The introduction in Congress of a bill which extends the workmen's compensation principle to embrace occupational diseases places before the American people an entirely new range of problems in the field of social insurance.
The federal government since 1908, and fifteen states during the past two years, have recognized the wisdom and justice of the compensation principle in dealing with the victims of industrial accidents. Now comes the demand that the American people, through Congress, adopt exactly the same principle in dealing with federal employees who are incapacitated for work by occupational diseases.
What is the present situation?
"The government gives no compensation for lead poisoning because, technically, it is not an accident, which is true, for under the circumstances it is a dead certainty."
—This quotation from the report of an investigator for the New York State Factory Investigating Commission is neither a playful nor an exaggerated statement. On the contrary, we now have complete confirmation of its truth in the official report and in the sober legal phrase of the solicitor for the Department of Commerce and Labor.[6]
[6] Opinions of the Solicitor for the Department of Commerce and Labor dealing with Workmen's Compensation. 1912.
It all came about in this way. A man named Schroeder went to work in the federal navy yard at Brooklyn. One of our big war ships, the Ohio, came to the dock and Schroeder was sent down into the water-tight compartments called "coffer-dams" to burn off the old coat of paint in preparation for a new. As a result of breathing the fumes of the lead paint, Schroeder was incapacitated for work by acute lead poisoning. He lost thirty-seven days on this account, and he applied to the government for the payment of compensation equal to the wages he had lost.
This statement was made by the attorney for the United States government:
"The question in this case is whether acute lead poisoning contracted in the course of employment is an injury within the meaning of the compensation act. If the inhalation of noxious gases is a necessary incident to the workman's employment, there can be nothing accidental in the injury resulting therefrom. This latter consideration disposes of the present case....
"It cannot be said that these fumes were inhaled by accident. The fumes were necessarily produced by the work he was engaged upon. The inhalation of such fumes was to have been expected and probably could not have been avoided. Lead poisoning, under the circumstances, was the natural, if not the inevitable, result."
Schroeder got not one penny.