British run sugar mills of Antigua, a slave with a machete stood beside another who fed cane into the mill, ready to cut off the arm of the mill feeder if it became trapped. For thousands of years, tradespeople, from builders to silversmiths, were self employed. Only a few of the highest skilled, such as church masons, could demand extra wages for work at height or contractual compensation if they were injured. In the mid to late medieval period, the skilled tradesmen formed local craft guilds which eventually developed a form of social insurance where the members' would each contribute a small sum for care of the needy, sometimes explicitly including their own incapacitated members.
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