of Governor Brumbaugh who had the courage of his conviction and he said to the men who sat in the chairs you now occupy, and the men who sat in the chairs of the higher branch of this House: "The existing condition relative to the workmen of our State must be eliminated," and well I remember the Attorney General of this State, when he stood over there where the President of the Pennsylvania Federation of Labor, Mr. Maurer, now sits, and told those who were advocating the retention of the common law defenses, if the employe did not accept this law, "you have enjoyed the common law defenses far beyond the time they are useful; they should have been eliminated years ago."

This money mad craze of men at the expense of human life must come to an end. This money mad craze at the expense of human life is coming to an end and will come to a more definite end. Without labor, what is capital and without capital what is labor? As was said by my aged and respected friend from York, we should be one family without question and we will be. Nothing has ever happened which will cause us to realize that this is true more than this present war. When we realize that we should be one family, and that labor is worthy of its hire, and in case the fathers of dependents are taken away, those dependents must be supported by the industry, a condition will then exist more beneficial to both capital and labor. Those principles of law containing iron-bound rules, which tend to defeat the employe in his right of action for injury, have now been modified. The Compensation Law has been placed upon our statute books and I have heard it said that more accidents have taken place since the law was placed there than ever before. Ladies and gentlemen, that is not so, I desire to suggest what is so; we know more about our business now than we did before. Heretofore things happened at the works we knew nothing about; henceforth we will know more about this and when we do, we will remedy the condition. No greater work toward safety can be accomplished than by keeping accurate records of accidents, showing how they take place and what caused them, and with rigid hand, pass safety laws to overcome the condition and see that they are enforced.

When the Compensation Law becomes a burden upon the industry, just that soon the person in charge of any particular part of the industry will realize he must conserve human life or the cost of his production will increase. He will have a personal interest in reducing accidents, but the State officials should have an interest far above that. Why should this State permit mills, mines and factories to operate and reap all their harvest if they do it at the reckless expense of the single human life that could have been spared if proper safety laws had been placed on the books and had been observed. We must come to that feeling and that spirit; we must not forget we are equal. Remove today the men of the mines, as was said by

my aged friend from York, and where is your nation? It crumbles; it falls. Yet no combination of workmen or employes under God's great sun suffered the hardships they suffered by way of compensation since 1891. You have given them some relief, you must give them more. The payment of money for what happened is one thing; but how much better it would be if you did not have to pay it because you spared the life.

I have given some attention to certain lines of this safety movement. Much can be accomplished if we work in unity with each other, but nothing will be accomplished if we have meetings, discuss this subject, go home and forget it. These meetings are called together in the interest of combinations of business; we should go home when the meetings are over and put into effect every thought we receive here, plus those we ourselves think can be put forth to save human life. They say safety devices will overcome the difficulty. To a certain extent they will, but in addition to safety devices, your working conditions should be such that people can work thereunder free from any dangers. You take your mills, your mines, and your factories; Pennsylvania should be at a stage now that skilled men would be sent to the works daily to take therefrom samples of the air, have it analyzed and tell the Department of Labor what it contains. We should have records as to the temperature both by the dry and wet bulb thermometers in order that the medical staff here could advise as to whether or not the conditions are fit to work therein, we should have samples of the atmosphere of every mine, every mill, and every factory analyzed daily to ascertain what gases, if any, dangerous to life or health are found and to have them eliminated.

This Department of Labor and Industry should classify their accidents. They know now how many workmen, since this Act of Assembly went into effect, have been turned from the mill, mine or factory minus an eye, a hand, a leg, a foot, or arm within the terms of this Act. They should know why such accidents happen. They should call to account those who are negligent, if negligence was the cause, because human life is too sacred to be dealt with cheaply and when they compile such figures and rule with an iron hand over both the employer and employe, then at the end of each business year you will find a reduction of accidents compared with the past. I have gone over records and found in a mining community certain men operating mines who are capable of mining a million tons of coal per fatal accident, while their neighbors do not seem to be able to mine more than a hundred and twenty thousand tons per fatal accident. They have exactly the same conditions; they have the same things to contend with, everything is similar except the method of doing the work, the cost sheet cuts a figure in one

place while it does not in the other. When this great Department of Labor and Industry will take charge of this great problem in a way so as to dictate to both the employe and employer "You shall be governed by a strict adherence, by a strict interpretation and observation of the laws we are to here administer," then you will realize accidents will be reduced; compensation will be a direct cause because it is through the compensation movement these statistics are gathered and the information obtained as to the number of accidents happening daily, the cause of such accidents and what is necessary to have them reduced.

Let the Department of Labor and Industry make good use of the records thus obtained and demonstrate to the employer and the employe that on account of the information furnished because of our Compensation Law, the death and injury rate will be reduced and Pennsylvania will emerge from its slumbers of indifference, to be the real progressive State of the nation in the safety movement.

