Chairman Mercer: What is the harm of reporting the bill complete to the Legislature, and then when it gets in there as a practical proposition, let them pass it, and if they can not, let them cut out such industries as they have to?
Mr. Mitchell: The difficulty is, if the farmers are apparently justified, the men who represent the agricultural districts will vote against it, and the legislator who represents a manufacturing district and who personally might not feel hostile to the legislation, will vote against it, because he does not want to put the burden on the farmers.
Chairman Mercer: Supposing some fellow offers an amendment striking out these industries which you would leave out in the first place, can they not pass the bill just the same?
Mr. Mitchell: Yes, but I am getting at the best way to approach it.
Mr. Harper (Illinois): The experience in Illinois on Commission bills has been that it is vastly better to have no opposition at all, and to eliminate all possibility of amendment if it is possible. In other words, if the Commission submits a bill to the Illinois Legislature, they are inclined to take it as it stands, especially if both sides interested in the matter are on the Commission, because they say, "Well, this matter has been agreed to and we have no special interest in it. If it is all right we will pass it." Hence, if we put something in that requires amendment, it is liable to stir up discord and dissension; and my personal opinion would be that it would be wise to avoid that if possible.
On the subject of classification I think it would be wise to make a classification based upon the hazardous trades; not the non-competitive trades, but the hazardous trades, and make it inclusive and as broad as possible. Include in the hazardous trades the non-competitive trades, as they have done in New York, but do not start with any one especially, because our courts here have gone further on class legislation than anything else, and I think it would be dangerous for us here to include merely non-competitive trades and call them hazardous or extra-hazardous. In my judgment it would be much better to call them extra-hazardous and include in that list the non-competitive industries.
Edwin R. Wright (Illinois): I wanted to suggest that it would of course be desirable to take in every occupation, but if we take in the farm labor and servants of Illinois, we cannot possibly secure the passage of this bill. If we burden our bill with too many classifications and too many occupations, the moment we get to Springfield, interested parties, the farmers to start with, would ask to have the farm labor stricken out, and when you once start the snowball rolling down the hill, you would strike the meat out of the bill and lose the confidence of the Legislature, and the moment you do that you lose the bill as a whole. It would not make any difference if nine-tenths of the bill were correct, you would have overshot the mark one-tenth and you would lose the entire bill because they would cut it all to pieces.
We have a great many dangerous occupations in this State. A great many men are killed or seriously injured on railroads every day. Five men are either killed or injured in mines of Illinois every day, and the proportion keeps right up through the trades, so that it is pretty hard to say where the danger starts or stops, but must classify the different trades in this State if we hope to get anything at all.
In comparing conditions here with conditions in foreign countries, you will have to take this question into consideration: In foreign countries, as I understand the situation, they raise the workers there, and if we raised the workers in this State we would soon arrive at the conclusion they have arrived at in England and Germany. Here we import the workmen ready-made and grown-up. We do not grow them in this country, and most of the men who are killed are foreign born, or a large percentage of them. If we fail in securing the compensation law, and it has got to take its regular course, we can get the same results through a different channel. Stop bringing in the men who are grown up, and raise them here, and you won't have the workers to kill, but you will have to conserve the workers in this State and in this nation. Out of 220 firms reporting in Illinois, there are over 200 accidents a month.