Acting under the authority conferred by section 20 of the act to regulate commerce, the Interstate Commerce Commission promulgated a classification of operating accounts to be kept by carriers by rail. Possibly the most important method introduced were the depreciation accounts, created for the purpose of providing a fund for the replacement of equipment when retired from service. These depreciation accounts are maintained by making monthly charges direct to operating expenses based on the average life of the several classes of equipment affected and crediting these amounts to a replacement fund. The carriers maintain a fund for the replacement of the insentient factors of operation that are worn out or wrecked and have to be consigned to the scrap heap. But the human being, our fellow-citizen, of whom one risks being killed or injured every time seven minutes of the day or night elapse, if wrecked, as a consequence of his professional risk, so as to make him unfit for further service, is cast aside, and the carrier assumes no responsibility whatever for his condition. He must assume his own risk, must bear his own damage, as though it occurred by reason of his fault or his negligence, when, as a matter of fact, his damage is as much the result of the operation of the property as is the damage to locomotives and cars, bridges and buildings, roadway and track, for all of which the carrier provides without question. As was said by Professor Bushnell in a recent thought-provoking article calling attention to the alarming increase in the number of abnormal dependents in the United States: Soldiers suffer because they are professional destroyers, but members of this great industrial army are struck down every year in this country because they are producers. This is the price they have to pay for the privilege of earning their bread in serving civilization. It is to the credit of President Roosevelt that he has perceived the essential injustice of this situation and has earnestly endeavored to correct it, not alone by advocating the passage of employers' liability and workmen's compensation acts, but by insisting upon a rigid enforcement of Federal statutes calculated to reduce the number of accidents, as well as pointing out the need of strengthening or supplementing such legislation in the interest of greater safety. The most commendable feature of the Roosevelt Administration, the fact that stands out most prominently as entitling it to popular approval, is the consistent effort that has been made to awaken the public conscience in industrial matters and secure justice for wage-earners. The keynote of this effort was struck by the President in his Georgia day speech at Jamestown, on June 10, when, in discussing the question of industrial accidents, he said: Legislation should be had, alike from the nation and from the States, not only to guard against the needless multiplication of these accidents, but to relieve the financial suffering due to them. * It is neither just, expedient, nor humane, it is revolting to judgment and sentiment alike, that the financial burden of accidents occurring because of the necessary exigencies of their daily occupation should be thrust upon those sufferers who are least able to bear it, and that such remedy as is theirs should only be obtained by litigation which now burdens our courts. The couplers which keep the trains together and make the vast commerce of the country possible are inspected by the carriers and in part by the Government. Skilled employees are required to make this movement possible, without whose aid, without whose intelligence, and without whose energy and watchfulness the entire commerce of the country would lie stagnant and become impossible, bringing about starvation and misery. Yet these employees, when injured through no fault of their own, through a regularly recurring risk, which is an incident of the employment, are cast aside and no effort is required by law of the carriers to heal or repair them, these men are abandoned and are left without compensation. When broken in body, maimed, and injured, they are forced, under the most disadvantageous circumstances imaginable, to combat the carriers whose commerce they have been pushing through the country. | tion of this law, show that the accidents from that particular cause of casualties has decreased. Yet, in spite of this decrease from this particular source, the slaughter goes on and has increased in other forms of railway activity, showing that the palliative influence of the safety-appliance law, or of all similar laws, is not sufficient to compensate our fellow-citizens who are engaged in handling this great commerce of the country from the risks which they are bound to bear. To state it in another form, where a regularly recurring per cent of our fellow-citizens is maimed and killed, it is the duty of the nation to force the enterprise itself to bear the expenses involved therein. I may say at the outset that I do not care whether the railways recoup themselves for the additional expense involved in paying compensation to their employees by raising the rates or by charging extra passenger fares, or by decreasing the amount of free baggage that they haul. Directly, this would affect a very small portion of the community. The freight charges might affect a still larger portion of the community, but, at all events, it is proper that the community which indirectly causes the railways to be so inhuman to the fellow-citizens of us all should permit a recoupment, because in the last instance the