Insurance Journal's new pub MyNewMarkets has an entertaining piece about the history of workers comp, which according to author Chris Boggs, began back in the days of the pirate.

Boggs does allow opinion to influence his rendering of history - notably he claims former German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck "was not known as a socially-conscious ruler; the working conditions of the common man were not necessarily foremost in his mind."

I beg to differ.

von Bismarck was nothing if not pragmatic, and the fact that he forced passage of the first national health insurance, pension, and disability legislation shows that if anything, he was extremely socially conscious. Any ruler of a European country in the latter half of the nineteenth century had to be socially conscious, as the locus of power was moving rapidly away from the genetically-chosen elite.

The ones who were not socially conscious (e.g. Czar Nicholas Alexander) didn't survive very long.

Other than that difference of opinion, the piece is well done and provides a brief intro with a promise of more to come.