The Human Cost of Industrial Progress
Former mine workers' leader John Mitchell calls for an end to the 'iniquitous' liability system that leaves injured American laborers without protection.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
John Mitchell, former president of the mine workers, in a 1910 address before the Liability Insurance association said in part: 'Industrial accidents and compensation for losses caused by them are subjects in which the workingmen are more directly interested than any other group in society. In the United States, the number of persons killed and injured is not even counted, but William Hard credits the American Institute of Social Service with the statement that 500,000 workmen are killed or maimed every year by American industry. It is a strange commentary upon our boasted American civilization that in this country twice or three times as many persons per thousand employed are killed and injured in the course of their employment as in any other country in the world. The United States is now the only industrial nation on earth that maintains the old system of liability based upon negligence. As a rule, an injured workman has no remedy at law if his injury were caused by the act of a fellow workman or if he contributed in any degree to his own injury. I believe that industry should bear the burden of the pecuniary loss sustained by workmen as a result of industrial accidents, just as it is now required to repair its machinery.'
“It is all very well for a workman to receive $1,000 for the loss of an eye or the loss of a leg, but it is much better for the workman, as it is for society, that the eye or the leg be not lost.”
This 1910 call to action mirrors the ongoing debates over gig economy protections and the responsibility of corporations for the physical well-being of their workforce. Mitchell's argument for an 'automatic system of compensation' laid the early intellectual groundwork for the modern workers' compensation statutes we rely on today.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.