Legal Decisions Indicate That His Cash Value Begins to Deteriorate When
He Is Twenty-Five.
What is the value of a man? What is his average physical value, measured
in dollars and cents? We hear it said that in partly civilized countries
human life is cheap. We are told that the great movements typified by
the American and French revolutions have raised the value of the
individual. Can we get these comparisons into an arithmetical table?
Summarizing the statements of another journal, the Saint Louis
_Globe-Democrat_ says:
After looking over legal decisions in the various States, _Bench and
Bar_, a publication devoted to affairs of the law, estimates that at
ten years of age a boy of the laboring class is worth two thousand and
sixty-one dollars and forty-two cents; at fifteen, four thousand two
hundred and sixty-three dollars and forty-six cents; at twenty-five,
five thousand four hundred and eighty-eight dollars and three cents;
from which time the decline is steady, a man of seventy, by this legal
decision scale, rating at only seventeen dollars and thirteen cents.
By the same practical method of computation, one eye is worth five
thousand dollars; one leg, fifteen thousand dollars; two legs,
twenty-five thousand dollars; one arm, ten thousand dollars; one hand,
six thousand dollars; one finger, one thousand five hundred dollars;
and permanent disability, twenty-five thousand dollars. This is merely
an average as far as decisions have been examined.
One of the candidates on the Democratic State ticket, who was crippled
for life while an employee on a Missouri railroad, fought his case
through the courts for nearly ten years, gained it several times, but
finally received nothing. So practise varies as well as theory.
The estimates of the value of a man’s life are based upon an idea not of
his value to himself, but of his value to others. The figures in
individual cases would vary greatly with reference to whether or not the
person’s death caused hardship to others who had been dependent on him.
The value of a man to himself is unimportant after he is dead. His value
to society at large cannot be considered in a cash estimate, since that
kind of value often depends upon other than physical resources. His
value to those who look to him for support can alone be estimated on the
material side.