people at large pay for the maimed and injured. They do this by taking care of those survivors of those thousands of railroad men whose families have fallen in the scale of life, who therefore will breed inferior children who in some form or other contribute to the asylums and the jails, because there is no hope for the unfit and the injured. The vast army of hoboes and tramps, in many instances, is recruited from persons who have been blacklisted because they testified against the railway company on the trial for a fellow-servant or their fellow-workers' conditions. (Adair v. United States, 208 have dared to raise their voices for the betterment of their and U. S., 161.) Coxey's army, ridiculous in its way, was a silent and peaceful protest which some day may become of entirely a different character unless the persons who compose the hobo army are decreased. These hoboes, in part, were persons who were blacklisted by the corporations because of various things which they had done which affected the carriers; and nothing offends the carriers so much as to have a man go on the stand and bear witness against what they consider their rights in favor of an injured fellow-employee. INTERSTATE COMMERCE ITS REGULATION. It is characteristic of the workings of a democracy that no coherent plan of regulation is carried out in the beautiful unital way characteristic of bureaucracies. To some extent this is to be regretted, but it is more important that people should be free and make their mistakes than that they should be well governed and simply the slaves of their own servants. Heretofore our attempts at the regulation of interstate commerce have beeen principally in the direction of reducing the inequalities of service; attempting to enforce just rates and giving localities an opportunity to protest against discrimination and manifest favoritism. The attempts of the Government to pass an employers' liability bill have been stricken down by the Supreme Court of the United States, and it does not become me, who has once administered justice, to criticise the action of our Supreme Court. The object of my bill (H. R. 16739), printed hereinafter, is to do away with the necessity or the possibility of any such construction as has been put upon the acts of Congress in the case of Howard v. The Illinois Central and Brooks v. The Southern Pacific, commonly called the "employers' liability act decision." It is a curious fact that the property rights of the carriers are protected; that in the Debs case the Supreme Court found warrant to preserve the movement of postal cars, freight trains, and passenger coaches; that in Lennon's case a man was put in jail for refusing to haul an empty car lying on a side track, although it was claimed to be a part of the interstate commerce of the country, while in the Johnson case below (117 F. R., 462) Judge Sanborn-of the same circuit court of appeals which decided the Cordage case against Miller-held that a dining car lying at a way station in Utah not equipped in accordance with the safety-appliance act was not subject to the safety-appliance act. The Supreme Court remedied the construction of the law in that particular case, but could afford no proper justice, for eight years of litigation, and finally was paid a small sum by way of settlement. Whenever a strike is threatened the carrier invokes the Federal character of the commerce and the persons involved go to jail (re Debs); when a receivership is asked for and a strike is threatened, the Federal character of the court having jurisdiction protects the commerce, and the person inciting to a strike is fined for contempt (re Phelan). Every statement herein made can be confirmed. The professional risk, that is, the inherent liability, of any person employed in railway traffic being killed or injured is a permanent and continuous risk. It is a risk which the man can not shift, as is shown by the above tables of the steady recurring numbers of men killed. In the case of death by a railroad accident no question of the employees' inattention, stupidity, carelessness, or similar defenses urged by the defenders of corporate selfish-Johnson has not received any damages as a consequence of ness can well be urged. It is as much a part of the business of the carrier to pay for the injury of the person who handles the traffic as it is to replace the various items of inanimate transportation which I have heretofore mentioned. I have referred to the safety-appliance acts. I have shown that the Government inspects couplers. The statistics of the Interstate Commerce Commission, in pursuance of the execu RECURRENCE OF INJURY. This is in exceptional cases. Strikes do not take place every day. Riots, such as were claimed by the railways to have been caused by the American Railway Union in Chicago, are not of daily occurrence, but the movement of freight trains and of passenger equipment is of hourly and daily occurrence to an extent undreamed of by a person who has not watched it, and when in this regularly recurring series of movements of trains one man is killed or injured every seven minutes of every hour of every day and night, his children are left to starve; his widow may be forced to sell all she possesses; the standard of life of four to six people is lowered and an American family is put on the "bum" while the courts for eight or ten years are blocked with wrangle of counsel and the pounding out of new distinctions of a law which is antiquated, which was unfair when created, and which has become disastrously reactionary when enforced at