Europe is about as big as the United States and you have all these countries competing, one with another. You have severe competition between Germany and England, and you find Germany not only bearing the burden of accident insurance, of sickness insurance and invalidity insurance, but the German manufacturer actually adds out of his own pocket to what he has been required by law to pay, sometimes to the extent of fifty or sixty per cent. more, in bringing about many improvements in the conditions of the workingmen, and I state here that that is one of the basic conditions of German prosperity. I want to put that on the record here because I want the manufacturers of America to send representatives to Europe, and they will find that what I am saying is true; that the reason why Germany is driving English-made goods out of the market is because this very burden that they talk about is an asset and not a liability.
Books have been written about this subject and I have had the honor of reading the advance sheets of the book by Dr. Frankel and Mr. Dawson, which has not yet been printed, but these books do not really show why Germany is beating England, notwithstanding this so-called "burden" upon the shoulders of the German manufacturer. Germany is passing from an agricultural country into a great manufacturing country. In doing so it is necessary for Germany to extend her manufactories out into the small towns. You all know what that means. Some of you from Massachusetts have seen the shoe factory leave Brockton to go out and get some cheaper help somewhere, and then it comes back to Boston, because in Boston they can get the skilled and intelligent help which must go into the product in order to make the community prosperous and to make the goods of that community sell.
When a German manufacturer goes to a small town he says to the workman: "You come out to my town and live there. You will have your accident insurance, your old age pension and your sickness insurance, and besides that I am going to get a house for you out there, and a little plot of land, and I am going down in my pocket and add something to that invalidity insurance, and I am going to do something for tuberculosis prevention, and I am going to have a sanitary factory, and when you come out there you can settle down and marry and raise your children, and when they grow up I am going to put them into an industrial school after they have left the public school at the age of fourteen, and they can go to that industrial school until they are eighteen."
Now all of these things go to make up an intelligent population in Germany, where the children grow up under the conditions of sanitation and education, and with the contentment that comes from the fact that a man knows he can settle down and marry and have children. The manufacturers in Germany realize that this is not a burden, but that it is the biggest asset they have in Germany. I wanted to point that out to you and have the delegates go back from here with the idea in their minds that there is more to be said upon this question of interstate competition than has been brought out as yet.
England is in a desperate condition because Germany is cutting into the markets of England throughout the world. England had to adopt her Workmen's Compensation Act, and she adopted a compensation plan that Mr. Dawson knows is excellent, and it costs about four times what it does in Germany. I want to get it on the record that there are no adequate figures or facts presented as yet as to the difference between the mutual organizations of Germany and the private insurance organizations of England. I do not know why that is, but Mr. Mitchell said yesterday that the private insurance companies similar to those of England might prevent accidents. I want to warn you before you go back, that there is the greatest difference in the world between the mutual organizations in Germany in the safety and conditions of the workingman's life, as compared with the third party insurance in England. I have never found in England a private company having any inspection whatsoever of dangerous industries. I visited many factories and went into every insurance company in London and asked them what they did to prevent accidents, and they were doing practically nothing. I went into the sawmills in Germany and in England and compared the safety devices side by side, and I want to tell you that where the manufacturers in Germany combine under the law as they are compelled to do, they deal with their men with a hundred times greater humanity than under the conditions in England.
I am sure of what I am saying and I am going on record. I want every manufacturer and employer to investigate what I am saying here. I say that you can get insurance by mutually organizing and having some provision in your bills for mutual organization of employers a great deal cheaper and with a great deal more regard for humane conditions than you can by the private proposition, unless you compel all insurance companies by some other statute to make inspections before they place their risk.
I also want this suggestion to appear on the record. Some sort of provision should be made so that the private insurance companies will not knock out the old men on poorer risks. When they started in England they did knock out some of the old men in the employments, but now that thing has been settled. It ought to be put here in statutory form, because when you get the third party in here between the manufacturers and the employes, you are getting people who do not put their hearts into the thing.
I know this will be a matter of controversy, but I want to offer it here. I want to tell you not to fear this bugaboo of interstate competition. Nobody wants to see the State of Wisconsin more prosperous than I do, and I am sure that if our Wisconsin manufacturers go forward and make that investment, they will put intelligence into the product and add a happiness to the people that will build up the State. If it were not so then the principle of tariff would be no good; if it were not so then China and Japan with cheap labor would have been beating us to-day; if it were not so slavery would have been the best thing for this country instead of the worst.
Mr. Dawson: An investigation as to the cost of insurance in the various countries of Europe will be undertaken by the United States Bureau of Labor, as requested by this Conference at its session at Washington.
Chairman Mercer: Gentlemen, is it not true that we have the best judgment of the great financial interests in this country to the effect that this interstate competition amounts to very little, and that that judgment is best evidenced by reason of the fact that nearly all of the big industries that are doing business both locally and throughout the United States are adopting a scheme that voluntarily places a greater burden upon their shoulders than the law has been providing?