EDITORIALS

...The workingman is interested because it is a question of comfort or misery for him and his family, the employer is interested because it means dollars and cents to him...

...It will be a great battle...

...It is the people's opportunity...

...Burrows, Carter, Clark of Wyoming, Depew, Dick, du Pont, Hale, Kean, Lodge, Nixon, Oliver, Page, Piles, Scott, all come up for re-election in 1911...

...But early ratification in one state will promote the cause in other states...

...The patriotism of the country will contest openly for this amendment...

...They can make it possible for the employee to get just compensaton, and for the employer to be relieved of the enormous waste of money that now goes to protect him from the decisions of the court and the jury in injury cases...

...This is encouraging news...

...Reductions of the rates may be made upon articles of minor importance, in which case they will serve merely to reduce the average rate on the whole bill, without advantage to the public...

...Much of the vast wealth which privilege has taken from the toil of the many, for the benefit of the few, can be forced to render to the government that which it owes to the government, in no other way...

...It therefore behooves President Taft to be vigilantly on guard when the bill is presented to him for his approval...

...Notice that the largest sum paid in any one case was $300 for the loss of an arm...

...It is a struggle to lay the foundation upon which we shall finally rear a more equitable system of taxation...

...The highest economic authorities in an unbroken line for forty years have advocated an income tax to ease the burdens of labor, by placing some additional weight on the shoulders of capital...

...The proposal of Secretary of the Treasury MacVeagh to reduce the tax on colored oleomargarine met with such a storm of disapproval that probably no further attempt at present will be made to change legislation on this subject of so great importance to the producers and consumers of butter...

...Following is the result: For loss of an eye..............Nothing to $200 For loss of an arm..............Nothing to $300 For loss of two fingers..........Nothing to $100 For loss of leg..................Nothing to $225 How do these figures impress you...

...sometimes it is due to the negligence of the employer, who thinks it too costly to provide adequate safeguards...

...If so, that family was kept from the limit of human misery...

...perhaps the oldest boy was big enough to get a job in a factory at $2.50 a week...

...Do you think the amounts given cover the loss...

...If not,—who is there to measure the terrible price that was paid for the accident...

...sometimes it is unavoidable—and then we say it is inherent in the business...

...The very existence of government itself might in some dark and unforeseen hour depend upon the right of the government to subject every dollar of the country's wealth to taxation...

...Too much stress cannot be laid upon the importance of having uniformity in the state laws relating to industrial insurance...

...Reductions may be made on extravagantly high rates and still be practically prohibitory in which case they are of no benefit whatever to the consumer...

...Presidents have urged its use as a means of reducing swollen fortunes...

...The amount fixed varies astonishingly in individual cases...

...But it is respectfully submitted that a great majority of the good people of this country believe it sound and just in principle...

...If they approach the subject in a broad-minded and humane manner, the, will be in a position to remove forever one of the most potent causes of friction between the manufacturer and the man who works in his mill...

...Sometimes the accident is the result of the man's own carelessness...

...You who read this are interested in this problem because at present you help bear the cost of these industrial accidents...

...When the Senate voted to send the constitutional amendment to the state legislatures instead of to state conventions, it gave the enemies of income taxation long odds...

...The fact that Roosevelt was for it, that Taft was for it,—until he changed his mind,—that the Supreme Court was for it for one hundred years, until one of the judges changed his mind over night,—all these things indicating a concensus of opinion of the enlightened statesmanship of all the world in its favor may signify nothing...

...The Association for Labor Legislation, by taking the first steps toward bringing about concerted action of the three committees, has stimulated a new kind of legislative activity that will, it is quite possible, be epochal in our treatment of the vital questions growing out of the relations between capital and labor...

...The position taken by the Administration and endorsed by the Senate assumes that it is necessary to amend the Constitution before a tax can be laid on incomes...

...It has been called "the most fundamental question of the future in this country so far as the social problems are concerned...

...If one were asked to place a money valuation on any part of his body, or on life itself, he would be likely to answer that they are all priceless possessions and that their loss is not to be measured in dollars and cents...

...It would be hard enough to carry, against the opposition of organized wealth, all but twelve state conventions with a membership chosen and instructed upon this single issue...

...the powerful opposition under cover...

...A thing so precious to so many good people should have been given a fair chance for its life,—a fair fight in the open forum upon the single issue...

...The necessity of making such valuations has given rise to an important problem...

...Many rates were raised with the deliberate purpose of reducing them in Conference, thus making a show of yielding purely for effect upon the public...

...Nothing could more vividly illustrate the injustice of the present system of compensating injured workingmen than the figures given...

...The majority of the Conference Committee of both the Senate and the House are not downward revisionists...

...Amidon, Chairman of the Food Sanitation Committee of the General Federation of Women's Clubs, in a strong, brief statement, showed that the opinion rendered by Solicitor General Lloyd Bowers in the Whiskey Label case, unless reversed by President Taft, would in effect destroy the pure food law...