the present time under modern industrial conditions. The systematized injustice, the denial of justice caused by the enforcement of old-fashioned laws-laws which the English, who originated them, have long since discarded as inept, as dangerous to their commercial progress-are retained by us as bulwarks of corporate resistance to social betterWe talk of the enlightenment of the American. We find it necessary to support missionary societies to carry the Gospel to heathen countries. We send thousands of school-teachers to the Philippine Islands; we send battle ships to Asia Minor to protect American colleges against the outrages of the Turk, when it is a fact that America and Turkey stand preeminent in this, that no Federal or national compensation acts prevail in either Turkey or the United States, and that on the rest of the Continent the theory which formerly prevailed in England and which now prevails in these United States has been utterly discarded, abolished, and cast aside as antiquated and unfair, as antisocial, as un-Christian, and as dangerous to the modern industrial state. ment. The tendency of modern civilization in standardizing all things that are in daily use, in fixing the thread on the screw so that the screw that is turned out in Manchester or in Pittsburg will fit; that the bolts which are put in the bridge at the bridge works in Pittsburg will fit when laid down on the great bridges across the Nile at Atbara, require such close calculation that commercial progress and national efficiency in the last instance depend upon the perfection of the ways of communication. The country whose railroads, canals, and waterways are most efficient will ultimately win. The size of the country and its resources are nothing as compared with its efficiency. Its efficiency depends directly upon the ease with which the forces necessary to handling the commerce are recruited. Consequently, in a country so vast as ours, where in many instances the only highway known to two generations has been the railway, success depends directly upon the efficiency of this method of communication. they can take the compensation which this act will provide for their relief. The countries that have progressed most materially within the last generation have been those countries which have cast aside the reactionary and antiquated forms of compelling the workingman to sue, or compelling their citizens or subjects to go to law for damages, when compensation should have been paid to them by the enterprise which caused the injury, as a necessary professional risk. Germany, and in Germany preeminently Prussia, blazed the way. Germany was followed by England, New Zealand, and Bohemia. The social legislation of these countries stands forth as a great step forward against the antisocial theories with which we are still burdened. Their progress has in no small degree been caused by the efficiency of their workmen, and this, again, is the consequence of the compensation acts, in all their various forms and developments, which these countries have forced upon the Continent. They have forced this upon the Continent, not by the force of arms. The "blood and iron policy of Bismarck ended when he had thrown France prostrate, and he turned his huge energy to the building up and repairing the ravages of war and making a fact that which the constitution of 1871 had held out to the various German tribes-a unified Germany. Politically this was accomplished very soon; economically the Germans, after the French war, were little better than their ancestors in the thirties or forties in this country; and the modern development of Germany has been caused in no indirect measure by the hearty cooperation due directly to the necessity of master and servants working toof master and servants in every industry. This cooperation is gether, and this working together was brought about by the necessary machinery called forth in the various compensation acts. and thousands of small cities, Dr. Richard Freund, president Based on the statistical material obtained from very large of the Invalid and Old Age Insurance Company, of Berlin, in 1895 published a summary on an investigation of the question as to what manner the modern social legislation has affected the problems of poor legislation and the care of the poor. This was published in the Twenty-first Book of the German Society for Poor Relief and Beneficence. It is based on exhaustive staMember who cares to read it can obtain it from the Library of tistical material and specially prepared interrogatories. Any Congress, and can find on page 83 the following summary of this statistical publication. He says: Even if the time within which the effectiveness of the labor insurance laws has been under observation has been much too short to permit a statement that the influence thereof upon public care of the poor should have completely shown its effect (especially since very unfortunate lem), still we may say that now there is a mighty effect to be recognized, economic conditions in the last year have disturbed the statistical proband this although in many cases the organizations charged with administering the laws have not given the attention which is required to work out the statistical effects. The administration of care of the poor has been relieved in an important measure from the necessity of taking care of all by labor insurance. The labor insurance laws have in a great measure relieved the laboring population from the necessity of applying for poor relief. Labor insurance has done more than this. It has