore & P. R. Co. v. Reaney, 42 Md. 117, 137. Viewed as an incidental matter, the subcontractor's negligence was a mere failure to interrupt the natural course of events started by defendant's putting plaintiff at work on the semaphore pole without warning as to surrounding conditions. Moon v. Northern Pac. R. Co. 46 Minn. 106, 48 N. W. 679, 24 Am. St. 194; Teal v. American Mining Co. 84 Minn. 320, 87 N. W. 837; Board of Co. Commrs. of Ramsey County v. Sullivan, 94 Minn. 201, 206, 102 N. W. 723; Thomas v. Wisconsin Central Ry. Co. 108 Minn. 485, 489, 122 N. W. 456, 23 L.R.A. (N.S.) 954; Neidhardt v. City of Minneapolis, 112 Minn. 149, 127 N. W. 484. Considered otherwise, the negligence of defendant and that of the subcontractor constituted contributing causes of the injury, for which, therefore, plaintiff "may recover damages from the one guilty of the first wrong, notwithstanding the succeeding negligence of the other united in producing" it. See concurring opinion of Mitchell, J., in Martin v. North Star Iron Works, 31 Minn. 407, 410, 18 N. W. 109. See also Johnson v. Northwestern Tel. Exch. Co. 48 Minn. 433, 51