Congress should adopt legislation providing limited but definite compensation for accidents to all workmen within the scope of the Federal power, including employees of navy yards and arsenals.

In other words, a model employers' liability act, far-reaching and thoroughgoing, should be enacted which should apply to all positions, public and private, over which the National Government has jurisdiction.

The number of accidents to wage-workers, including those that are preventable and those that are not, has become appalling in the mechanical, manufacturing, and transportation operations of the day.

It works grim hardship to the ordinary wage-worker and his family to have the effect of such an accident fall solely upon him; and, on the other hand, there are whole classes of attorneys who exist only by inciting men who may or may not…

As a matter of fact a suit for negligence is generally an inadequate remedy for the person injured, while it often causes altogether disproportionate annoyance to the employer.

The law should be made such that the payment for accidents by the employer would be automatic instead of being a matter for lawsuits.

Workmen should receive certain and definite compensation for all accidents in industry irrespective of negligence.

The employer is the agent of the public and on his own responsibility and for his own profit he serves the public.

When he starts in motion agencies which create risks for others, he should take all the ordinary and extraordinary risks involved; and the risk he thus at the moment assumes will ultimately be assumed, as it ought to be, by the general…

Only in this way can the shock of the accident be diffused, instead of falling upon the man or woman least able to bear it, as is now the case.

The community at large should share the burdens as well as the benefits of industry.

By the proposed law, employers would gain a desirable certainty of obligation and get rid of litigation to determine it, while the workman and his family would be relieved from a crushing load.

The practice of putting the entire burden of loss to life or limb upon the victim or the victim's family is a form of social injustice in which the United States stands in unenviable prominence.

The legislation of the rest of the industrial world stands out in striking contrast to our backwardness in this respect.

I urge upon the Congress the enactment of a law which will at the same time bring Federal legislation up to the standard already established by all the European countries, and which will serve as a stimulus to the various States to perfect…

The principle of the eight-hour day should as rapidly and as far as practicable be extended to the entire work carried on by the Government; and the present law should be amended to embrace contracts on those public works which the present…

The general introduction of the eight-hour day should be the goal toward which we should steadily tend, and the Government should set the example in this respect.

These figures indicate the increasing need of providing some machinery to deal with this class of disturbance in the interest alike of the employer, the employee, and the general public.

I renew my previous recommendation that the Congress favorably consider the matter of creating the machinery for compulsory investigation of such industrial controversies as are of sufficient magnitude and of sufficient concern to the…

Had the machinery existed and had there been authority for compulsory investigation of the dispute, the public would have been placed in possession of the merits of the controversy, and public opinion would probably have brought about a…

The creation of a board for compulsory investigation in cases where mediation fails and arbitration is rejected is the next logical step in a progressive program.

This means that there will be an ever-increasing need to consider the problems inseparable from a great industrial civilization.

The relations of the capitalist and wage-worker to one another, and of each to the general public, are not always easy to adjust; and to put them and keep them on a satisfactory basis is one of the most important and one of the most…

It is idle to hold that without good laws evils such as child labor, as the over-working of women, as the failure to protect employees from loss of life or limb, can be effectively reached, any more than the evils of rebates and…

To fail to stop these practices by legislation means to force honest men into them, because otherwise the dishonest who surely will take advantage of them will have everything their own way.