raised the standard of life of the lower classes of population in this short time, and has exercised such a mighty influence that the poor relief, bound to take cognizance of these facts, could use the resulting savings through strengthening and expansion of its services, nay, was forced to expend moneys beyond that. When, therefore, whole classes of citizens have been crushed out, thrown aside as scrap, the feeling of resentment against the carrier harms its efficiency and thereby hurts the national thrust forward in international commerce. For every pensioner that the United States Government maintains in every hamlet and wayside station, we may be assured that the broken fami- In a summary of Fifteen Years of Social Legislation the lies and wrecked men and the memories of some uncompensated president of the federal insurance office of the German Empire loss feed an undying dislike, hatred, or malignant hostility to (twenty-eighth volume, Year Book for Legislation, 1904, pub. the great and necessary railways of the country, and indirectly lished by Schmoller), beginning on page 529, in an article on the against the country that has permitted 773,049 men killed or in-progress of the German labor insurance in the last fifteen years, jured to be cast aside as scrap without prompt, permanent, and states, on page 553, that 10.3 million persons were protected by just compensation. The excuse has been the country was grow- sick insurance; 19.1 million persons were protected by accident ing and we had no time to regard these problems. insurance; 13.04 million persons were protected by invalidity insurance, for which purpose annually over 550,000,000 marks (over $131,000,000) were collected, and for whom up to the close of 1903 over 4,000,000,000 marks (nearly $1,000,000,000) were expended; a capital of 1,500,000,000 marks (nearly $400,000,000) were gathered and nearly 400,000,000 marks (nearly $100,000,000) were loaned out by the invalidity insurance associations of their employees, for building and lean associations, farmers' banks, erection of hospitals, sanitaria, tuberculosis homes, and other public and quasi-public institutions, for the. purpose of raising and improving the conditions of the German working classes. A democracy can only take up one or two things in a generation and settle them, but the time has come, Mr. Speaker, when it becomes necessary for us to seriously weigh the danger of permitting corporate cupidity to continue a system of licensed butchery and murder, of permissive breaking up of families, of degrading the standard of American citizenship, infinitely worse than the slavery which was broken up forty years ago, because that was confined to a small group, which inevitably was bound to come to encounter the economic progress of the rest of the world, restricted in area, whereas our present system, if continued, will inevitably lead to a growth of a feeling that a class, comprising a million and a half of men, consequently seven and a half million of American citizens, is being discriminated against, while the freight that they move and the passengers that they haul are to obtain the most favorable consideration at the hands of this body. Should my bill (H. R. 16739) be passed, the persons who are injured have their choice of remedies. They can either sue in the courts as heretofore, bearing the burden of the proof, or else In this connection I shall incorporate only a few figures from the Atlas and Statistics of the German Labor Insurance, by Dr. G. A. Klein. It was published as part of that wonderful showing made by the German Government for the World's Fair in St. Louis (1904), and of course does not claim to be up to date. The hurry in which these data were collected must also be taken into account. These figures are from page 19. Volume III, "Income, expenses, and capital." 1 Free medical treatment, medicines, and other remedies outside of hospital treatment, as well as crutches, braces, and like appliances. During the first thirteen weeks after the accident, during which time he is taken care of under sick-insurance laws. 3 In place of free medical treatment and annuity payments the injured person may be taken care of in a sanitarium. If incapacity to earn living is 15 per cent or less, the annuity charge may be paid in one anticipated payment (since October 1, 1900). annuity. Table showing professional risk of railroad employees and workmen, Prussian-Hessian State railways. (From Archiv für Eisenbahnwesen In 1906, 31,088 persons received $1,492,736 compensation within a few weeks of their injuries, payable from the earnings of the PrussianHessian State railways on a mileage of 20,848 miles. in heartless and necessarily efficient corporations. The Continent followed the Prussian and German system of social legislation, because it found that the betterment, while not directly quantitative, proved to be an absolute qualitative betterment and showed itself in the efficiency of those persons for whom social care was provided by the State. Is there a doubt in the mind of anyone of those to whom | ligence stood opposed to the great masses of capital organized my words are addressed that the English were forced to give up the barbarous and archaic jurisprudence based upon the common-law system of master and servant by the stress of German competition? Their trades unions, their system of allowing men's savings to be robbed by speculators, their intense effort to better this by the Friendly Societies Acts and Registration Acts and the Companies Acts, all show the futility of applying