EXTENDS HELP
Detroit Employers' Association Posts
Members on Compensation Act

The Employers' Association of Detroit, John J. Whirl, secretary, which is certainly a live wire institution, has been preparing its membership for the operation of the Michigan Workmen's compensation act which went went into effect Sept. 1. Letters sent out during August read in part:

The legal and legislative committee of the Employers' Association of Detroit have carefully considered the purpose, scope and effect of the "workmen's compensation act", which will go into effect Sept. 1, and the application of the principles of law thereto, and respectfully submit their views and suggestions.

This law expressly removes the defenses heretofore authorized in an action to recover damages for personal injury sustained by an employe in the course of his employment or for death resulting therefrom, to wit, the negligence of an employe (unless such negligence is willful); the negligence of a fellow employe; the assumption of risk by employe. These defenses have heretofore been a material element in our laws for the protection of employers, but are now removed.

In view of the express removal of the defenses heretofore allowed in personal injury cases it seems imperative that all members of the association expressly elect to be governed by filing with the Industrial Accident Board, on Sept. 1, 1912, an acceptance thereof, blank forms for which purpose can be obtained from the Industrial Accident Board at Lansing, or of this office.

We are advised by Mr. John B. Corliss, chairman of the committee, that the provision of the act assuming to bind the employe without his consent after 30 days of employment seems to be in violation of the constitution of our state, which expressly preserves the right of trial by jury.

It is, therefore, deemed necessary that the members of the association not only elect as indicated their acceptance of the act, but also to safeguard their interest insist that employes also accept the provisions of the law.

You will find herewith copies of a form to be used by you in notifying the Industrial Accident Board, at Lansing, of your acceptance or desire to come under the provision of act 10; copies of a form to be used by an employe electing to come under this act; copies of a form to be used by an employe electing not to be subject to the act; and a notice for posting above your time clock, officially announcing to your employes your acceptance of the provisions of the act. This budget is sent to you so that you may be fully advised as to the initial formalities.

This office can render valuable service to our members. If each member will fill out one copy of the first mentioned form, and return it to this office, it will give us a very good idea. as to the number of firms who have decided to come under the act, and the method they have arranged for with regard to compensation.

Briefly:-Fill out the form and attach to it a letter of inquiry with regard to any of the points which are not clearly understood by you. Send that into this office and let us endeavor to set you right, so far as we can, and those points that we are not fully informed on, we will secure the information and convey it to you, perhaps more quickly than you can get it by your individual efforts.

Let Him Out of Jail

The government, says Liberty and Progress, of Melbourne, has ordered the release of a criminal named James O'Grady, who was under sentence of three years' imprisonment for blowing up some mining machinery with gelignite in connection with the late Collieburn strike. O'Grady had only served three months of his term. The new South Wales labor government has also at last given way in connection with the Lithgow strike rioters. Α threat to ferment a general strike of one day throughout the states if the men were not realeased, seems to have frightened the government. So they have let three of the rioters out of prison.

According to the New York World of Thursday, Aug. 15, 1912, Chief Magistrate McAdoo of the metropolis is about to institute an inquiry into charges that striking furriers have adopted a strong arm system, and also been engaged in bribing members of the New York police force, who are just now rather under a cloud anyway, to keep away from pickets.

The World said: Chief Magistrate McAdoo is to make an inquiry into charges that members of the executive, strike and picket committees of Furriers' Union No. 14,236 have maintained a strong arm squad and have sought to bribe policemen in furthering the strike declared on June 20 against a number of fur manufacturers of the city. In the Tombs court yesterday he issued summonses for three members of these committees on the complaint of Joseph Cohen, of 52 Cathedral Parkway, president of the Star Fur Mfg. Co.

Abraham Salkin, I. I. Salkin and one Margolies were named in the complaint as having been in charge of the work of intimidation and bribery. Cohen alleged in his complaint that "Abraham Salkin and Margolies, on Aug. 1, corruptly and wickedly agreed and conspired with each other and with others unknown to prevent Joseph Schneider, employed as a furmaker by Kaye & Einstein; one Friedman, an employe of Max Cohen & Bro. James Hairstaulos, an employe of Herbst & Co.; Michael Cohen, an employe of the Star Fur Mfg. Co., and other furmakers and apprentices, by force, threats and intimidation, from exercising their lawful trade and calling."

