Daily Arizona silver belt., 1908-12-09

The ODleCI souEut TUT COuIu De dCnleNcU n measurable degree, as far as thos,
 Filled or crippled are concerned, by pro
 oer iabilitetaoin these taoinetaoinet;
 per employers liability laws. As far al
 sopecrns those who have been wori out, I call your attention to the fac ,bat definite steps toward providing cdage pensions have been taken 1T many of our private industries. Thes,
 nav be indefinitely extended through voluntary association and contributor .ehemeS, or through the agency of say iprs banks, as under the recent Massa ehnsetts plan. To strengthen these prac ,isal measures should be our immediate hty: it is not at present necessary to consider the larger and more general governmental scLemes that most Euro osan governments have found them selyes obliged to adopt.
 Our present system, or rather no sys- ,sm works dreadful wrong, and is of bppeft to only one class of people-the lawyers. When a workman is injured wbat he needs is not an expensive and Ionbtful lawsuit, but the certainty of ,sGef through immediate administrative .s,ien. The number of accidents which ,esult in the death or crippling of wage. xorkers, in the Union at large, is simp- lv appalling; in very few years it ,rns up a total far in excess of the az ,regate of the dead and wounded in sry modern war. No academic theory ,bout "freedom of contract or icon stitutional liberty to contract" should
 .-t Co <b similar movements. Progress in civi. r,ation has everywhere meant a limi- ,ation and regulation of contract. rall vour especial attention to the bulle- i'm of the Bureau of Labor which gives |, statement of the methods of treating The unemployed in European countries, ss this is subject which in Germany, for instance, is treated in connection with making provision for worn out and ,-ippeld workmen.
 Pending a thoroughgoing investiga- tion and action there. is certain legis- htion which should be enacted at once. The law, passed at the last session of the congress, granting compensation to certain classes of employees of the gov ernment, should be extended to include .ll employees of the government and should be made more liberal in its terms. There is no good ground for the distinction made in the law between those engaged in hazardous occupations and those not so engaged. If a man is injured or killed in any line of work il was hazardous in his case. Whether l per cent or 10 per cent of those follow ing given occupation actually suffer injury or death ought not to have any bearing on the question of their re- eeiying compensation. It is a grim log e which says to an injured employee or to the dependents of one killed that be or they are entitled to no eompensa- ton because very few people other than he have been injured or killed in that occupatiOn. Perhaps one of the most striking commissions in the law is that t does not embrace peace officers and others whose lives may be sacrificed in enforcing the laws of the United States. The terms of the act providing compen- satOn should be made more liberal than in the present act. A year r's compensa- ton is not adequate for a wage earner s family in the event of his death by ac cident in the course of his employment And in the event of death occurring, say ten or eleven months after the cci- dent, the family would only receive as compensation the equivalent of one or two months earnings. In this respect the generosity of the United States to- wards its employees compares most un- favOrably with that of every country in Europe-even the poorest.
 The terms of the act are also a hard ship in prohibiting payment in cases where the accident is in any way due to the negligence of the employee. It s inevitable that daily familiarity with danger will lead men to take chances that can be construed into negligence. So well is this recognized that in prae tieally all countries in the civilized world, except the United States. only a great degree of negligence acts as bar to securing compensation. Probably n no other respect in our legislation both State and National, are we SO far behind practically the entire civilized world as in the matter of liability and compensation for acciednts in industry. lt Is humiliating that at European in- lernational congresses on accidents the Unite dStates should be singled out as ihe most belated among the nations in respect to employers liability legisla. ton This government is itself large employer of labor, and nits dealings With its employees it should set stan dard in this country which would place II on par with the most progressive countries in Europe. The laws of the | Unite dStates in this respect and the aSs of European countries have been summarized in recent bulletin of the | Bureau of Labor, and no American who | reads this summary can fail to be struck | py the great contrast between our prac- | uees and theirs--a contrast not ins any ! sense to uor credit.
 The congress should without further l .gelay pass model employers liability | law for the District of Columbia. The employers liability act recently de- cared unconstitutional, on account of | apparently including in it's provisions employees engaged in intrastate com ue'ce as well as those engaged in in yistate commerce., has been held by the I%a courts to be still in effect so far S s lts provisions apply to the District VI lolumba. There should be no ambi- gily on this point. If there is any uOuot on the subject the law should be Vtnaetpd with opaeiaI roforanno to fha