The workman's rights are very fully protected by the requirement that the first payment shall be accompanied by a form prescribed by the Commissioner setting forth clearly the amount, the rate and how it was computed, and the period of time covered. by the payment. And if the right to compensation is controverted a copy of such notice stating the ground of objection is also sent to the claimant, as well as to the Commissioner.

And while the inception of payments is amply protected, the law does not stop there but provides that no claim may be closed without an opportunity to the claimant to be heard. The existing practice is that when a notice of final payment or stop payment is received from the employer or insurance carrier, a copy of that notice which gives the total payments made, the period covered and the reason for stopping payments, is sent to the claimant with a notice that the claim will be on for a hearing at a time stated in the notice. If the claimant objects to the closing of the case, he has only to appear at the time stated and make known the grounds of his objection. If, however, as so frequently happens, the workman has returned to his work at his full wages, and has received all that the law entitled him to, he is not dragged down to the Department to waste at least a day from his work with an attendant loss of pay, only to learn that he has received all that the law entitled him to. If neither by written communication nor by personal appearance the claimant objects to a closing of the case, and if the evidence before the Department is complete, the case is then declared closed and notice to that effect sent all parties. But even such closing is not final if the claimant subsequently can show that his disability extended beyond the time for which compensation was paid.

The great merit of this system of payments lies in the promptness of payments and the relief from compulsory attendance at useless hearings on the part of the claimant. It must not be supposed that few cases are paid without delay and controversy, as some would have us believe. The opposite is the fact.

In order to arrive at an idea of the length of time between the date of accident and the first payment of compensation, I twice during the past year had random tests made. This was done by taking at random from the closed files an equal number of cases of the different kinds of carriers and examining each case to learn the lapse of time between accident and first payment. These cases examined included both uncontroverted and controverted cases. The average lapse of time in each of the classes of insurers was as follows:

Considering that no compensation is due for the first 14 days, and that the first payment is not due until a week later, or 21 days, the above indicates that all claims are being paid in a minimum of time after accident. If in the foregoing we eliminate a few cases that were controverted and accordingly somewhat lengthened we get quite a startling result, and the examination. of individual cases has disclosed that very frequently as a matter of fact, the first payment of compensation is made before the 21st day; in other words, compensation is being paid in many cases before the law demands. This undoubtedly follows upon the making of the employer responsible for prompt and direct payment without the legal machiney of the Department being put in motion.

In view of the adverse criticism of the Law that has been made during the past few months, the above facts are submitted. If there were evidence that any substantial injustice was being done under this system, there might be ground for criticism, but a system that patently is so much of an advantage to the workers should not be abandoned without conclusive evidence that justice is being done. No such evidence has came to my attention.

MARITIME EMPLOYMENTS

No subject has received the attention of the Legislature and the courts more than the matter of maritime employments under compensation.

After having been declared entirely outside of compensation for more than a year, the maritime employments have been brought back under compensation in large part, as the result of three events during the past year.

First, there was enacted by the last Legislature, in section 113 of the Law, a provision that an employer carrying on a maritime employment and his employees might by waiving their admiralty rights and liabilities bring themselves under the operation of the Compensation Law, and the Industrial Board was given authority to make awards in such cases. This provision was made to take effect on July 1, 1922.

In the meantime, however, the U. S. Supreme Court, on May 27, 1922, in the matter of the State Industrial Commissioner vs. Nordenholt Corp., in a case carried up to that court by the Attorney General at my request, reversed the New York Court of Appeals and declared that workers on the docks and on land, as distinguished from those injured on board a vessel, had the right to claim compensation under the New York Act.

This decision brought back under compensation, or in effect declared they never had been out from compensation, a vast number of workers on our docks and around shipping. It left a very unsatisfactory situation, however, for the practice is to divide. gangs of longshoremen, and some work on the dock while others

are sent on board the vessel to truck freight or stow it in the hold. These latter were left entirely without a remedy under compensation, while their fellow workmen on the dock were protected. This apparent inequality was bound to work badly and to the manifest disadvantage of shipping in our ports.

