Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Coalminers, Accidents and Insurance in Late Nineteenth-Century England
- 2 The Costs and Benefits of Size in a Mutual Insurance System: The German Miners’
- 3 A New Welfare System: Friendly Societies in the Eastern Lombardy from 1860 to 1914
- 4 Economic Growth and Demand for Health Coverage in Spain: The Role of Friendly Societies (1870–1942)
- 5 Sickness Insurance and Welfare Reform in England and Wales, 1870–1914
- 6 From Sickness to Death: Revisiting the Financial Viability of the English Friendly Societies, 1875–1908
- 7 America's Rejection of Government Health Insurance in the Progressive Era: Implications for Understanding the Determinants and Achievements of Public Insurance of Health Risks
- 8 Medical Assistance Provided by La Conciliación, a Pamplona Mutual Assistance Association (1902–84)
- 9 In it for the Money? Insurers, Sickness Funds and the Dominance of Not-for-Profit Health Insurance in the Netherlands
- 10 Belgian Mutual Health Insurance and the Nation State
- Notes
- Index
1 - Coalminers, Accidents and Insurance in Late Nineteenth-Century England
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Coalminers, Accidents and Insurance in Late Nineteenth-Century England
- 2 The Costs and Benefits of Size in a Mutual Insurance System: The German Miners’
- 3 A New Welfare System: Friendly Societies in the Eastern Lombardy from 1860 to 1914
- 4 Economic Growth and Demand for Health Coverage in Spain: The Role of Friendly Societies (1870–1942)
- 5 Sickness Insurance and Welfare Reform in England and Wales, 1870–1914
- 6 From Sickness to Death: Revisiting the Financial Viability of the English Friendly Societies, 1875–1908
- 7 America's Rejection of Government Health Insurance in the Progressive Era: Implications for Understanding the Determinants and Achievements of Public Insurance of Health Risks
- 8 Medical Assistance Provided by La Conciliación, a Pamplona Mutual Assistance Association (1902–84)
- 9 In it for the Money? Insurers, Sickness Funds and the Dominance of Not-for-Profit Health Insurance in the Netherlands
- 10 Belgian Mutual Health Insurance and the Nation State
- Notes
- Index
Summary
Historians of the coal industry seem largely unaware of – or uninterested in – coalminers’ attempts to insure themselves against workplace accidents. The few scholars who have considered miners’ efforts to protect themselves in this way tend to examine financial rather than medical provision, and to emphasize the failings, rather than the benefits, of the schemes which were available. But what is most striking is that they are all inclined to agree that it was the coal industry's combination of high risks and high (if unstable) earnings that explained miners’ desire, and ability, to insure themselves and their families against the risks of industrial injury.
It seems odd then that when historians turn their attention to the working class as a whole – including, of course, workers in less dangerous, less well-paid occupations than coal mining – they suggest, some of them, that voluntarism played a greater role in the provision of late nineteenth- (and early-mid twentieth-) century welfare than conventional analysis allows. It also seems odd, to coal mining historians at least, that they have begun to stress the difficulties of determining workers’ reasons for deciding to protect themselves and their families by means of insurance. Martin Gorsky, for example, warns against ‘monocausal accounts of friendly society growth’. He is at particular pains to counter the view that, in the early nineteenth century at least, either surplus earnings or ‘the health risks of industrial labour’ provides a complete explanation of increased spending on insurance.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Welfare and Old Age in Europe and North AmericaThe Development of Social Insurance, pp. 9 - 26Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014