These statements give rise to the question, what should be done to reduce the number of accidents and to relieve and prevent the distress which frequently follows them? The Reduction of Industrial Accidents in the United States. The accident rates in transportation are much higher in the United States than they are in European countries and are therefore much higher than they need be. Experience in other countries has demonstrated that the accident rate in transportation can be greatly reduced over what it is in this country. In the United States the fatal injuries in transportation are about three and one-half times as high as they are in Great Britain, while the non-fatal rate is five times as high. Among railway employees the accident rate in the United States is more than two and one-half times as high as it is in Germany. The accident rates in coal-mining in this country are from two to three times as high as in the European countries taken together. In Great Britain, for example, the accident rate in coal-mining is 1.29 out of every one thousand employees in a year, while in the United States it is about 3.10 per thousand. We shall expect nothing less of ourselves than that we should reduce the accident rates in the United States to a favorable comparison with those in the industries of other countries. If we could do this the saving in lives and in the consequent economic and social burden would be surprisingly great. If, for example, we could reduce the accident rate among railway employees from 2.50 per thousand per year in the United States to .98 per thousand, as it is in Germany, there would result an annual saving of 1,735 lives in that industry alone in a single year. If we could reduce the accident rate in the coal-mining industry in this country from 3.10 per thousand employees to 1.29 per thousand, the rate in the United Kingdom, we should save annually in the coal-mining industry alone 915 lives. Adequate figures are not at hand for similar comparison in other industries. These, however, will give some intimation of the tremendous waste of valuable, strong manhood and suggest the possibility of tremendous saving. These losses cannot be expressed adequately in terms of the dollars and cents of earnings. The loss of a father to his family is only partly the loss of his income. The lack of his presence and comfort, the denial of education and other advantages to the children probably exceed the most extravagant estimates of the loss of earning power. As soon as we begin to ask ourselves what can be done to reduce the accident rates in industry another question appears, namely, what are the causes of these accidents? The answer to this latter question should give us some specific suggestions as to the means of preventing industrial accidents. More than one-half of the fatal and non-fatal accidents in industries are due to machinery, especially machinery in motion, such as gearing, belts, shafting, pulleys, elevators, hoists and cranes. Less than one-half of the industrial accidents are due to other causes than machinery, the greatest number being due to hot liquids, acids, steam, explosives, collapses of buildings, and the falling of objects. The first problem in the prevention of industrial accidents, therefore, seems to be the protection of the men from machinery, especially moving machinery. Perhaps it would be nearer the truth to say that the problem was protecting the machinery, for it amounts to the installation of automatic couplers, covering devices and all sorts of precautions and warnings that successfully keep ma chinery out of contact with the employees. The installation of automatic couplers on freight trains registered itself immediately in a very marked saving of human lives. Other similar installation of purely inert mechanical devices have resulted in a remarkable saving of human life. The second source of protection is an adequate system of inspection of lifting, hoisting and travelling machinery such as elevators and cranes and especially of buildings in process of construction. The prevention of accidents not due to machinery would also be greatly furthered through such precautions as have already been indicated. To them, however, should be added automatic` devices for handling hot liquids, acids, etc. In coal-mining extensive investigation by the Federal Government in rescue work and in the prevention of accidents promises to reduce the accident rate in that large field. Mr. Daniel L. Cease, editor of the Trainmen's Magazine, has put the need and the problem of the prevention of industrial accidents very forcibly in a paragraph which I beg leave to read. He says: "So we say advisedly, until sane rules of employment regulate industry, until it costs more to kill a man that to protect him, until the man and the machine are brought closer to the relative endurance of each other and safety devices are installed that automatically will prevent accidents, we shall have an actual casualty roll that will warrant repetition of the statement that the mines are stained with the blood of their victims, every skyscraper is cemented with the blood and brawn of its builders, and every large enterprise is baptised in the blood of its workmen." Compensation and Charitable Aid. It will take a long time to reduce to the minimum the number of industrial accidents in this country. And after we have done all we can to prevent accidents there will doubtless be an irreducible minimum. To