To bring this about, Cohen continues, these men hired as members

of a strong arm squad-at $3 a day, with an expense allowance of 50 cents a day-Samuel Goldstein, Morris Schneid, Isidore Tischler, Joseph Schecter, Albert Tennenbaum, Benjamin Cohen, Daniel Delmar, Edward Gerber, Joseph Joseph Sheppard, Harry Brown, Abraham Fink, Samuel Reichbach, and a number of others unnamed. To support this charge, affidavits were offered from several of these men.

Goldstein, who said he lived at 23 Stuyvesant place, and was a pugilist by occupation, swore that Abraham Salkin hired him, through Joseph Sheppard, to do "gorilla work".

"Gorilla work," as I understood it, swore Goldstein, "consisted of going out with people pointed out by the pickets and bringing them down to the union rooms, and if they didn't come to satisfy them with something they don't like."

Hit them,' my orders were," Goldstein added, and went on to tell of having had a man pointed out to him by Tischler at Twenty-eighth street and Sixth avenue.

"A

"Fischel and I went over to talk to the man," Goldstein continued. special policeman was standing near, and when I hit the man and dropped him, Fischel hit the policeman and ran away. The policeman ran after him, and I hit and dropped my man again, just as he got to his feet."

Morris Schneid swore that he had induced an old man, a "scab", to go to the union's rooms with him, but that as soon as they arrived there, an officer of the union "beat up" the old

man.

"Then I beat up the officer, because I had given the old man my honor that I would protect him. They paid

the old man $3, and afterward hired him as a strong arm man," Schneid concluded.

Another affidavit contained the story of a man who went home one night and found his clothes "covered with blood." He talked the matter over with his wife, and decided that he was "tired" of his job. When he went around the next day to get his money, he says that an officer of the union declared:

"This is the best day's work we've done yet. Why, you could kill five men a day!"

"I'm no Jack Zelig," the man quoted himself in reply, and having received his money, he quit.

Joseph Schester, of 1302 Washington avenue, the Bronx, declared that Irving Rafsky, whom he believed to represent the American Federation of Labor, with which Union No. 14,236 is allied, had as one of his duties the protection of the pickets.

"In what way?" Schecter was asked, according to the statement to which he took oath.

"To see that the coppers should be away from the place," he replied.

"How was he supposed to get the policemen away?"

"With sugar; with money."

"How was he supposed to do that?" "He could give money and the copper could get off the block.”

PATIENT AS JOB

Organized Labor Allows Itself
to be Robbed

"Patient Organized Labor" is the title of an article in a recent issue of the Pacific Coast Mechanic, the official organ of the National Trades and Workers Association, says the Southern Lumberman for August. The patience of organized labor is wonderful indeed. The boils that afflicted Job were as nothing compared to the ills that have been endured by members of the labor unions. A California paper says: "Organized labor is taxed by its leaders as no autocrat ever dared tax a slave. And resistence, protest or rebellion is punished

by death." On one pretext or another the last dime is taken from the pockets of the patient workers. These

poor creatures paid enormous sums to the McNamara defense fund. What became of the money? Mr. Clarence Darrow, attorney for the defense, admits the receipt of $110,000 and a court of law is now trying to determine how he spent that sum, for he says he did spend it. But $110,000 is a small amount compared to the total contributed by organized labor. And after all, the murderers confessed.

It sounds like a grim joke. But very patient persons seldom possess a highly developed sense of humor. Probably Job never saw a joke in his life. It seems that something should be done to spare the patient workers another experience of similar sort. A San Francisco paper sarcastically observes:

"That the incompetent are entitled. to protection against imposition is a wholesome axiom of law. Village school teachers, country clergymen and the unsophisticated in general are protected against the bucket shop, the mail order swindle and the gold brick adventurer. The post office issues fraud orders against thieves and does what it can to stand between the hawk and the pigeon. Why should not organized labor be similarly protected even against its will, since the spectacle of wholesale robbery is demoralizing to the public at large?"

Healthy Awakening

Reports from various parts of the country show a healthy awakening on the part of the public to the tyranny of labor domination. In Los Angeles two hundred and eighty pickets were arrested under the anti-picketing ordinance passed by the city council. and which the supreme court of California has decided is legal. In Hartford, Conn., the central labor union, its members, agents and all allied unions, have been restrained by the court from indulging in any form of

In

picketing, "peaceful" persuasion, loitering and congregating. In New York state the supreme court, in granting a permanent injunction restraining the machinists' union from interfering with the business of a manufacturer, recently awarded the plaintiff a judgment of $4,000 against the union for damages sustained by him in the maintenance of a commissary in which to house and feed the workmen who took the places of striking machinists. Tampa, Fla., during the recent cigarmakers' strike: "Five hundred citizens with police authority, manning one hundred autos and armed with pistols, rifles and pump guns loaded with buck shot, took things in hand, and closed up the two labor temples, locked the doors, carried away the safes, books and papers, and arrested the ring leaders. Not a shot was fired. It was rumored that the carpenters' union was to re-open the labor temple. Within a half-hour one thousand citizens were on the ground with guns; the union hall was opened."

not

sociation, with offices in New York, with 425 members, and the West Coast Lumber Manufacturers' Association, of Washington state, with 129 members, have now been elected to membership in the Chamber of Commerce of the United States of America.