the theory of laissez-faire in the modern industrial state, in which the employee with his muscles and intel In the convention of New York, in 1821, William L. Marcy, afterwards Secretary of State, said, in speaking of the growth of the idea of popular franchise, which was growing toward A combination of conditions such as I have sketched out, and which are within the knowledge of every Member in this House, can not but lead to a decrease of national efficiency. And this national efficiency, as I have tried to show, affects the international standing of the community. The maimed and killed, | their widows, their declassed children, must be taken care of by societies or almshouses or by the community at large in an inefficient manner, when the direct burden which they had assumed is our burden and we should bear it as a necessity. Ultimately we must bear it in some form. Is it not better and more honest to bear it directly and to make that enterprise as an entity which causes these injuries-crippled and maimed and killed, American citizens all-pay proper and timely compensation for the damage fully and as fairly as they pay for repairs to locomotives, headlights to their engines, new equipment, and universal manhood franchise, that "Once having been granted, Sooner or later, Mr. Speaker, the railway employees will demand not that something be done for them by the Nation, but that their employers be directly forced to give them the compensation sought to be enacted in this bill. I am not afraid of the charge that this is an entering wedge into the entire system of labor conditions. I want it to be an entering wedge. The Congress of the United States can not legislate for coal mines in Utah, Pennsylvania, or West Virginia, for silver mines in Arizona, for the salt works in New York, or for the numerous trust-owned steel mills of Pittsburg and Chicago; these are within the police powers of the respective States; but the commerce of this country-which is protected by the decision of the Supreme Court in the Debs case and all similar cases wherever the workingmen struck to better their conditions and where hoboes and rowdies burned cars and impeded the progress of the mails-has been taken charge of as being within the regulative power of Congress, and it is our duty not only to protect the commerce, but the human beings, our fellows, who make it move; it is our duty to pass all legislation which makes for its efficiency and which will keep us abreast of the times. The times are changing. The conditions which possibly were fair when seventeen railways handled the freight from New York City to Buffalo have become unfair when the traffic from New York to Chicago, a distance of 996 miles, is handled under unital control. The master can have no idea of the details, is not responsible, as a matter of fact, for the employment, and can not exercise any supervision or selection of the employees in handling this traffic; and yet an employee running a locomotive for forty years, careful and experienced, diligent and honest, faithful and loyal to his company, if wrecked through the stupidity of a telegraph operator or the untoward accident over which he had no possible control, is put to the proof of showing that he was free from negligence. If he is killed, his widow has the burden of the proof to show that the engineer who ran into an open switch or whose locomotive was wrecked in a smash-up with a freight train, over which the engineer had no control, and was without any blame, yet under prevailing conditions she should have no effective compensation except after eight to ten years' wrangle, trickery, and litigation, while the railway mail clerks in the postal cars, the persons in the sleepers, or passengers who are behind the locomotive obtain fair compensation for their injuries. On a troop train rushed forward under the requirement of the act to regulate commerce, which provides (sec. 6, lines 8-13, p. 12) That in time of war or threatened war preference and precedence shall, upon the demand of the President of the United States, be given. over all other traffic, to the transportation of troops and material of war, and carriers shall adopt every means within their control to facilitate and expedite the military traffic the only persons not compensated in a fatal wreck would be the trainmen, engineers, and firemen, who are doing the work, while the taxpayers would pay pensions or compensation to every officer, soldier, and other military person enlisted to destroy and wreck property. For a period of years the Government, to its credit, be it said, has authorized the payment of a small sum ($1,000) for every railway mail service employee killed or dying of injuries contracted in the service within one year. In other words, we have recognized the inevitable and constantly recurring danger, and have taken the initial step in the right direction of compensation. The Government has to that extent, in carrying out the recommendations of the President in respect to this bill (H. R. 21696, a bill granting to certain employees of the United States the right to receive from it compensation for injuries sustained in the course of their employment), only extended the operation of former acts. XLII-AP-25 The Republican party has been in control of the Government for forty years. A very small period of this time excepted, it has controlled the Presidency, the Senate, and this House. In all that period of time the argument has been used that the burdens of the protective tariff were proper and necessary for the purpose of