The Most Progressive Session in Years
Washington's legislature scores a victory for labor with new laws on workmen's compensation, an eight-hour day for women, and the initiative and referendum.
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.
Viewed carefully, the session just ended at Olympia will be found noteworthy for the legislation enacted in behalf of the working people of the state. Organized labor centered its efforts on three bills: the initiative and referendum, the women's eight-hour workday, and workmen's compensation. Big Business, realizing the people were aroused, sought to soften the blow to its interests by amending the bills, but the principle embodied in each stands. Campbell’s eight-hour bill cuts two hours from the working day of every woman in industrial or mercantile pursuits, excepting the fruit and fish industry. The Teats compensation measure throws upon industry the entire burden of caring for its injured, doing away with the old inhuman common law defense. It is declared to be the most radical departure from the old order of dealing with the victims of modern industry yet taken by any state in the Union.
“The Teats compensation measure throws upon industry the entire burden of caring for its killed and injured and their dependent ones; doing away with the old inhuman common law defense.”
The 1911 passage of workmen's compensation and the eight-hour day for women represented a foundational shift in how the state treated the physical and economic well-being of the workforce. Today's debates over gig-worker protections and the 'Right to Disconnect' echo this same 1911 struggle to force industry to internalize the costs of worker safety and time.
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