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PREFACE.

The rapid spread of the workmen's compensation laws in this country. has seemed revolutionary to many people. Yet they have been in force in Europe for over a quarter of a century, and in England since 1897. The first American statute of this kind was in 1910, and that was held invalid. The next one was in 1911. Yet such laws are now in force in half the states of this country and rapidly spreading, while about 350 judicial decisions have already been rendered upon them. Indeed, nothing so revolutionary in its effect upon the rights and liabilities of so vast a number of American citizens has ever been known in American legislation as that which has been caused by the adoption of the modern workmen's compensation acts. It has become imperative to have an adequate treatment of the existing law on these matters, and this volume is offered to meet that need.. Many distinctive features of the American statutes are taken literally from the English act, or closely modeled thereon, and therefore our own courts have had to go to the English decisions for precedents in many of the most important American cases. There are about 2,000 of these English: decisions, and these, together with all American cases, have been carefully analyzed, and all their value fully presented in this work.

There is also a Federal statute on this subject, but it is limited to employees of the Federal government, and no cases under it have yet been passed upon by the courts.

This treatise was prepared primarily for use as one of the annotations in the Lawyers Reports Annotated, and appears in the current volume, L.R.A.1916A. This explains the frequent use of the word "annotation;" also several very slight changes in form and arrangement deemed more appropriate to the style of a text-book. One of these is in the form of printing the table of contents; another is in the running titles or top lines on the pages. The third of these is in transferring the first 23 pages of the L.R.A. volume preceding the text of the present treatise, and on which were printed the reports of some leading cases, to the end of this volume, with new page numbers, but retaining the former page numbers 1-23 in brackets. An index and a table of cases reported and cited in this volume have also been added. In other respects this entire treatise on workmen's compensation laws, followed by over forty of the leading Ameri

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can decisions on this subject reported in full, with some special text annotation, is exactly reproduced from the L.R.A. volume without any change in type or otherwise. To those not familiar with that series of reports, it may be proper to say that this work is an example of what L.R.A. is doing for all branches of the law. But L.R.A. subscribers should not purchase this volume, because they already have the entire work in their reports.

We may also be permitted to call attention to the compactness of this volume, and to the fact that, if printed in the style of ordinary text-books, it would fill more than a thousand pages.

Rochester, N. Y., 1916.

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