Chairman Mercer: Is it not true that the laboring men think now that they ought to have both systems left open to them, because they are afraid they are being handed a "gold brick" by the compensation plan, if their right to recovery under the common law is taken away from them?
Mr. Flora: Yes; if you have had many dealings with working people you will know that they are always afraid of a "gold brick."
Dr. McCarthy (Wisconsin): Do you not believe that after a discussion with the working people they will realize the situation and understand it better? I know in talking with the labor representatives up in Wisconsin for the last two or three years before the Legislature, that they are gradually beginning to understand what a compensation act is. I think the sentiment is changing among our labor people in Wisconsin, and I believe this winter they are going to accept the compensation act without asking for their common law rights.
John Mitchell: I do not believe there should be any hesitancy in answering that question. The fact of the matter is that the working people want the right to sue in order to make the employers careful. We all know, of course, that under any compensation that is proposed here they are simply averaging up the compensation. That is to say, a man who is probably entitled to anything at all under any law we now have, gets something; and the man who is entitled to a great deal does not get so much.
Dr. McCarthy: Do you think it will make the employer more careful?
Mr. Mitchell: Of course I do. I believe that if it cost an employer $20,000 to kill a man he would be careful. If it is expensive for an employer to kill men, he will protect them, but the great difficulty in this country is that it is not expensive to kill men. It is the judgment, I think, of nearly every one who has investigated this matter, that human life is entirely too cheap; it is not expensive enough for the employers who injure their workmen.
Dr. McCarthy: The employers only pay one rate, any way. It falls on the insurance companies. Why should the employers be more careful?
Mr. Mitchell: Because their insurance rates are fixed by the number of accidents or the number of recoveries. I dare say in England the number of accidents is not as high as it is here. In fact, a representative of an English insurance company told me the other day that the British Government pays 30 cents per capita for mine inspection, and their total expenditure amounts to $6,000,000 annually. I dare say that while our population is double the population of Great Britain, that we do not pay in the whole United States $2,000,000 dollars a year in either factory or mining inspection, where as a little nation of 40,000,000 people is spending $6,000,000 annually. That is one reason, I think, why the accident rate is so much lower in England than it is in the United States.
Mr. Parks (Massachusetts): I have heard a great deal about this double liability plan where the workman, failing to win his suit at common law, would be entitled to compensation under the compensation act. I believe in Mr. Mitchell's idea in regard to that, and I believe that is the idea of the majority of the workmen. The cry in Massachusetts is that they want something different from the present employers' liability act. I am not so enthusiastic a laboring man as to think that we are going to get the employers' liability act so amended that we will take all of that grievance away from the act. In fact, if we got all of the defenses taken away from the employer there would be no need of a compensation act.
We have had that bill before the Massachusetts Legislature for a number of years, and we have not heard any great talk about workmen demanding this or that right under the employers' liability act. They have been asking for something to take the place of the employers' liability act. They want a workman's compensation act. I do not want to see this thing come up from the workmen themselves, because I think it is going to stop this workmen's compensation movement. If they continually rise and say that the workmen demand this and demand that it will mean that the workmen will get nothing. I have had considerable experience in the Massachusetts Legislature in agitating labor legislation, and, if I do say it, I think Massachusetts in recent years has put more remedial labor legislation on the statute books than probably any other State in the Union, with the possible exception of New York. I give way to New York, because we like to follow New York, but I cannot say that of the other States of the nation. Personally, I would like to see the workmen get all they possibly can get, but we cannot impose too many restrictions on the employers, and if we recommend in the different States the taking away of practically all the defenses of the employer under the employers' liability act, and at the same time recommend the workmen's compensation act, the whole thing will fall through and we will get nothing. I believe we ought to go easy and get something that we can put through.