The forum. [volume] (Springfield, Ill.) 1904-192?, 1910-11-05
OR|sPROTECTED
THE REPUBLICAN PARTY LOOKS
AFTER WAGE-EARNERS
Passes Laws Requiring Installation of
Safety Appliances in Mines and
other Dangerous Places.

The Republican party at the last
session of Congress again exhibited
its deep and sincere interest in the
general welfare of the working men
and women of the country by adding
important enactments to its already
long record of legislation on this sub
ject. Practically all classes of en-
ployes, especially those engaged in
occupations more or less hazardous,
are the beneficiaries of laws which
should operate to tighten the burdens
which naturally fall upon the Shout
ders of man. The Republican party
recognized the necessity of reducing
the dangers under which hundreds of
thousands of miners work by creating
the Bureau of Mines. This bill was
passed for the purpose of establishing
an efficient governmental instrument
for investigation, examination and re-
port to the world of the kind of safety
appliances that will prevent the aw-
full losses of life in the operation of
mines, and especially of coal mines.
A second purpose of the bureau is
to perform the same office in respect
to the great industry of mining that
the Department of Agriculture per-
forms in respect to the farming inter-
ests of the country; that is, by ex-
pertinent and investigation to deter
mine the most effective C-ethods of
mining and the best means of avoid
ing the deplorable waste that now OBJ
tains in the present mining methods.
Defines Safety Appliances.
No more important legislation in the
interest of human life has ever been
enacted by Congress than the laws
of the recent session giving to the In
terstate Commerce Commission am
pier powers to define the needed
safety appliances for the prevention
of accidents to employees and passen-
gers, and, after a hearing, to require
their adoption by interstate railways.
Other legislation, with respect to the
inspection of locomotive boilers and
the removal of dangerous overhead
distractions, awaits the consideration
of the next session of this Congress,
and l hope that it may speedily be
passed. The employers liability act
was perfected by needed amendment
SO as to enable injured employees more
easily to recover just damages.
Compensation for Injury.
But in one sense the most forward
step taken in the interest of the
worker was the creation of a Congress
sicnal Commission to report prac-
teal bill for the fixing of workmens
compensation for injuries received in
the employment of interstate COM
merce railways, as risks in the bust
ness to be fixed by speedy arbitration
and to be graduated according to the
extent of the injury and the earning
capacity of the injured person. This
Is important. not only as affecting in
terstate commerce railways. but, if
adopted, as furnishing a model to the
country for beneficial change in the
legal relation between employee and
employer. This reform would put an
end to the vexatious and costly litiga-
ton through which an injured en-
ploye must go in order to recover
damages-litigation which. on account
of the poverty Of the employe, fire.
Quently serves to defeat the ends of
Justice, and In other instances leads
to exorbitant and unjust verdicts.