Though the national chamber was organized as recently as April 22, more than 77,000 business men of the nation are now affiliated with it through 102 different organizations, covering 29 individual states and the Hawaiian Islands. The Chamber of Commerce of Alexandria, Va., with 52 members, is the smallest local organization that has so far joined; the Chamber of Commerce of Boston, Mass., with 4,609 members, is the largest. The National Association of Glue and Gelatin Manufacturers of New York, with 36 members, is the smallest national body that has so far become affiliated. The next in size is the United States Potters' Association, with 56 members.

The detail work of the National Chamber of Commerce is being carried on by the following men: General secretary, Elliott H. Goodwin, formerly secretary of the National Civil Service Reform League; field secretary, Edward F. Trefz, formerly advertising counsellor to the Painted Display Advertising Association of the United States; assistant secretary, D. A. Skinner, formerly assistant chief of the Bureau of Manufactures, Department of Commerce and Labor; chief of editorial division and editor of The Nation's Business, G. Grosvenor Dawe, formerly managing director of the Southern Commercial Congress.

They Lost Money

Only a few months ago, at Broken Hill, labor unions lost £5,000 in conducting a co-operative bakery and a co-operative woodyard. It was a small affair, but yet another of the numerous examples which show that those who work at an industry are generally the worst fitted to control it.-Liberty and Progress.

About the time that this issue of THE AMERICAN EMPLOYER makes its appearance, the electors of Ohio will be voting on a proposition to amend the constitution of the state in 41 respects, mostly bad. Almost the entire list of changes proposed will be, if adopted, detrimental to the business interests and the business men of the state. Such of the proposals as are not detrimental are unnecessary, seeking to reach points that can be covered by legislative enactment under the present constitution of the

state.

The proposals include civil verdicts in lawsuits by the concurrence of nine jurymen, no limit to the amount of damages to be recovered by heirs in the event of a wrongful death, the initiation and referendum, nullifying the veto of the governor if 60 per cent of both houses of the state legislature vote to disregard his veto, regulating hours of labor, establishing a minimum wage, workmen's compensation to be contributed to by employers alone, to provide for the regulation of methods of mining, weighing, measuring and marketing coal, oil, gas and all other minerals (this is a sleeper in a "conservation of natural resources" proposition), an eight-hour day on public work, prompt removal from office of public officials, including the judiciary, in addition to impeachment, limiting the power to punish for contempt of court, trial by jury in contempt proceedings, no order of injunction in labor controversies except to preserve physical property, taxation of state and municipal bonds, inheritances, incomes, franchises and production of minerals, regulation of corporations, double liability of bank stockholders, limiting outdoor adver

tising, and municipal home rule, the last named involving all sorts of municipal ownership.

How, Marshall Cushing's magazine for manufacturers, comments in part as follows on the proposed Ohio constitutional changes:

They are proposing that nine jurymen may render verdicts in civil cases. This was the work of the ambulance chasers in the constitutional convention. How will the corporations fare, do you think, in the hands of these juries and these ambulance chasers? There is a proposition for the minimum wage carefully concealed under the title "welfare of employes", something which everyone wants. But does everybody want it under its real name, the minimum wage? We shall have to wait and see.

It is proposed to limit the governor's veto power naturally, as the governor (Uncle Judson Harmon and no other) has dared to stop the mob. Conservation creeps in. "Conservation of natural resources" is the title and under this provision what the grafters and hold-up artists will to do to the gas, oil and coal companies of Ohio. will be something that they cannot think of and they think of everything. Compulsory workmen's compensation, the employer to pay all of the expense and the burden of occupational diseases as well, is proposed. And the eight-hour day on public. work is on the list, and the practical removal of protection to property and even life through the weakening of the injunctive process. Of course, municipal ownership is on the program, and provisions for taxing franchises, incomes and inheritances.

The radicals are going to try for an increase of 100 per cent liability