protect the injured man and his dependent family from want, some suitable plan of compensation for injury or death from industrial accidents must be effected. There are a small number of American commonwealths that do not have laws that define an employer's liability for accidents that overtake persons in his employ. Where such statutory provision has not been made the common law defenses of contributory negligence, assumption of risk and fellow-servant rule operate. Under these defenses, in practice, the burden of proof falls upon the injured employee and under these circumstances usually the burden is left just where it falls-on the shoulders of the man or his family. In order to define the employers' liability and to modify these common law defenses most governments and nearly all of the commonwealths of the United States have passed what are called employers' liability laws. These laws do not establish de novo the liability of the employer for accidents sustained by his employee but rather do they define that responsibility which has long been acknowledged to exist under the common law. Therefore these statutes are best described as limitations or definitions of the common law defenses. In some states they apply only to a small number of specified industries and in many cases the compensations are inadequate. If it is difficult for the injured employee to establish claims for damages under the common law defenses, it is not any easier under the employers' liability statutes. Indeed these laws have been found to have so many techni calities, and the processes of judgment are so slow, that it is said that many worthy claimants with little means have been deterred from accepting even the fighting chance of getting indemnity under these laws. Mr. Elihu Root is quoted as saying that "employers' liability laws in general are foolish, wasteful, ineffective and barbarous. They are not inaptly described as obsolete, judgemade and unfair. In operation they have tended to put property and its protection above persons and their protection." If neither common law defenses nor the liability statutes are satisfactory what should we strive for as a system of compensation for workmen injured in the course of their occupations? In trying to answer this question we are not without the lessons of experience. Great Britain and her colonies, Germany, Austria and Norway have worked out compensation systems based upon an entirely different principle from that upon which the old common law liability and the later statutory liability have been founded. They substitute what may be called industrial or occupational risk for the question of fault. This substitution means a new point of view. It recognizes that an employee going to his work is attended by certain risks of accident and sickness and that these risks inhere in the fact and conditions of employment rather than depend upon the fault, gross negligence, or carelessness of either employer or employee. This new principle of occupational risk substitutes the system of insurance or of probable injury for the principle of fault. In as many as twenty-four countries that substitution has already been made. They have stopped trying to fix the fault, except in cases of wilful negligence or drunkenness, and are trying to adjust the amount of compensation to the facts and needs in the case. Several of our commonwealths have also adopted the new principle, and commissions in other commonwealths appointed to investigate the subject have reported in favor of it. The compensation systems adopted by the American states may be divided into two classes, compulsory and elective. Under the former, employers are compelled to insure their men in a state insurance fund or in some insurance company subject to the approval of the state authorities. Under the latter, employers may choose whether they will come under the compensation law or have claims adjusted under the older employers' liability laws. The scale of compensation for injury usually bears some ratio to the average earnings of the injured employee and covers some stated number of weeks. These ratios and amounts vary widely among the various states and may in some cases be unfair, but substantial justice in time undoubtedly will be done in fixing the amounts of compensation. Until such a time as an adequate system of compensation shall have become general we shall have the question of charitable help because of these industrial accidents. A few moments ago I called attention to the fact that a large portion of the men injured in their employments are men with a wife and young children. In a large number of cases fatal accidents make widows and orphans. In the two states of Pennsylvania and Illinois in the single industry of coalmining in a recent ten-year period 6,183 women were made widows and 14,444 children were made orphans by industrial accidents. In a single year in the production of coal in this country there are created at least 1,000 widows and 2,500 orphans. Now it is not a matter of imagination that there is a direct connection between industrial accidents and the problems of poverty and dependence. These accidents record themselves directly in the broken family, especially in the incapacity or loss of the natural breadwinner. We know, too, from the experience of relief-giving societies that the widowed mother with her small children creates a considerable part of the problem of dependence. The President of