“One appealed case has been tried in court and the court sustained the Commissioner’s finding as far as temporary total disability was concerned, but found the claimant entitled to compensation for permanent partial disability, remanding the case to the Commission for additional compensation, which was promptly awarded. Had the Commissioner been in possession of the facts, the award for permanent partial disability would have been made without appeal.”
Commissioner Wallace makes the following pertinent statement:
“The Washington State insurance system has succeeded beyond the best hopes of its friends and sponsors. In this act, one of the youngest States is giving the older commonwealths another example of a wise and progressive law. The State’s control over public utility corporations, giving the suffrage to women, eight-hour laws for underground miners and women wage-earners, full crew law for railways, and other laws enacted during the past four years in the interest of labor deserve full praise and should not be forgotten in the triumph of our compensation act.
“The compensation act has thus ushered in an era of publicity regarding the appalling maiming, dismembering and killing of workmen in the mines, mills and workshops of our State. The great question just now becomes not what we can give to pay for pain and suffering and even death, but how can we best safeguard those who toil. This will be real progress; compensation must ever be mere apology.
“Concerned as we have been as to how the little home flock could be kept together when the breadwinner was stricken down in his endeavor to make an honest living, and thinking in terms of dollars and cents how much it will take to keep the wolf from the door during these times of industrial disaster, we may have overlooked the fact (or was it because we were not familiar with it?) that, according to the best authorities who have made accident prevention a scientific study for a number of years, 75 to 90 per cent. of the accidents that occur are preventable.
“Our law has been widely commended and is in reality the best compensation law in the United States today. It has been rarely condemned, save by those who profited by the old legal system. It has shown the great waste of human energy, manhood and womanhood—wastes which reflect discredit upon this young and virile commonwealth—and as these things begin to be understood by the people they will insistently ask, what can we do, not only to preserve the mineral, the timber, and the water-power resources of our State, but what can we do to conserve our greatest asset—human life?”
I am confident this Congress will endorse the sentiments expressed and I only wish to add the employer and employe, State official and private citizen, voice the same sentiments and desire to give them widest publicity.
REPORT A.
INDUSTRIAL INSURANCE COMMISSION OF WASHINGTON.