Shortly after this decision Congress passed an Act, and on June 10, 1922, it received the approval of the President, whereby the Compensation Laws of the States were declared to extend to all maritime workers other than the master or member of the crew of a vessel. These latter were left in the exclusive jurisdiction of admiralty, but as to all other classes of workers the Federal District Courts were ousted of jurisdiction.

The effect of these three events has been to bring all classes of maritime workers under the protection of our compensation law except the masters and members of crews of vessels, and even as to them some employers by election bring them under the law.

Whether the courts will declare the Act of June 10, 1922, beyond the power of Congress remains to be seen, but it is earnestly hoped that the law will be upheld.

In the meantime, the operation of the law relative to maritime. workers has added many thousands of claims to those we had to handle. And because of the peculiar difficulties encountered in these cases, I have recommended an appropriation to establish a longshore division in the Compensation Bureau to handle exclusively these cases. If then the law should later be set aside and we again lose jurisdiction of these cases, that division could be dropped without any disturbance to the rest of the Bureau.

UNIVERSAL COVERAGE UNDER COMPENSATION

The scheme of the New York Workmen's Compensation Law is for the compulsory insurance of employees engaged in certain enumerated employments that are declared in the law to be hazardous, and for a system of elective coverage in any other employment where the employer and his employees by their joint election bring themselves under the Compensation Law.

By chapter 634, Laws of 1918, a provision was added to the law whereby all other employments, whether defined as hazardous or not, were brought within the coverage of the law wherein were employed four or more workmen or operatives. If, therefore, four or more workmen or operatives, that is to say, workmen, mechanics, laborers, artisans, or the like, were employed regularly in the business of the employer, whether on the same premises or not, all employees of every sort and nature, except farm laborers and domestic servants, were brought under the Compensation Law. This was a very liberalizing provision but lead to much litigation as to the meaning of the term "workmen or operatives" and to the application of the statute.

The constitutionality of the provision was upheld by the Court of Appeals in Europe vs. Addison Amusements, Inc. (231 N. Y.

105). The case of Krinsky vs. Ward & Gow (231 N. Y. 525, affirmed without opinion) was carried to the U. S. Supreme Court and was sustained by that Court in an opinion handed down on June 5, 1922. In their opinion the Court held that it was competent for the legislature to define what constitutes a hazardous employment and that it might even declare any employment to be hazardous in which one or more persons were employed. The Court in its opinion said among other things:

Next, we agree that, in a test of constitutionality under the Fourteenth Amendment, the question whether there is inherent hazard in an occupation or a group of occupations is not to be settled conclusively by a legislative declaration or by an empty form of words. We add, it is not to be settled, hardly is affected, by an arbitrary a priori statement, unaided by the light of experience in which the Legislature acted, that there is absolutely no inherent hazard in an occupation, especially where it appears that even one employee has been seriously injured while acting in the line of his duties in a manner that easily might have been anticipated by the employer, or the inspector who supervised his work, to say nothing of the employee himself, had either of these exercised the ordinary care of the reasonably prudent man to whom the common law so frequently resorts for a standard. The Legislature, in the New York system, is justified in extending the benefits of the Compensation Law as far as it reasonably may determine occupational hazard to extend to the "vanishing point as it were- - and any lines of group definition it may adopt, if easily understood and applied, cannot reasonably be called an empty form of words" merely because they do not carry on their face the reasons for adopting them.

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In examining the Compensation Law and its many amendments, including the one in question, and the workings of the law as indicated by the decisions cited and others, we have been impressed again and again, to the point of complete conviction, that this act or any of its amendments is not the work of novices or bunglers. A priori reasoning has not been resorted to; there is no reliance upon generalization or common knowledge;" no simply because;" nothing taken for granted. No case that we recall illustrates more aptly or forcibly the wisdom of the familiar rule, expressed by this court in a recent case in these terms: "There is a strong presumption that a legislature understands and correctly appreciates the needs of its own people, that its laws are directed to problems made manifest by experience, and that its discriminations are based upon adequate grounds." Middleton v. Texas Power & Light Co., 249 U. S. 152, 157. The law was passed in 1913 and re-enacted in 1914 after the taking effect of a constitutional amendment adopted under circumstances mentioned in the White case, 243 U. S. 188, 195; the decision of this court was announced in March, 1917; meanwhile, administration commenced July 1, 1914, and was continued for four years prior to the enactment of second group 45; a multitude of compensation rulings, opinions of the attorney General, and court decisions, sufficiently reported to the public, together with the administration of the state insurance fund, and a study and adoption of the plan of classifications used by private casualty insurance companies for underwriting business may give but an inadequate impression of the informed expert opinion upon which the Legislature might, and we fairly may presume did, draw for aid in framing the new group.

