Our whole plan is optional. No employer and no employe is obliged to come under it, but if a manufacturer or an employer of labor wants to come under it, all he has to do is to file a declaration with the commissioner of labor, and he is under it. He is not under it definitely, because he can get out at the end of any year by serving notice sixty days in advance of his desire so to do.
Then, as far as the laborer is concerned, the plan is that as a part of his contract of employment he waives his right to anything else except the compensation, and this law will fix his compensation. Then we follow that up by arbitration to settle all the disputes that may arise. The only question that can arise for the court to pass on is whether the arbitrators have exceeded their jurisdiction under the law, but all questions of fact are to be settled by the Board of Arbitration. If we had some criterion to follow, something that we could point to definitely as to just what would be the result to the employer and the laboring man, we would feel differently. But we feel that we can put this system into operation, and we feel further that the manufacturers and the laboring men in their present spirit will operate under it until we can arrive at something definite. We are endeavoring to make our schedule just as large as it can be made. Our schedule is indefinite and will undoubtedly be increased over what it is in the bill. In other words, we propose to do just as the railroads have always done, to put onto the traffic for the benefit of the laboring man every dollar it will bear, and get that money to the man who is injured with as little expense as is possible. That is what we are aiming to do, and we know of no other way to do it except by putting it under a voluntary system, so as to get away from the constitutional conditions that you meet everywhere. Under a compulsory system you cannot do that, but under an elective system you can.
As to the expediency, we feel that our people will try it, and if it does not work it will not take any act of the Legislature to annul it. We can accomplish some results, and the time will come when we can have some figures perhaps to give conferences like this in their effort to ascertain what is best as the policy to be followed. We started out first with an insurance scheme connected with it, but we abandoned that and made up our minds to make it just as simple as we could, and to let the employer of labor have the widest possible scope to protect himself. If he does it through mutual insurance companies, well and good; if he does it through the other insurance companies, well and good; the idea being to hamper him as little as possible in that respect. All we want is to make it absolutely sure that when a man is injured he will receive his pay. That has been one of the troublesome questions; we have tried to make a provision, which is still tentative, by which the employe's claim shall be an absolute lien upon all the property of the employer.
Prof. Seager: We have not previously provided for the expenses of this Conference or for the expenses of the next Conference we may hold. With that thought in view, I would like to move that the members of the Commissions and committees represented at this Conference be requested to use their best efforts to secure an appropriation from the funds of such Commissions and committees of $50 from each Commission and committee toward the expenses of our Conference.
Chairman Mercer: Without any formal motion that will be taken as the sense of the meeting.
Mr. Dawson: I move that when we adjourn, we adjourn to meet in St. Louis, and that the time be fixed between Christmas and New Year. The reason I make this suggestion is that there are to be other meetings at that time in St. Louis—the American Economic Association and the American Association for Labor Legislation, and also because by that time all the bills of these various Commissions will be ready, and we can have a final interchange of views before they go to their various Legislatures. I will add to that motion also that the Executive Committee be given power to change the date and place of the meeting if they deem it advisable.
(The motion being seconded was adopted by a vivâ voce vote.)
Dr. Allport: It appears in the matter of making provisions of the kind we have been discussing that their constitutionality would depend on two aspects: First, that we take the view as suggested by Mr. Mercer, that it lies within the police power of the State to regulate this matter and so constitute all these employments as dangerous employments, or whether we shall put into the law something which looks like a joker. The particular point I have reference to is this: The specifications in Sections 1, 2, 3 and 4 of the Wisconsin tentative bill relative to waiver of the matters we have been discussing; that is, assumed risk and contributory negligence, fellow-servants, etc. The second bill recommended makes this provision: "The provisions of this act shall apply to any person, firm or corporation transacting business in this State who shall have elected to accept and operate under such provisions."
That implies an election to accept the provisions of the act. In Section 4, however, is this provision: "Every person, firm or corporation engaged in business in this State that has an employe in his or its service shall be presumed to have accepted the provisions of this act. Every employe, as a part of his contract of hiring, shall be deemed to have accepted the provisions of this act unless at the time of such hiring he contracts in writing to the contrary, in which case the employer shall not be liable under the provisions of this act. Every employe whose contract of hiring is in force at the time his employer elects to provide compensation under this act, shall be deemed to have accepted the provisions thereof unless he files a notice in writing to the contrary with his employer within thirty days thereafter."
I am not a lawyer myself, and I do not know what that means, but I would like to know from somebody who is posted in constitutional law as to whether that method of circumventing the usual provisions of the law is strictly in accordance with the rulings under our constitution. That is, whether a law can specify that we shall have the right of election under the law, making the provisions of the law specific, and then in the following section specify that unless they shall elect to the contrary they shall be supposed to be acting under the provisions of this law. That is the way in which Wisconsin has gone behind the constitutional part of the law.