III
In the summer of 1916 a bill bearing the names of Senator Kern and Representative McGillicudy of Maine and affecting the interests of 400,000 people was enacted into law. The passage of this bill, the Kern-McGillicudy Workman’s Compensation bill, was many years over due.
“It has been disgraceful,” he said in the senate, “that the great government of the United States has lagged behind every nation in the world, civilized and half-civilized, except Turkey, in the care it has given to the people who are employed by it.”
About this time he was making a futile effort to secure adequate compensation for an Indianian who had been hopelessly crippled by an accident in Panama while in the government service, and the difficulties he encountered outraged his sense of decency and justice.
When the bill reached the amendment stage, it was due to the vigilance of Senator Kern that it was not emasculated by amendments, offered in good faith, no doubt, but utterly destructive. Senator Smith of Georgia insisted upon writing a contributory negligence clause into the bill. This was earnestly contested by Senator Kern on the ground that while there might be some justification for such a clause in an employers’ liability law, it would defeat the purpose of a government workman’s compensation act, and would deprive the government employee of the sense of absolute security to which he was entitled.
And he just as vigorously opposed the proposal of Senator Cummins to have the law administered by a bureau instead of by a special commission.
During his service in the senate he never ceased to marvel at the light manner in which hundreds of thousands of dollars were appropriated for elaborate postoffice buildings where a very simple and inexpensive one would do, and the pitiful parsimony with which some statesmen were inclined to deal with expenses incidental to the legal protection of the lives and interests of the workingmen.
The measure was finally passed in August, 1916, in practically the form in which it was presented, carrying with it an inestimable boon to 400,000 men and women who were doing the civil work of the nation.
IV
During the same summer Senator Kern made his heaviest contribution to humanity in the part he played in forcing the consideration and passage of the child labor law. This was a subject that had been near his heart for many years, and we have seen that almost a quarter of a century before while a member of the state senate he had fought to place a child labor law upon the statutes of the state. For many years efforts were made from time to time to pass a child labor law, but without results. The public opinion of the republic had long been crystallized against the exploitation of childhood, and social workers had accumulated the most damning evidence against the system, but the statesmen seemed impervious to the pity of it, and cynically found excuses for non-activity. But a few years before Senator Kern had listened to the witnesses called by the House committee investigating the strike in the mills of Lawrence, Massachusetts, and had been sickened by the sight of pale, aenemic, underfed, overworked children who were actually forced to pay for the cold water that they drank while at work in the mills. He hated the exploitation of childhood with a holy hate, and one of his ambitions was to be able to strike a blow at the system while in the senate.