What was it they were aiming at, and how did they seek to accomplish it? We need not be sure of hitting upon a correct, much less a complete, explanation. Upon the general presumption referred to the questioned group must stand unless it were demonstrated to a moral certainty, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the grouping could not possibly be explained on reasonable grounds.

Let us assume that after four years' practical experience in the operation of the Compensation Law, aided by the intensive studies of the Commission,

the Legislature was satisfied with the law as well suited to the needs of the people, except that it did not go far enough and left uncovered much unclassified ground where undefined and virtually undefinable industrial hazards remained. It was desired to leave out, as before, farm laborers and domestic servants; a classification sustained upon simple grounds, doubtless far from expressing in full the reasons that had actuated the Legislature, in New York Central R. R. Co. v. White, 243 U. S. 188, 208.

Aside from this, let us suppose it was desired to extend the benefits of the law as far as practicable from the administrative standpoint; abandon the attempt to go further in grouping occupations as hazardous because of the names by which they are described, include all remaining businesses, above a fixed minimum, in a single group, treat them all as more or less hazardous, and leave questions as to the particular degree of hazard, and the proper grouping of businesses as between themselves, to be worked out by the Commission in the light of experience, according to the methods of private casualty insurance companies, as already was done with the exist ing groups.

Was actual inherent hazard ignored? Not at all; rather it was treated as virtually universal, but incapable of being precisely defined or classified by fixed statutory rules in advance, and more easily treated in the light of experience; the new group was to be a part of a law which operates, as nearly as experience may guide, not in vacuo, but only where there is actual inherent hazard and to the extent that it extends.

But why begin with "four workmen or operatives regularly employed?" Possible answer: It was necessary to begin somewhere; the Legislature must decide where; it is reasonable to believe there is some actual inherent hazard, where even as few as four workmen or operatives are employed steadily, though it be no more than may arise from the danger of their injuring each other; besides, an employer who has as many as four workmen or operatives regularly employed, reasonably may be counted on to have a payroll account that may be made the basis upon which to compute the premiums for state insurance; below four, the business perhaps hardly would pay the cost of administration, hardly give opportunity to distribute the loss, according to the general principle of insurance which runs throughout the Compensation Law.

But why extend the responsibility of the employer to others in the same employ whose occupations are separate and non-hazardous? Possible answer: It is the employer himself who commingles in a single business or establishment those doing the more hazardous with those doing the less hazardous work, if it is done. If it be practicable to carry them on separate payrolls, presumably the Commission has the discretion to adjust it in fixing the amount of securities to be deposited under section 50, or the premium rate under section 95. Further possible answer: The difficulty is inherent in the subject; in years of practical experience, it had been found that in the extremely varied and complex organization of industry, disabling or fatal injuries occur when least expected, and in ways not characteristic of any particular industry described. The Legislature hardly could be called upon to predict, any more than the employer, who was to be injured; and to confine the cost of casualty insurance strictly to those who were sure to be "casualties," might baffle the efforts even of the experienced legislators who framed second group 45. Accidents cannot be relied upon to follow the symmetrical lines of group description; this is a difficulty that showed itself under groups as they stood before and led to the 1916 amendment of the definition of "employee." Even clerks and salesmen cannot, in this busy day, be confidently treated as immune from industrial hazards; if a general rule must be declared, it would be safer to say, on the basis of experience, that no occupation is free from industrial hazard, than to say that any specified occupation is free. Even the probable oversights or want of vision of the employer are an appreciable source of danger to elerks, as witness Joyce v. Eastman Kodak Co., 182 App. Div. 354, where a clerk employed by a maker of photographic cameras and supplies (classed as hazardous in group 23) but engaged in clerical duties having no direct