The Hattiesburg news. (Hattiesburg, Miss.) 1908-1917, 1911-04-11

TIL
the average annual number of fatal.
ties in mines is 346 per 1000 employ,
| ed.
in order that we may extricate
ourselves from the humiliating and
disgraceful position We now hold in
respect to this question it is impera.
tive that the factory and mining laws
of our states-which at the present
time are wholly should
| be greatly extended and should be
enforced with the utmost vigor. EN-
ployers should be required to equip
machinery and working places with
every practical safety device it is
possible to secure; and the state itself
should establish museums of safct---
devices and Industrial hygiene in
which should be exhibited drawings
or models of all safety appliances in
use in this and other countries. Fur
thermore, the force of factory and
mine inspectors should be largely in
creased, the inspectors should be
removed from the sphere of political
influence, and schools should be es-
tablished and conducted in connection
with the museums OF safety devices
in which inspectors should be thor
oughly trained in the work the law
requires them to do.
What the worKlngmen desire and
demand is not so much compensation
for injury as prevention of injury,
and l believe that industry should
bear the pecuniary loss sustained by
workmen as a result of industrial &C.
cidents, just as it is now required to
repair its machinery and offset the
losses caused by depreciation in the
value of its plants.
During the eleven years from 1894
to 1905, the employees liability COM
pany of the United States took in
$99,959,076 in premiums from Ameri-
can employers. These companies
paid out in the settlement of claims
of injured workmen s43,599,49S, or
43 per cent of the amount they took
in. OF these $43, ,49S paid in the
settlement of such claims, it is safe
to say that 35 per cent was expended
by the injured workmen in the pay
ment of attorneys fees and court ex-
penses, so that, in the final analysis,
the injured workmen received less
than $39,000.000 out of the 100000
900 paid by the employers during this
period in premiums to liability COM
panies. Allowing $15,000,OOO for the
administration of the liability COM
panies and for reserve, it would mean
that $550000,000 were wasted-were
worse than wasted because the money
was used in burdening our courts
with litigation and in delaying or de-
feating its settlement of claims,
many of them just claims, when it
should have been used, and would be
used under a wise compensation sys-
TEN, for the immediate relief of the
men and their families, who are the
victims of the hazard of industrial
pursuits.
Il am not prepared to say that even
though the entire s10O,OOO,OO0 had
been paid directly to the injured work
men, 1t would have been sufficient
to have Unidentified them for their
losses, but l do believe that it would
not have required very much more
to have compensated them on the
basis of the British Workmen's Com
pensation Act.
ION the whole, it would seem to
me that from every consideration of
sound business judgment, practical
economy, and fair dealing between
man and man, we should not hesitate
longer in abandoning a system that
has been productive of so much mis-
cry and injustice, to say nothing of
the friction and ill-feeling engender-
ed between workmen and employer.
Under our present system a workman
injured is compelled to sue the only
man on earth upon whom he has
moral claim for employment, whereas
under an automatic compensation
system he receives as a right-not
as a benefaction-a definite amount
OF money-a sufficient amount to tide
him or his dependents over the Pc
riod of greatest distress"
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