affording to the American workman a higher standard of living and more just compensation. I do not take any credit for not using the present condition of economic slowing down as a weapon for pointing out to the majority of this House the unfairness in not having given compensation to the employees. The solution of the problem is new. We have had other problems to deal with heretofore, and, as I have said, it is characteristic to solve one problem at a time. I shall on another occasion insert as part of my remarks certain portions of W. J. Ashley's book on the progress of the German working classes in the last quarter of a century (1904), which show that Bismarck's commercial and social policy raised the standard of living and increased the efficiency of the German working classes to an immense degree and made possible the tremendous economic progress of Germany throughout this period as a consideration for the burdens and injustice of a moderate protective tariff. THE LEGALITY OF THE PROPOSED LEGISLATION. At the outset of this argument I stated that the system under which employees are bound to sue for damages virtually amounts to a denial of justice. The greatest draftsman that England ever produced-the cardinal legate, Stephen Langton-forced the King to promise that he and his successors would no longer sell or deny justice to any man, and that the law of the land should be applied to each man's grievances. Our Constitution forbids the Congress to do certain things in the first eight amendments. The fourteenth amendment forbids the States abridging the rights of citizens or denying them the benefit of due process of law. The leading case, in which all the previous decisions were reviewed, Holden v. Hardy (169 U. S., 380), summarizes the decisions so clearly that all I shall do is to briefly refer to it. In the courts of England, Mr. Justice Brown said: While the cardinal principles of justice are immutable, the methods by which justice is administered are subject to constant fluctuation, and that the Constitution of the United States, which is necessarily and to a large extent inflexible and exceedingly difficult of amendment, should not be so construed as to deprive the States of the power to so amend their laws as to make them to conform to the wishes of the citizens as they may deem best for the public welfare, without bringing them into conflict with the supreme law of the land. Of course, it is impossible to forecast the character or extent of these changes, but in view of the fact that from the day the "Magna Charta" was signed to the present moment, amendments to the structure of the law have been made with increasing frequency, it is impossible to suppose that they will not continue, and the law be forced to adapt itself to new conditions of society, and, particularly to new relations between employers and employees as they arise. Although this case affected the mining laws of the State of Utah, yet its reasoning is, I believe, apt to this discussion, when we remember that under power to regulate commerce, Congress is absolutely supreme, in so far as the power is sought to affect the relation of the carrier and its employees who are engaged solely in interstate commerce establishing and maintaining post routes. Very little attention has been given to the power of the Government to refuse to contract for the carriage of the mail with any carrier who might refuse to abide by the provisions of an act like my bill (H. R. 16739). But if the people demand some form of a railroad men's compensation act, its terms could be embodied in every contract for handling and hauling the United States mail, and the protection afforded by the Revised Statutes withdrawn from any carrier who refused to accept and abide by its provisions. On page 390 the court states: Recognizing the difficulty in defining with exactness the phrase "due process of law," it is certain that these words imply a con. formity with natural and inherent principles of justice and forbid that one man's property or right to property shall be taken with any other, or for the benefit of the State, without compensation, and that no one shall be condemned in his person or property without an opportunity of being heard in his own defense. On page 392 the court quotes, with approval, the following extract from the opinion of Chief Justice Shaw, in Commonwealth v. Alger, 7 Cushing, page 53, at page 84: Rights of property, like all other social and conventional rights, are subject to such reasonable limitations in their enjoyment as shall prevent them from being injurious and to such reasonable restraints and regulations established by law as the legislature under the gov erning and controlling power vested in them by the Constitution may think necessary and expedient. The court states that the power to regulate dangerous industries is necessarily inherent in every form of government, although prior to the adoption of the Constitution but sparingly used in this country: As we were even then almost purely an agricultural country, the occasion for any special protection to a particular class did not exist. Certain profitable employments, such as lotteries and the sale of intoxicating liquors, which were then considered to be legitimate, have since fallen under the ban of public opinion and are now almost altogether prohibited or made subject to stringent police regulations. But in the vast proportion in which these industries (the business of mining coal and manufacturing iron) have since assumed, it has been found that they can no longer be carried