CONSERVING HUMAN LIFE
Mahon, Thomas J.
Conserving Human Life If we are to prosper and progress as a people, we must look to the protection of the individual. We have the means at hand, the tools with which to work. Why not use...
...How best to secure that safety in employment is the great problem that is strictly "up to us"— up to all of us...
...AND THESE ENORMOUS LOSSES OF LIFE AND LIMB ARE LARGELY, IF NOT MOSTLY, PREVENTABLE...
...Isn't it of greater importance, doesn't it go to the happiness of the home and through that to the well-being and prosperity of the nation...
...They constitute a body of laws ill adapted to the wonderful and changing system of industry under which we live...
...The well disposed manufacturer will not hesitate to take the advice of a body of experts of this kind, while the man who cares very little about his employees will be compelled to use this reasonable protection to human life...
...five hundred thousand are seriously injured...
...Our Labor Laws Ineffective IF WE MERELY compensate at one end, and do not prevent at the other, then we cannot hope to benefit society or even to cheapen the product...
...For some few years thoughtful men have struggled with the elimination of these archaic rules and the fixing of responsibility for industrial accidents and industrial disease where it rightly belongs—upon the industry itself...
...A great humane movement is sweeping through the world...
...Wisconsin having just passed a Workmen's Compensation Act, the legislature is now considering a measure which aims not merely to improve the rule of compensation or money damages between workers and employers for these industrial losses in human life and limb, but—what is vastly more important—to prevent these losses...
...It will occur at once to the thinker that such a Commission will be the way out of the difficulty of readjusting the law to the rapidly changing economic conditions...
...Heretofore, legislatures have been working overtime in the giving away of natural resources and franchises, and the enactment of laws to protect rights in property...
...If conservation of forests and water-powers and minerals, if con»ervation of property, is good, why not tackle the question of the conservation of human life...
...We may hope that better and more humane industrial conditions and a great gain in the sum total of human welfare and human happiness will result from this beneficent and long-desired legislation...
...By THOMAS J. MAHON WHY NOT CONSERVE OURSELVES...
...In the last two years we have seen a tremendous movement in favor of workmen's compensation, a more equitable distribution of the burden of accidents incurred in production, and for the prevention of the preventable losses which industry now imposes upon workers—upon us, society...
...We have found that they are suitable to the conditions in your factory, and you shall use them...
...If we can delegate to a Commission the power to make reasonable rates and require reasonably adequate facilities in transportation, we can delegate to a Commission the power to fix reasonable standards of methods, appliances and conditions to protect health and life in industry...
...We have felt that the time has come when we must pause for a moment in our commercial and industrial strife and consider the welfare of human beings...
...The safety of the workers, then, is tfe safety of us all...
...To obviate this difficulty, the Industrial Commission Bill has been introduced, proposing a Commission which shall have power to look into the conditions of industry and examine the best safety devices, the best methods which can be used for protection against disease and accident...
...Most of us Are Workers" IF WE DO NOT have better opportunities for our workers, safer conditions under which they shall live, better educational opportunities, and if the humane note is not struck in our legislation, then, indeed, our prosperity turns to ashes...
...Through the recognition of these principles, the "hazards of industry" have been borne by the employed...
...The Industrial Loss IT IS ESTIMATED that in the United States thirty to forty thousand wage earners are killed by industrial accidents yearly...
...After all is said, most of us are workers...
...Through the workmen's compensation and insurance laws, on the other hand, a just and reasonable compensation for those losses which cannot be foreseen and prevented will be spread over industry, and from that to society...
...A law which describes a piece of machinery in detail is hard to draft and still harder to enforce, and after the description has been made as thorough as human ingenuity can make it, there still remains the fact that, with the rapid growth of invention, tomorrow the description may be obsolete and useless...
...A factory inspector finds it impossible to enforce laws which are often archaic a year after they are made...
...To attain perfection of mind and body was the aim of the Romans when the Roman Republic was at its height...
...It will say to the manufacturer, "Here are certain health and safety devices and methods which we have examined...
...We may hope for the dawn of a new day in labor conditions...
...The Industrial Commission Idea UPON A SCIENTIFIC EXAMINATION of such methods and devices, it is proposed that reasonable standards of safety and health shall be made and enforced by this Commission in the same manner in which reasonable rates and reasonably adequate services and facilities are prescribed and enforced by similar commissions dealing with railroads and public utilities...
...Why not use them...
...If we are to prosper and progress as a people, we must look to the protection and perfection of the individual...
...If based upon scientific principles, if common sense is used in working out the problem, then human life will undoubtedly be saved, the conditions of industry will be bettered and life be made more worth living—and saving...
...Why not use them...
...It is safe to say that double this number of fatalities from industrial accidents would hardly comprehend the "number of deaths resulting from occupational diseases—lead poisoning, mercury poisoning, arsenic poisoning, anthrax, compressed air disea'ses, and the many other industrial diseases that prevail throughout the country...
...For this purpose of prevention the present labor laws are ineffective...
...Our Human Foundation EVERY NATION has flourished only when the physical and mental faculties of its people were developed and preserved to the fullest extent...
...It is finding expression even in our legislative bodies...
...So the manufacturer finds himself unable, even if he really tries to do his best, to readjust conditions to these unequal, misfit and untimely laws...
...It is only recently that the idea has crept into our life, both national and state, that, after all, all the wealth which we have in the country is as nothing compared to the main purposes of our existence as a ration—the protection of the lives, liberty and happiness of the people...
...Perfection of mind and body was the principle that governed the ancient Greeks...
...Since we have become the greatest industrial nation of the world, our courts and our legislatures have struggled with the old common law doctrines of "assumption of risk," "contributory negligence" and the "fellow-servant rule"—doctrines borrowed from the dim past...
...The movement for industrial compensation laws is the result...
Vol. 3 • June 1911 • No. 22
