Mr. Ranney (Illinois): In answer to Mr. Flora's question, I attended the National Manufacturers' Association meeting in New York and talked with about fifty or seventy-five large employers of labor, and there was not one of them that was in favor of a fair employers' liability law. But what they want to know is definitely what this is going to cost them. If they have got to be liable for every accident, they have got to know not only the expense under the compensation act, but the additional expense under an action at common law, which is an unknown quantity. I know that large employers in general are in favor of a fair compensation act, but I do not think they are in favor of double liability, because they will never know where they are. The laboring man quite properly wants to have a fair compensation act and wants a fair amount, but if he elects to go to common law, he should take that chance. Otherwise he will get a fair compensation without any legal action whatever.
Mr. Ingalls: Would a liberal rate be more preferable to the employers than a double liability?
Mr. Ranney: I think it would.
Mr. Ingalls: Of course, if you can fix the rates all right it might go a long way toward covering the proposition.
Mr. Ranney: I am not speaking for any employer, but I think that if a bill is adopted that is fair to both parties, that the employer should have some protection on that side. I am simply voicing what Mr. Mitchell said yesterday, that he was not in favor of the English act, which gives double liability.
Mr. Mitchell: I am not in favor of double liability, but I am in favor of the alternative.
Mr. Ranney: I do not think the employers would have any objection to an alternative, but they would not be in favor of a double liability where they might have to fight the case in court and then in the event of their winning the suit the workman could come in under the compensation act and get compensation. That does not seem to me to be fair.
Dr. McCarthy: Do you want the election before or after the accident?
Mr. Mitchell: After.
Dr. McCarthy: If the employers' liability acts that have been passed were any good, or could be amended in any way to stop litigation, we would not be here. England tried for nearly a hundred years to modify the employers' liability act. The only thing we are here for is to knock out the everlasting cost of litigation, and the most perfect act that we can get will be the one that will knock out this expensive litigation. If a man is entitled to elect after he gets hurt there is going to be an awful confused state of affairs and the tendency, I believe, will be to increase litigation, because the temptation will be constantly before that man through the attorneys coming to him to go into litigation.