The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-05-26
MELTzER FOR
 SAFE PLACES
 TO WORK IN
Scorches Employers Who Hire Lawyer to Lead Fight Against Legislation For Workingmen
Praises Provision of Germany For Safe Guarding Workers and DenOunces Certain Legal FictiOnS
Especial to the Farmer.)

fore the Judiciary committee on
 substitute for House Bill No. 263, in
 troduced by Representative Meltzer
 The substitute was introduced by MT
 Meltzer about 10 days ago, and the
 hearing on the bill was postponed
 from day to day until yesterday, late
 in the afternoon, it was heard Those who spoke in its favor were Messrs Meltzer, Thoms, Managan of Water. bury, Representatives, and Leonard oi Hartford, representing the Central La Dor Union of Hartford. Gross anG Warehouse opposed.
 MT. Meltzer explained his bill al some length and spoke in part as fol. | lows:
 "This bill amends Section 4702 of the General Statutes, which defines the l duty of the master to the servant ir l general terms, making it the masters
 duty to provide for his servant a req | sonab1e, safe place in which to work
 and reasonable safe appliances to work with,' and the usual construction put
 by courts and employers upon the
 word reasonable to mean ordinarily | safe, moderately safe and no em-
 ployer at the present time makes an | effort to have an absolutely safe place l to work in or absolutely safe tools to
 work with, because the law does not 1 lIAPOoC OIl IiLi SuCll d Ouly, anu lIic evil this bill seeks to remedy by strik- l ing out from the statute the word reasonable, and defining at some de- tail the duties of the master how he | is to provide for the servants safety l in case of dangerous machinery, or a dangerous place to work in.
 "The purpose of this bill is to pre- vent industrial accidents, which are preventable by compelling employers to provide absolutely safe places in which their employees shall work and safe appliances to work with. It is admit ted by all who are acquainted with in- dustrial conditions that more than 90 per cent of industrial accidents are from preventable causes, and therefore it Is time that the State takes notice of such an appalling state of indus trial conditions and enacts laws to prevent it. An ounce of prevention Is better than pound of cure. and while just compensation for injuries ought to be had and legislation for to prevent avoidable accidents is a higher duty on the part of the State, as it not only protects the working men, the mainstay of our industrial expansion but it saves the State from human waste, which is a great eco- homie loss.
 'These laws safeguarding working men against avoidable accidents from dangerous machinery and unsafe places to work in have been enacted in many States of the Union, in Eur ope and especially in Germany. It was amusing to me to hear that phrase-maker, MT Emery, whom the Manufacturers Association have inn ported from Washington. D. C., to lead their fight against legislation in favor of workingmen, when he praised the compensation laws of Germany. He was willing to borrow these laws from Germany. But the compensa- tion laws are only a small part of Germany's care for it's working classes. From cradle to the grave in Germany the State has it's finger on the pulse of the citizen. Germany hates waste in any form, especially human waste. It recognizes that it costs so much for the State to raise boy to manhood, say one or two thousand dollars, and it considers it an economic losS,. aside from the humane view, to permit an employer to maim his workmen by his failure to provide for them a safe place in which to work and safe tools to work with, and if the wOrkmen do get injured and their injuries are in cident to the employment. then the State throws burden of the loss upon the industry, that is on the consum- CTS.
 "Only recently the Minister of In- terior in Germany said, Germany's wonderful industrial expansion is due to the efficiency of it's workmen, and their efficiency could not have been maintained but for the social laws the State enacted for their safety and pro- tection.' I do not mean to say that the individual German is more charit- able than the American. The contrary is the case, but collectively the State in Germany is more careful of the well being of workmen than we are. We have inherited two things from Eng land, which we still cling to and which form the basic foundation of our misguided views of the relation of master and servant. or employer and employe.
 ''In economies we still cling to the economic theories of Adam Smith and test and justify many an unfair or unjust commercial act by that prin- ciple. In law we have adopted from the English Common Law the legal fiction, that legal entity called the ordinary prudent man, and we let him decide all our controversies in all relations of life: whether the price is reasonable, whether the time is req sonable, whether there was reasonable care, whether the place was reason ably safe, whether the tools were req sonably safe, etc, etc.
 "NOW, I do not desire to enter into a discussion of the merit or demerit of such a system of deciding what is right or proper in each individual case. but I submit, gentlemen, that under the present conditions of our industrial activity with the increasing use of dangerous machinery, and the great number of people working to- gether in one place, the 'ordinery pru- | dent man could not be relied upon to | decide properly and wisely whether a certain place, under the conditions, l tools were safe. When industry was in it's infancy, using only few sim | pie tools for its work, and only a few | men working together and their em- ployer working with them, and using | the same tools, then it was proper to l rely upon the ordinary prudent man | to provide reasonably safe place in | which to work and safe tools to work | with. but in modern industry no such l conditions prevail.
 Our inventive genius has produced | very intricate and complicated ma | chinery to do the work, which while | very useful is very dangerous to those | who handle it unless you safeguard | them properly. We have harnessed | the giant forces of nature to do the | work of modern industry and we con- gregate in one place thousands where | and I submit that for their protection | in life and limb a different standard | of safety ought to be provided by |