WORKMEN’S COMPENSATION: MR. JONES ANSWERED
To the Editor:
So it seems that my fellow “Socialist agitators” and I are leading around by their noses such staid and proper citizens as are to be found in the City Club of New York, the New York Federation of Labor and the American Association for Labor Legislation.[[5]] And because some of us are advocating here and now in New York that employers shall be permitted self-insurance, mutual insurance or contribution to a state managed fund, we are “seeking to destroy private business in all its forms.” But F. Robertson Jones, who is one of those “employes of the casualty companies who have their bread and butter at stake,” really need not be so perturbed. No one really proposes “to transfer their jobs to political appointees and to leave them out in the cold.” That is a “pure figment of the imagination” to make use of Mr. Jones’ own restrained language. There are many good men working for the state now and there will be more when Mr. Jones and his fellow-employes are taken over to apply to the public good the experience and knowledge gained in private enterprises. And if public service is too contaminating, there will still be the self insurers, and the mutuals in which those left “out in the cold” may find ready employment. Let me hasten to add that I do not make this statement “sneeringly” and that I hope a sober consideration of it will carry conviction that if untrue, at least it is not “unqualifiedly untrue.”
One example will do as well as a dozen to illustrate my point about the attitude of the casualty companies toward “elective” acts. It is well known that those companies opposed the New Jersey “elective” act at the start. Seeing its tremendous advantages they then became active in its support. As illustrating this point, I need only refer to the energy and insistence with which the officers and counsel of various casualty companies tried to put through, in the closing days of the session last year in New York, a bill fashioned on the New Jersey model. A special message from the governor and a special session of the Legislature were talked of and only the uncompromising persistence of the State Federation of Labor and the American Association for Labor Legislation saved the employes of this state from something even worse than the New Jersey act. The author of that proposed New York bill, when it emerged from the conference called by certain casualty officials and attorneys disowned it, it was so bad.
The Pennsylvania commission is an example of a commission advised by more than casualty company actuaries. Of that act a commissioner from another state writes: “The Pennsylvania act is calculated to turn the employe over to the “Shylocks” and loan sharks in the liability business. The report of the Pennsylvania commission outlines the most abominable act that it has been my privilege to examine, and it fully maintains the reputation of the state of Pennsylvania as being the ‘rotten borough’ of the world.”
No facts are quoted to prove that my statement as to the club feature is “diametrically the opposite of the truth.” If the scheme does not work out to the advantage of the casualty companies it would be interesting to know why not. We would all agree that what the companies most desire is that they shall get the employers, “or all large employers,” to “come permanently under the compensation feature or to stay out permanently”—exactly my point. Under such happy circumstances prospective profits are beyond the dreams of avarice. Maybe the profits have not been made yet, certainly I have not so stated, It is the prospect which is so alluring, the profits so nearly within grasp which are now slipping through their very fingers, because of these “ill-advised enthusiasts” and other undesirable citizens.
And is it, then, “a purely gratuitous misstatement of the fact” that the casualty companies opposed, tooth and nail, the Ohio compulsory act which, by the way, does not give a monopoly to political boards? Do they not oppose such an act here in New York today? Have they not opposed it in Iowa, California and Washington?
As to the casualty companies having been most active “for a constitutional amendment in New York,” so far as I have observed, that activity has been very largely confined, as has that of certain lawyers, to advocating such changes in the amendment as would defeat the whole broad purpose of last year’s amendment. If listened to by the Legislature these advocates would have put off for another three years the much to be desired amendment to our constitution.
The objections to the fixing of rates by the insurance department are two-fold. First, that that department is not “composed of officials expert” in casualty insurance; second, that Senator Foley at the public hearing at Albany, in order to meet the criticism of the American Federation of Labor, proposed a state fund divorced from the state insurance department. This was an important concession to labor and was so intended. Labor and many others had fears of the state insurance department, remembering the influence of the insurance interests before Superintendent Emmett took charge and fearing their influence after his retirement. That the “constitutional objections have been carefully considered and that the overwhelming weight of opinion is that they are not valid” is, as Mr. Jones would say, “a purely gratuitous misstatement of the facts,” “a figment of the imagination,” if not, indeed, “a gratuitous insult” to our intelligence. A few lawyers retained by the casualty insurance companies may disagree with us, but that hardly makes such a weight of opinion as to be overwhelming. As to bar associations, all that is needed is to look up the clients of some of these association committeemen. If what is wanted is a duly attested power of attorney of the casualty companies, I must admit that I cannot produce it.
If the Foley bill be studied with a little more care and with some understanding of the lengths to which insurance agents will go and have recently been going in Wisconsin, to misrepresent the state fund, the statement about turning over the rich New York field may not appear as such “nonsense.” It is to be remembered, too, that at the time the Foley bill was introduced, the accompanying bill providing for the organization of mutuals made such organization a matter of extreme difficulty. This has been somewhat remedied lately, more or less at the instigation, I fear, of the aforementioned enthusiasts and Socialists.
The men who were openly planning the rout of the casualty companies at the time I wrote were the State Federation of Labor, of course. To that valiant and determined host has now been added the American Association for Labor Legislation, the Progressive Party in which ex-Superintendent of Insurance Hotchkiss is so important a figure and Colonel Roosevelt.
Paul Kennaday.
New York.