The accidental republic : crippled workingmen, destitute widows, and the remaking of American law

In the five decades after the Civil War, the United States witnessed a profusion of legal institutions designed to cope with the nation's exceptionally acute industrial accident crisis.

Jurists elaborated the common law of torts. Workingmen's organisations founded a widespread system of cooperative insurance.

Leading employers instituted welfare-capitalist accident relief funds. And social reformers advocated compulsory insurance such as workmen's compensation.