CHAIRMAN PALMER: George T. Fonda, Director of Labor and Safety, Bethlehem Steel Company, South Bethlehem, Pa., will continue the discussion. We certainly enjoyed Mr. Dever's remarks.

THE RELATIONSHIP OF THE WORKMEN'S COMPENSATION LAWS TO THE SAFETY MOVEMENT.

By GEORGE T. FONDA, Director of Labor and Safety, Bethlehem Steel Company, South Bethlehem, Pa.

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I do not believe that any of us presume that the compensation law of this State and other States has not had a material effect upon the safety movement. However, there are certain phases of the situation which I will try to point out in my part of the discussion and I feel it a privilege to address you.

In the first place, there are a good many industries in this country that had considerable safety work under way before compensation laws were generally put into effect. Those industries were in many cases the larger industries and it was good business for them to conserve their human resources. I think probably everybody here is familiar with the large propaganda that the United States Steel Corporation has had under way for a good many years, and

that it was done because of the humanitarian consideration for its employes. As a matter of fact, the compensation laws have forced a good many of the smaller industries to recognize the safety movement as essential to their business and no doubt compensation laws in general have been responsible for the national movement which has become a general propaganda and which perhaps otherwise might not have occurred at such an early date. It is most fortunate for this country that this consideration has had some headway previous to this international situation which is upon us because, as everybody admits and realizes, it must be the conservation of human resources and the application of those resources which is going to win this war; and I can come to you as representing one of the largest arsenals-for such it is-in this country today, whose function in this war will probably have considerable to do with the ultimate result; and I want to say to you that we consider the conservation of our human resources as the most vital question.

Now, Compensation laws have made it possible for us to do one thing in particular and that is to consider the direct cost of meeting the liabilities as the result of industrial accidents. That was not possible before the laws were put into effect. It immediately gives you an opportunity to effect conservation in the various branches of any industry in a very definite way. Today you will find, particularly in the iron and steel industry, and I presume it is true in a great many other industries, that the whole force is working under very heavy pressure; the heads of departments are being pushed for production; every individual man in the department is being pushed for production, and that production must be kept up to the maximum. The result is that that particular department head and his associates, no matter how humane they may be and I think you will agree that most of them are humane, many of these men have come up from the rank and file-he has got to consider his production in dollars and cents and in terms of cost, and particularly is that true with the companies that are doing Government work, because, as you know, the United States Government has controlled all of the profits and limited them to a certain percentage. Now, by writing into the cost of the particular operation of cost of compensation to that particular department you immediately have a factor which that department head is bound to consider and he will consider it as part of the operation and the result, of course, produces a benefit to the employes of the department and to the plant in general. This is brought about through compensation laws, and it is, I think, a condition which, while it may be right or it may be wrong to state it this way, nevertheless has been forced upon us under circumstances over which we have

had no control and the mere fact that the results can be obtained through this medium should be sufficient to prove the value of compensation laws.

The points which were made by Mr. Farquhar and Mr. Felton simply magnify the importance of conservation of human life. The greatest way to conserve these resources is undoubtedly through an educational propaganda and every one that is engaged in the safety movement today is doing all he can through those channels, but it is impossible to get one hundred per cent. efficiency out of any educational program insofar as the safety movement is concerned. I am at a loss to know, and a good many of you are at a loss to know, just how the educational work we are all doing is going to produce the maximum result. There are not many industrial accidents today caused by defective equipment and lack of safeguards. Those things have been done in the very early stages of the safety movement in almost every case. How are we going to get the men in our industries to appreciate that this is being done for their benefit and know that they are going to accept the educational work that is being done and help us to eliminate the accidents which are largely due to the carelessness of the men injured or carelessness of some fellowworker? If we can accomplish that we can do the most to prevent industrial accidents and conserve human life which is an advantage to the employe and employer alike. I think we ought to take away with us just that thought, that the employe must be impressed with the fact that he must be absolutely open to all the educational propaganda that is in effect for his betterment. If he fully appreciates that he will then do most to help the safety movement and reduce the tremendous loss of life and limb.

In conclusion, let me refer back to some of the things that were said by Mr. Farquhar and Mr. Felton and to say that we must consider the problems we have to meet, including conservation of our human resources. We must consider and meet these problems as national problems and not individual problems. It is not going to be a question of the interest of John Jones or Henry Smith, or one industry here and another industry there. We must think in terms of the nation. It is not the time to do the usual things in the usual way but rather we must do the unusual things in the unusual way and it is going to be necessary to take groups of men in one industry and to place them in another. This is going to involve a considerable number of new hazards to the individual worker and we have all got to meet this new condition. We will all have to work together in the training of the new industrial army which will be necessary to win this great war and thereby make the world safe for us all to live in.