Proceedings, Third National Conference Workmen's Compensation for Industrial Accidents

by National Conference on Workmen's Compensation for Industrial Accidents

I was asked to read a paper at the National Conference of Charities and Corrections at St. Louis, my subject being: "Compensation from the Point of View of What a Relief Society Would Consider Adequate." I tried to get a number of accidents equal to that of the victims of Cherry; that is, accidents that happened one at a time in the commonplace fashion, where, instead of having the press interested in it for weeks, the man will get three lines in a paper in an obscure corner, saying that So-and-so had his head cut off or had suffered an accident which cost his life. I got from ten societies similar to the United Charities of Chicago, in ten of the largest cities of the country, something over one hundred accident cases, and I have a couple of charts which show the kind of compensation that was obtained by those one-at-a-time, obscure accidents, and then what happened in the case of the men down at Cherry, where they met their death so dramatically. One chart shows the compensation they received, either through court action or from the employer, and it shows what 50 families received where the man was killed in a one-at-a-time accident in ten of the large cities of this country. The second is a chart of 50 families in Cherry, and shows that they received $1800 apiece; while the 50 one-at-a-time families only received $8749, in amounts all the way from $3000 down to $7.

I suppose that a damage suit of $10,000 or $15,000 does have some compelling effect upon an employer with reference to protective machinery, but I think that the greatest thing in the world that will happen in the way of preventing accidents is to make it dead sure that every accident will receive some just measure of compensation. Instead of having 50 accidents get $8749, if they come to $3000 apiece, making a total of $150,000, that fact will have a great deal more effect in preventing accidents than has the present plan.

Now, I have another chart which shows the whole relief story of Cherry, and indicates the effect of public opinion upon the compensation received by the sufferers. The Red Cross Society, the Legislature and the whole community became interested in Cherry. The money contributed by the public, by the Legislature and by the community generally amounted to $87,240 odd dollars. In our one-at-a-time accidents something was done for the victims, of course; they were cared for in day nurseries, in orphan asylums, in hospitals and the county agents gave help and the charities gave some help, but not in any such amount as the Cherry sufferers received. Twenty-four of these one-at-a-time cases were cases where the children were taken out of school and put to work or to begging, or the family took in boarders, and in some instances the criminal courts had played their part. Whatever it was, it was a certain fixed amount. (Down in Cherry the amount contributed is to go to the families in monthly payments, spreading over some five years, and in amounts suited to the number of the children and the ages of the children in the family.) The deterioration in the income of the families, resulting from the one-at-a-time accidents, was 64 per cent. Notwithstanding the wife and the children did everything they could, the income in these families has deteriorated almost two-thirds. In one case, where there was permanent disability, a man was awarded in one court $22,500. The case was appealed from court to court during a number of years, and finally the man received absolutely nothing.

Those are some of the general consequences, and I believe that in this matter of prevention nothing is going to have so wholesome and so certain an effect in the prevention of accidents as to have accidents cost money, and cost about what they ought to cost, and cost it with a certainty. You can see what happened in the case of these 50 families, where the accidents happened one at a time; those families only cost something like $8000, and some of that even, in fact, quite a large part of it, was a gift from the employer and not compensation.

(A motion was adopted thanking Mr. Kingsley for his graphic presentation of the facts.)

John Flora (Illinois): I see in this tentative "code" no provision for doing away with the defenses of the employers before the courts. The Chicago Federation of Labor, which I directly represent on the Illinois Commission, holds that any compensation bill in the State of Illinois is not worth the paper it is written on, unless we have a provision also doing away with the right of the employer to bring into the defense what is known in court decisions as assumption of risk, contributory negligence and the fellow-servant doctrine.

Chairman Mercer: Let me suggest that further down in this bill the common law remedies for all industrial accidents covered by this bill are intended to be repealed. If they are repealed, that would dispose of your question.

Mr. Flora: Very well. I want to say then in reference to this first section, that it appeals to me a great deal stronger than anything else. I happen to be a building trades man myself, and I want to say individually, as a member of the Illinois Commission, that I am in favor of a compensation law that will cover everybody. I do not favor taking out any class of industry and making that one class amenable to a certain law, and allowing another class to go without any protection whatever. I hold that the widow of a man who is killed in a non-hazardous occupation suffers just as much as the widow of a man who is killed in a hazardous occupation. I do not know how the constitution would affect this matter in this State. That, I presume, is something that the Illinois Commission would have to look up, but nevertheless I think it is a great deal better than the New York proposition. I never have been very much taken up with the idea of having two different bills in New York. I feel that they might have gone further and have made one bill that would cover every occupation. I hold with the rest of the representatives of the working people that the working people will never agree to surrender their right to go into court under the common law.

Mr. Dawson (New York): I have not made up my mind at all as to this question, whether the right of the workingman who is injured, or of his family in the event of his death, to proceed under the existing law, should be taken away; whether he should be compelled to exercise an option and abide by it, or whether he should be permitted to proceed under the law through the courts, and in case he fails to establish that he has been injured by the employer's wrongful or negligent act, still be entitled to compensation under the compensation act.

There are, however, some considerations that arise in my mind. In the first place, the tendency of the proposed legislation in this country has been to do away with certain of the defenses, even though a compensation act be adopted. An argument in favor of that has been that by doing away with these defenses the employers will be made very glad indeed to accept a compensation act. I think the impression is that the bill which was passed by the Ohio Legislature, and since vetoed by the Governor, was intended chiefly to influence public opinion there in favor of abandoning entirely the old method of dealing with industrial accidents. Certainly in New York there is no question but that the weakening of the defenses was directly for the purpose of getting the manufacturers to take advantage of the permissive act. As I understand it, a similar proposition is now being brought forward in Wisconsin. If, in spite of this, by any chance the fixed policy in this country should ultimately be the same as in Great Britain; namely, to preserve to workmen their rights under the common law and under statute law relating to employers' liability, either in an optional form or in a form which would still give the benefit under the workmen's compensation act, though defeated in the courts, it occurs to me that this weakening of defenses would be a peculiarly dangerous thing for us to do. The present situation in the United States is that the employers' liability theory, the negligence theory has, notwithstanding these defenses, in the main, been pushed just as far as the courts and the juries could push it, to cover many accidents. Notwithstanding that we chafe at these defenses, the courts and juries have gone just as far as they could go, on the theory that an employer was to be held liable only for his own fault. This is due to a strong sense of natural justice and a desire to compensate as many as possible.