on with due regard to the safety and health of those engaged in them without special protection against the dangers necessarily incident in these employments. In consequence of this, laws have been enacted in most of the States designed to meet these exigencies and secure safety to persons peculiarly exposed to these dangers. The court then instances ordinances and regulations of various kinds guarding hatches, stairways, elevator shafts, and employment of sanitary appliances, protecting persons against fire in theaters, hotels, factories, and other large buildings, and in the case of the mining industry stating the special provisions made for the shoring up of dangerous wheels, ventilation shafts, signaling to the surface, supplying fresh air, and the elimination as far as possible of dangerous gases, limiting the number of persons permitted to enter the cage, the covering of the cages, and the provision for fences and gates around the top of the shaft, besides other similar precautions. These statutes, one and all, have been held constitutional within the various States, although imposing on the various industries necessary burdens, on the theory that the State at large was the guardian of those who industrially were unable to contract for their own safety, and that it was necessary to provide against their own greed, as well as the exploitation of their masters or employers. In this great case the Supreme Court well said, in speaking of the argument that the freedom of the laborer to contract had been infringed upon (p. 397): The argument would certainly come with better grace and greater cogency from the latter class, but the fact that both parties are of full age and competent to contract does not necessarily deprive the State of the power to interfere where the parties do not stand upon an equality, or where the public health demands that one party to the contract shall be protected against himself. [My italics.] The State still retains an interest in his welfare, however reckless he may be. The whole is no greater than the sum of all the parts, and when the individual health, safety, and welfare are sacrificed or neglected, the State must suffer. It might be assumed that this argument should apply with stronger cogency to the enactment of an employers' liability bill than it would to the remarks which I am. addressing to this House in the matter of the compensation act. The sad experience of every person who has studied the enforcement of employers' liability acts, factory acts, or safetyappliance acts, of every form of palliative legislation except a compensation bill, forces one by a system of exclusion to rely upon the enactment of the compensation act as the only method whereby adequate relief can be given to those who have heretofore been judicially disinherited and have been made to feel the strong arm of the law in a peculiarly atrocious method of whittling away the rights sought to be conferred upon them by State or national legislation. I take the credit for my bill (H. R. 16739) as the first Federal general-compensation bill. It is set out herein so that all may understand the scope and my proposed method of correcting some of the antisocial evils of our present-day methods. [TEXT OF THE COMPENSATION BILL.] A bill (II. R. 16739) to provide compensation for injuries to employees solely engaged in interstate and foreign commerce, to which the regulative power of Congress extends under the Constitution of the United States, and to create a Commission of Injury Awards, and granting powers to said Commission. (Introduced February 10, 1908, by A. J. Sabath, of Illinois.) Be it enacted, etc., That the provisions of this act shall apply to each and every common carrier subject to the provisions of an act entitled "An act to regulate commerce," approved February 4, 1887, as amended by an act approved March 2, 1889, and by an act approved February 10, 1891, and by an act approved February 8, 1895, and by an act approved June 29, 1906, and all other acts supplementary to or amendatory thereof, as well as any acts which are or may be passed at the present session of Congress, to which the regulative power of Congress extends under the Constitution of the United States, said common carrier shall be liable in respect to the employment subject as aforesaid to such of its employees as are engaged solely in the movement of handling, storing, dispatching, moving of interstate traffic or commerce to which said regulative power of Congress may or does extend. SEC. 2. That any such employee while so engaged solely in carrying on interstate commerce, who in the course of his work, employment, and occupation is injured and suffers injuries which result in disability, either temporary or permanent, shall be paid by said employing carrier as indemnity and compensation for such injury, or if the said injuries result in the death of such employee, then to the executor or administrator of the estate of such deceased employee, for the exclusive benefit of the surviving widow and next of kin of such deceased employee, a sum or sums of money, in accordance with the following condition and scale of compensation: Provided, That (a) The employer shall not be liable under this act for injuries sustained by the employee which do not disable and incapacitate the employee for at least one week. (b) The employer shall not be liable to pay an indemnity and compensation to an employee where the injury is caused by the wanton and willful misconduct of the employee so injured. (c) Where the injury to the employee is caused