Mr. Sumner: As I understand politics in Missouri, the farmers there are strong partisans, and unless you can get your bill adopted by one party or the other, as a party measure, which I think would be very improbable down there, because our parties are very largely in the control of the corporate interests of the large cities, they would have something to say about the bills and the farmers' representatives would simply go with the party. Still, with the initiative and referendum the people and the labor unions down there are not relying very much on the Legislature any more.
Chairman Mercer: If either party, or if both labor and capital wanted this proposition, then they would vote for it?
Mr. Sumner: Yes.
Chairman Mercer: So if the employers and employes should agree on what was a proper bill in your State, you would not have any special difficulty, after all, would you?
Mr. Sumner: No, probably not. I should add that we have discussed this matter at the City Club in Kansas City, and the employers are just as much opposed to the present system as the employes. I was told by a State Senator last week that he has a bill now drawn up to be introduced at the next session of the Legislature, but I apprehend that the bill will not be acceptable to us.
Prof. Seager (New York): It seems to me in this matter that we are between the devil and the deep sea. If we begin this legislation by taking in all trades, we have got to scale down our schedule of compensation. We have got to recognize the validity of the argument, that you cannot put too heavy a burden upon competitive industries in one State when they have not the same burden in other States. That means a low scale of compensation. That means it would be very hard to get wage-earners behind our proposal, and for those reasons I anticipate that the political obstacle to getting a bill passed that contains an adequate scale of compensation and applies to all industries is going to be serious in most of the States.
I know it was our opinion in New York that such a bill could not be passed through the Legislature. The only certainty of getting a bill through the Legislature was limiting it to extra-hazardous trades and to trades that were non-competitive. That policy of course has this disadvantage: There is some doubt as to whether a classification along those lines will be upheld as reasonable by the courts, and I confess that we have some anxiety as to whether the bill we have induced the Legislature to pass will be held to be constitutional on that account. On the other hand, along that line it is possible politically to make a beginning, and I am inclined to think that it would be easier, if we can, to get the thing started for extra-hazardous industries and then to extend our definition of hazardous industries and gradually take them all in as the public is convinced that it is a good policy and a great improvement over the Employers' Liability Law. That would be easier, I believe, than to work along the other line of trying to take in all the trades at the outset. Starting on that line would involve a very low schedule of compensation and then trying to advance our schedule of compensation to what we would feel was adequate.
Chairman Mercer: But how about the desirability of it in case you feel it could be done?
Prof. Seager: Oh, I assume that we all agree that that is what we want if we can get it.
Charles McCarthy (Wisconsin): In looking over the New York Bill, and after hearing the argument of Professor Seager, I cannot help saying something about this bugaboo of interstate competition. I have just returned from Germany and England, where I have been some months examining the workmen's compensation insurance scheme. You are now discussing the scope of the bill and I want to tell the delegates here that the idea here in America that we in Wisconsin cannot start this scheme because of competition from other States, has a parallel in the commissions in Europe.