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Inventing Industrial Accidents and Their Insurance: Discourse and Workers’ Compensation in the United States, 1880s–1910s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Julian Go III
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Extract

For an industrial worker in late-nineteenth-century America who lost a limb or an eye from a precariously assembled piece of machinery or who suffered some other work injury, compensation could be attained only through litigation. But under the common law, the courts assumed that workers who found themselves in dangerous work situations had the freedom to leave and find employment elsewhere. If they chose not to leave and were injured, the employer was not to blame legally. The doctrine of “assumed risk,” one of three “employers’ defenses,” made it difficult for a worker to win compensation. Only when an injured worker could prove that the employer had directly caused the accident and had done so alone was payment awarded (Downey 1912: 11–13).

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Social Science History , Volume 20 , Issue 3 , Fall 1996 , pp. 401 - 438
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Copyright © Social Science History Association 1996 

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