by the negligence or willful act on the part of the employer, or on the part of some person for whose act the employer is responsible and accountable, nothing in this act shall affect any civil liability whatsoever of the employer. But in case the employee, or if the injury results in the death of such injured employee, the executor or administrator of the estate of such deceased employee may, at his option and election, either claim indemnity and compensation under this act or maintain an action at law to recover damages in respect thereof independently of this act, but in no case can the employee so injured. or in case of death of such injured employee, the executor or administrator of the estate of such deceased employee, claim indemnity and compensation under this act and maintain an action at law to recover damages for injuries to the employee, causing his death. SEC. 3. That if an action is brought to recover damages, not based on any provision or provisions of this act, for injury caused by any accident, and it is determined in such action that the injury is one for which the employer is not liable in such action, but that he would have been liable to pay indemnity and compensation under the provisions of this act, the action shall be dismissed; but the court in which the action is tried shall, if the plaintiff so elect, proceed to award such sum or sums of money to which the plaintiff is entitled under and in accordance with the scale of indemnity and compensation hereinafter provided under this act, but may deduct from such sum or sums any and all costs incurred by the plaintiff in bringing the this act, where the court awards such sum or sums of money under action instead of proceeding under this act. In any proceeding under and in accordance with the scale of indemnity and compensation hereinafter provided under this act, after deducting any and all costs of the proceeding, shall cause the clerk of said court to issue and enter upon record a certified order of the sum or sums of money so awarded to the plaintiff, as indemnity and compensation, and such certified order shall have the force and effect of an award under this act. SEC. 4. That proceedings for the recovery under this act of compensation for an injury shall not be maintainable, unless notice of the accident has been given as soon as practicable after the happening thereof and before the employee has voluntarily left the employment in which he was injured, and unless the claim for indemnity and compensation with respect to such accident has been made within six months from the occurrence of the accident causing the injury, or in case of death within one year from the time of death: Provided always, That (a) The want of or any defect or inaccuracy in such notice shall not be a bar to the maintenance of such proceedings. If it is found in the proceedings hereinafter authorized for settling the claim that the employer is not, or would not, if a notice or amended notice were then given and the hearing postponed, be prejudiced in his defense by the want, defect, or inaccuracy, or that such want, defect, or inaccuracy was occasioned by mistake, absence from the United States, or other reasonable cause; and, (b) The failure to make a claim within the period above specified shall not be a bar to the maintenance of such proceeding if it is found that the failure was occasioned by mistake, absence from the United States, or other reasonable cause. (c) Notice in respect of an injury under this act shall give the name and address of the person injured, shall state in ordinary language the cause of the injury and the date thereof. (d) The notice may be served by delivering the same at or sending it by post in a registered letter addressed to the office or place of busi ness of the employer on whom it is to be served, or, if there be more than one office, any one of the offices of such employer. SEC. 5. That whenever any common carrier subject to this act, more particularly described in section 1 hereof (in this section referred to as the principal), while engaged in the pursuit and carrying on interstate commerce hereinbefore mentioned, contracts with any other person or persons, partnership firm, limited or otherwise, company, or corporation (in this section referred to as the contractor), for the execution by or under the contractor of the whole or any part of any work pertaining to and in the course of interstate commerce undertaken by the principal, the principal shall be liable to pay such er ployee solely engaged in interstate commerce as hereinbefore set forth any indemnity and compensation under this act, which he would have been liable to pay if that employee had been directly in its or his em ploy whenever the indemnity and compensation is claimed from, or proceedings are taken against the principal, then, in the application of this act, references to the principal shall be substituted for references to the employer, except that the amount of indemnity and compensation shall be calculated with reference to the wages and earnings of the employee under the employer by whom he is immediately employed: Provided, That (a) Where the principal is liable to pay indemnity and compensation under this section, he or it shall be entitled to be indemnified by any person who would have been liable to pay indemnity and compensation to the employee, independently of this section, and all questions as to the right to and amount of any such indemnity shall in default of agreement be settled by the Commission of Injury Awards hereinafter provided. |