The spirit in which the committee’s recommendations have been received and acted upon by members of the association reminds me of Emerson’s statement: “Every good and commanding movement in the annals of the world is the triumph of enthusiasm.” We have found enthusiastic support everywhere. Our misgivings at the outset that the campaign would result in the loss of the more conservative members of the association proved to be groundless.
Our interrogation blanks, mailed to 20,000 American manufacturers early in the committee’s work, brought forth the largest reply in the association’s history. Ninety-nine per cent of the members answering expressed themselves emphatically in favor of an extended progressive campaign for accident prevention and compensation for injured workers. At the last three annual conventions of the association, the greatest attendance was during the reading of the report of the Committee on Accident Prevention and Workmen’s Compensation. Many meetings in various parts of the country dealing especially with the committee’s work have been so well attended that no doubt exists today in the mind of a single official as to the need for keeping the committee’s work well at the head of the association’s activities. The wonderful increase in membership of the association during the last three years is another proof that the members desire to maintain an aggressive and constructive part in settling the social and industrial problems with which the United States of America and other industrial nations are confronted.
Progressive employers know that social legislation is not only desirable from a humanitarian viewpoint, but necessary from an economic standpoint. Thinking business men realize that sound social legislation is both a human duty and the best safeguard against militant Socialism. Sound social legislation will bring us the efficient, organized, co-ordinated industrial peace of the bee-hive. Militant Socialism will bring us the industrial peace of the grave.
The three years’ campaign of the National Association of Manufacturers has been along the following lines:
1. A strenuous campaign has been carried on in all the states for laws providing automatic compensation for injured workers or their dependents and support has been given to all reasonable bills, as the association realized that a perfect and uniform workmen’s compensation system for the whole United States can be secured only step by step.
2. Members have been urged to support state compensation laws wherever these are optional, regardless of the fact that this means in many cases an increase of 300 to 1,000 per cent in insurance rates.
3. Special efforts have been made to have manufacturers organise their own relief association, preferably in co-operation with their workers, for the reason that such systems have most effectively reduced accident rates as well as industrial unrest.
4. Model workman’s compensation bills have been prepared and widely distributed. These bills are at present before the legislatures of six states. While they cover the whole subject, the committee urged an especially strong educational campaign for the recognition of three essential principles in compensation legislation, viz.: that a good workmen’s compensation law must encourage accident prevention; assure compensation, preferably by compulsory insurance, and cover all wage-workers. It also attempts to provide that doctors’ and lawyers’ fees shall not rob the injured.
Correspondence in connection with the campaign with legislators, lawyers, insurance men, employers and workmen amounted to an average of twenty-eight letters a day for the last year.
On the association’s suggestion, enlightened insurance officials have adopted resolutions providing for a limitation of business-getting expense in workmen’s compensation laws.