the Board of Commissioners of Cook County, Ill., which includes Chicago, has said: "Injuries received in industrial pursuits are adding each year scores of persons and families to the relief list of the county agents' office. Hundreds of able-bodied men in the prime of life are annually receiving injuries which result in the loss of life, limbs or health, and many of them die and their families become county charges. Most of these men have large families and when the natural breadwinner is killed or incapacitated he usually leaves them without means of support." To give alms to such families is often necessary but it is the least satisfactory way of meeting the problem. The benefit system of many of our large employing corporations is greatly to be preferred to charity whether. public or private. But even in this preferred form the assistance is often not adequate or satisfactory. We can free our wage earners and society in general from the burden of industrial accidents only through their reduction and prevention and by means of adequate compensation for the irreducible number. The problem therefore of reducing industrial accidents, of preventing them and of compensating men thus in jured is no inconsiderable question in any program of social betterment. Occupational Diseases. I have said that it is extremely difficult to determine the number of industrial accidents in the United States. It is even more difficult and at the present time impossible to determine the amount of sickness more or less directly traceable to the kind or to the conditions of employment. In 1910 a committee of distinguished scholars and students of this question presented a memorial to the President of the United States, asking that a national commission be appointed to inquire comprehensively into the fact and extent of occupational diseases in this country. Among other things, this committee said: "In the absence of official sickness statistics for this country or any part thereof, the actual amount of sickness, whether preventable or not, in industry or in different groups of occupations must naturally be a mere matter of scientific conjecture. If, however, the facts of sickness-insurance experience of the German industrial population are applied to the estimated number of persons engaged in gainful occupations in the United States, it is brought out that the probable amount of sickness and its cost in the United States would be approximately as follows: Estimate of Sickness and Its Cost Among Occupied Males and Females in U. S., 1910. (33,500,000) (a) Estimated number of cases of sickness, on the German basis of 40 per cent. of the number of persons exposed to risk.. (b) Estimated number of days of sickness, on the German basis 13,400,000 284,750,000 of 8.5 days per person per annum (c) Estimated loss in wages at an average of $1.50 a day for 6/7 of the 284,750,000 days .. $355,107,145 (d) Estimated medical cost of sickness at $1 a day for 284,750,000 days 284,750,000 (e) Estimated economic loss at 50 cents a day for 6/7 of the 284,750,000 ... 122,035,715 772,892,860 (f) Total social and economic cost of sickness per annum In his book called "Diseases of Occupation," Mr. Oliver classifies these diseases as follows: Diseases Due To: (a) Gases, Vapors and High Temperatures, (b) Increase or decrease of atmospheric pressure, (c) Metallic poisons, dusts and fumes, (d) Organic or inorganic dust and heated atmosphere, (e) Fatigue. I do not need in this presence to discuss particular diseases of occupation. I need only mention as illustrations, phosphorous necrosis or "phossy jaw," caisson disease or compressed air illness, plumbism or lead poisoning. It may be a debatable question whether tuberculosis should be listed as an occupational disease or not, because it does not confine its ravages to the industrial class or to those who follow a particular occupation. Yet it is intimately associated with the industrial class, and high rates of mortality from tuberculosis are associated with the occupations themselves. In the report of a recent investigation made in Chicago, Doctors Hull and Hedger named as conditions of employment tending to spread and increase tuberculosis these things, namely: Low wages, high rents and consequent crowding, excessive fatigue from long and irregular hours of work, and unsanitary conditions of the places of employment, such as deficiency of daylight and sunlight; foul air and impure food. Tuberculosis is responsible for almost exactly one-quarter of all the deaths among wage earners in this country between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five, and for almost exactly one out of three deaths that come between the ages of twenty and forty years to both male and female wage earners. In Hamburg, Germany, the people who pay taxes on an income under one thousand marks (about $250) have a death rate from tuberculosis which is double the average death rate for the population of the city. The death rate from tuberculosis among agriculturists may be put at 106 per hundred thousand. In comparison with this the death rate from tuberculosis among those engaged in cotton manufacture is 202; brass work, 279; copper work, 294; glass making, 295; earthenware, 333; cutlery, 382; file-making, 402. Other statistics might be given showing the same thing, namely, that tuberculosis is intimately associated with certain occupations, especially those giving rise to dust,-metallic, mineral or organic. 3 |