...In many states it will doubtless be wise to submit the amendment to existing legislatures called in extra session for that purpose...

...Or a leg...

...There are indications that we are making headway with this problem...

...Political parties have declared for it with honest enthusiasm...

...It sometimes occurs that all else is lost sight of in the nomination and election of the legislature where United States senators are to be elected...

...They voted against the Income Tax...

...Unless their respective states elect legislatures opposed to these men, there may be counted against it on this basis alone the states of Rhode Island, Michigan, Montana, Wyoming, New York, Ohio, Delaware, Maine, New Jersey, Massachusettes, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Washington, and West Virginia...

...It is the problem of industrial insurance...

...In response to a great protest that went up President Taft has directed that no more lands be disposed of in this way...

...The Pittsburgh Survey recently made an investigation of the actual amounts paid as compensation by employers to twenty-seven workingmen permanently injured in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania...

...Perhaps the wife found employment cleaning railroad cars at $1.21 a day...

...But in every case it has been found necessary to set a price upon the workingman's body...

...These questions are not to be lightly answered...

...Appeal to the public,—arouse every taxpayer...

...It will therefore be necessary to scrutinize the "reductions" of the Conference Committee and analyze them with intelligent discrimination to determine their real significance to the public...

...They represent the kind of appraisals that are actually placed upon eyes and arms and fingers and legs...

...It is a fact, however, that such valuations are made constantly...

...In our great industries, particularly in the most hazardous ones, scarcely a day passes that does not take its heavy toll of maimed or killed workingmen...

...Or an arm...

...and when workingmen will no longer have the price of an eye or a finger or an arm or a leg put at zero...

...Those injured workmen who were fortunate enough to get any compensation at all received barely enough to pay the doctor's bill, and, in the case of the most lucky ones, perhaps, to help keep the family from starvation while the wound was healing...

...The public demands a genuine downward revision, not a "fake" downward revision, and will judge of this revision not by what it may appear to be when the Conference Committee completes its work, but by what it shall prove to be when it shall have gone into effect, should it become a law...

...Besides, there are United States senators to elect in thirty states...

...In three states, at least, the day seems near at hand when employers will not have to bear the double cost of insuring themselves against both legal hazards and accident hazards, but only against the accident itself...

...If the amendment is defeated the non-government-supporting millions escape taxation for all time...

...but you also are interested because you are a member of Society, and Society must care for those who are rendered dependent through injury...

...Protect the Pure Food Law LAST week Mrs...

...Is it to be expected that the legislature which is to be chosen in Rhode Island by the Aldrich machine, will be very enthusiastically for a constitutional amendment to tax incomes...

...It is only necessary for the opposition to carry twelve state legislatures to defeat it...

...Aldrich in the Senate as a basis for "trading" in conference...

...The fact that it is a recognized means of raising revenue in the most civilized nations of the world may not mean anything...

...By such cooperation, the committees will be able to agree upon a line of action and a set of schedules that will do much to give a scientific and constructive character to their work...

...They can establish a system under which the costs of industrial accidents may be distributed more equitably among the manufacturer, the workingmen, and society at large...

...How about some of the other states...

...One of the first acts of Secretary of the Interior Ballinger was to take a million acres that had been reserved for public use on account of its water power by Secretary Garfield under President Roosevelt, and restore it to public entry...

...Observe more particularly that the minimum compensation in all cases was— nothing...

...The legislatures of New York, Wisconsin, and Minnesota recently appointed special committees to study it, and to recommend a system of industrial insurance upon which these legislatures may base intelligent laws...

...WHAT is a human eye worth...

...Such uniformity would remove the objection often raised against state legislation of this kind, that it places the manufacturer in the state that enacts it at an unfair disadvantage with his competitors in those states that do not...

...Public interest will thus be centered on the action of the legislature upon the amendment, and will powerfully aid in securing ratification...

...It would also make the way easier for the enactment of similar laws in the other states...

...How Shall We Pay For Industrial Accidents...

...Organize at Once THE INCOME TAX may not be worthy of the slightest respect as a measure of legislation...

...The candidates for the legislatures will be selected with respect to a multitude of issues,—highways and bridges and the regulation of electric and steam railways and insurance companies, not to mention the struggle between prohibition and the regulation of the liquor traffic,— any one of which issues may be used to obscure or side track consideration of the constitutional amendment to tax incomes...

...However hard the fight to carry the legislatures of three-fourths of the states, it must be won...

...Advocates of income taxation can determine as to the better course in their respective states...

...As soon as the House of Representatives acts upon the amendment its friends should organize promptly in every state to secure ratification...

...How were they to keep the wolf from the door until they got well again—at least well enough to find work that a crippled man could do...

...But how about the men who received nothing...

...It has been announced that the three committees will hold a joint meeting in the near future—probably at Atlantic City...

...These committees are now at work...

...But these various moves show the need of constant watchfulness to preserve and persistent effort to strengthen laws that in any way diminish the profits or act as a check upon the greed of big business...