and is not just. I think that matter ought to be taken care of by the general fund.

The CHAIRMAN. I am asking now purely for information. What would it mean to have a panel of physicians? Would they have to be retained, like lawyers?

Mr. FRITZ. I do not believe that that is the intent of this section. I think what it means is that the carrier would probably engage Doctor Jones and Doctor Smith to treat cases of such employees as may go to them for treatment. That is what I think that would mean, but the fact is, if it would work that way, that those individual treatments would result in vastly increased costs because they would be treated at the regular rate charged per call by physicians, whereas with our regular staff we are able to have that done for less.

Mr. HUNTER. The next speaker is Mr. Holman, who represents in this connection the Council of American Shipbuilders.

STATEMENT OF DUDLEY M. HOLMAN, GENERAL MANAGER, UNITED STATES MUTUAL LIABILITY INSURANCE CO., QUINCY, MASS.

Mr. HOLMAN. You have heard mostly, Mr. Chairman, from New York. I am going to touch briefly on Massachusetts conditions and on the coastwise and Lake States which also have to deal with these problems.

The purpose of this act is so far in advance of any compensation act that I have ever known of that I am almost at a loss to know where to begin.

I was a member of the original Industrial Accident Board of Massachusetts. I was for 18 months president of the International Association of Industrial Boards and Commissions, and I was a member of the committee that drew up the compensation act for our soldiers and sailors who went over on the other side, and so I am fairly familiar with compensation legislation.

This is so far in excess of anything, even the New York act, that it is going to be very burdensome on industry in various parts of the country.

Now, I am also at a loss to know just what or who is covered by this proposition. This bill, by its title, provides compensation for employees injured and dependents of employees killed in certain maritime employments, and provides for its administration by the United States Employees' Compensation Commission. Now, I do not know, and I see nothing in the statute to tell me, what is meant by "certain maritime employments."

The CHAIRMAN. That is not the test. The test is found in section 3.

Mr. HOLMAN. Section 1 reads:

This act may be cited as the longshoremens and harbor workers' compensation act.

The CHAIRMAN. I know; but I was laboring under the same difficulty you are with regard to just what it means, but, after that, if you will turn to section 3, you will find a description of the persons who will be covered by this act. There is some difference between maritime jurisdiction and admiralty jurisdiction.

Mr. HOLMAN. And there is some question about where admiralty jurisdiction ends and where compensation begins.

The CHAIRMAN. We are trying our best to discover just where it begins and ends.

Mr. HOLMAN. The very latest decision of Mr. Justice McReynolds, while admitting that the accident occurred on a maritime contract and wholly under admiralty law, yet states that as no material damage would be done to the general admiralty proposition, and as the State of Texas did provide a certain remedy, allowed that to go in as a compensation case.

Before I came down here I had a talk with one of the industrial commissioners in Massachusetts, and he said that, taking the Rohde case, the Oregon case, and the Texas case together, he was prepared now to accept almost any case as coming under the workmen's compensation act of Massachusetts.

But I would like to read into the record the comparative compensation in cases of temporary total disability that is allowed in the various States in which maritime employments are conducted.

If you please, I shall not take time to read it; I shall give it to your stenographer. In Massachusetts the maximum is $16. (The table referred to is as follows:)

Now, in one of the plants in Massachusetts they have been engaged in repairing two battleships of the Argentine Navy. Those repairs involved practically the entire changing over of the power plants and the fire control of the ships. It involved the most expensive sort of labor to do this shipwright and other technical work, men who were very high-paid men. Those men worked part of the time on board the ships and part of the time off the ships. Part of the time they were working on the United States airplane carrier Lexington, which was new construction and they were under the compensation act, but the moment they got on board one of the boats they were under maritime jurisdiction.

If this act were in effect their status would change, and, instead of getting $16 a week as they would get under our State compensation act, they would get, with this amendment, $25. If they were killed, their widows under this act would get compensation for life or until remarriage, while under the Massachusetts act the widows

in exactly the same circumstances would get from $4,000 to $6,400 each, dependent upon the number of minor children which they

had.

It is going to be very difficult to explain to those men why their status changed from $16 to $25 and to their widows, if they are killed, that if they were killed at a certain place they get only $4,000 or $6,400, and in the other case they get a large sum of money for life.

