BIG BUSINESS AND THE ORIGINS OF WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION.

The article examines the process whereby big business came to sponsor workmen's compensation legislation, as well as its striking legislative success in so doing. Social reform and the regulation of business enterprise and banking first became widely accepted as a legitimate function of the federal and state governments during the Progressive Era. In large part this was the result of an understanding by many of the more sophisticated financiers and corporation leaders that such reform would strengthen the system; that if the new trusts were to stabilize their dominant position in American society, the demands of other groups must be met at least in part. This did not mean that business leaders made the initial demands for particular reforms. Those suffering under intolerable conditions initiated most movements for reform. But it did often mean that success, in the sense of legislation enacted, and followed upon the adoption of particular reform programs by big business leaders. The socially uncontrolled entrepreneurial initiative that led to America's leap into world predominance as an industrial power in the last third of the nineteenth century was accompanied by a ruthless spirit of competition that left little room for concern about the welfare or working conditions of those at the bottom.