A Dead Unmarried Worker Was Worth Nothing—Until This Law
Washington's legislature finally let dependent parents and siblings sue when a provider was killed on the job, ending a rule that made unmarried workers cheaper to kill than to maim.
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.
OLYMPIA, Feb. 4.—With the passage in the house and senate of bills which will give dependent parents, sisters and brothers the right to sue for damages in case of the killing of their provider, labor unions and the working men in general have won a legislative victory that has been waged at every legislature for the past fourteen years.
Always the forces of the corporations were too strong in one or the other branches of the legislature or in both, and a law remained on the statute books which all but paid corporation lawyers declared was a shame to the state.
The law now limits the right to sue for damages to the widow or children, and makes the life of an unmarried man worth nothing to those dependent upon him. Boiled down to a cold-blooded statement a sawmill or a railroad would rather kill an unmarried employee outright than to maim him. If he were killed there was nothing to pay, whereas if he lived he could sue.
And this worked a hardship on the married man. Realizing their obligations to his wife or children if they killed him, corporations sought to employ as many unmarried men as possible. A dead unmarried man was no expense, while a dead married man meant damage suits and appeals.
Senator Rosenhaupt of Spokane got this bill through the senate and Representative Campbell of Snohomish led it in the house. Palmer of King county tried to kill the measure on the grounds that it helped ambulance chasers, but Edge of Spokane stopped this talk by asserting that between the ambulance chaser and the paid attorney of a corporation who fought the suits regardless of right, there was no choice; one was as bad and not a whit better than the other.
“Boiled down to a cold-blooded statement a sawmill or a railroad would rather kill an unmarried employee outright than to maim him.”
The old rule gave employers a grim incentive: an unmarried worker killed on the job triggered no damages for the family members who depended on him. Washington's 1913 reform widened wrongful-death recovery and is part of the long struggle over workplace safety and who counts as a family in the eyes of the law.
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