I am going over this very hurriedly.

Under subdivision (e) of section 8 you deal with a minor who has been injured and whose wages under normal conditions could be expected to increase. You provide that this fact should be considered in arriving at an average weekly wage, yet there is no definite way of deciding this question as it appears in any part of the proposed act.

Is it to be left entirely to a possible increase in wage, or a probable increase in wage, or is it to go through from apprentice to fullfledged workmen?

The CHAIRMAN. That is true now, is it not, under our liability law?

Mr. HOLMAN. Yes, sir; it is true under your compensation acts in most of our States, but there is nothing here to indicate any course of procedure, any way of arriving at it. That is the thing that I am trying to draw out.

The practice in Massachusetts is very general amongst insurance companies of affording medical treatment and hospital treatment during the entire time that an injured man needs it, whether it be one week, one month, one year, two years, or whatnot. He is given adequate medical treatment. The law places the responsibility. We have no self-insurers in Massachusetts. It is not permitted under the state law. Consequently, while it is an elective act, the taking away of the three main defenses has made it practically impossible for any but a few large corporations to go without compensation insurance, and there the insurance carrier usually furnishes adequate medical treatment.

It is true that in Massachusetts the man has a right to select his own physician during the first two weeks. Very few of the men, as a matter of fact, ever do that. The majority of these men are taken care of either in plant hospitals or taken care of by the insurance carrier in other hospitals. If a man needs a specialist, he gets it; if it is an X-ray proposition, he gets that; and if we can not find out exactly what is the matter, we have a conference of doctors and the man gets, I think, as good medical treatment in Massachusetts as you could possibly pick out anywhere else in the world.

Under this proposition here, you are going back to the panel system, which obtains in California with modifications, or the system that formerly prevailed in Massachusetts and which was thrown out by Massachusetts, of the employer posting up on the place of employment a notice that, for example, men injured in this plant will be treated by Doctor Smith and Doctor Jones and Doctor So-and-so.

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In other words, if the responsibility is placed upon either the self-insurer, who is an insurance carrier under this act, or the insurance company to furnish adequate medical treatment, with your referees supposed to be men of understanding and who appreciate values, they would know whether the men were getting adequate medical treatment; but to allow a man who does not speak English to look down a list of half a dozen doctors and then go pick out one doctor is not furnishing the adequate medical treatment which we feel he is entitled to.

Again, contrast the provisions of this proposed legislation with the United States employees' compensation bill, where the maximum payment is $66.67 per month and the widow receives not less than $50 nor more than $100 a month, and you will find that we are asked to consent to placing a burden upon private employers far beyond anything that the United States is willing to give to its employees. I think a fair comparison between the provisions of the United States employees' compensation act and some of the other acts, a fair medium, could be obtained when you take as a basis the biggest act in the United States, that is, the act that confers the largest benefits, and then on top of that add another much larger burden, and you are putting such a burden on industry that it is going to be indeed a very heavy burden and it is going to drive industry from some of the higher-cost centers into centers like Alabama and elsewhere they can get laborers at very much lower rates.

I feel, and I know my people feel, in common with everyone who has ever studied this thing, the need of a uniform compensation law, a law that shall be just and equitable and will not place too heavy a burden upon the employers and yet will be fair and reasonable for the men.

The original conception of workmen's compensation acts was to measure the difference to a man so far as his earning capacity was concerned. It was deemed unfair, of course, that the individual, before the passage of these acts, should have all the suffering and pain and pay his own expenses and all that, and it was resolved to place a part, and only a part, of the burden on industry, and that was the thing that these acts undertook to do. The measure at that time was a man's loss of wage-earning capacity. Since these acts have gone in we have since had creeping into them from time to time damage acts, so that we are measuring now not a man's loss of earning capacity-that is not taken into consideration at allbut we have a damage situation where a man is paid so much for the loss of a hand or finger or something else, whether or not it injured his earning capacity, and getting away from the original conception, not only here but abroad, of workmen's compensation.

I had a talk with the chairman of the Massachusetts Industrial Board yesterday, and he had not read the bill. Commissioner Parks, who was apparently favorable to this bill according to something I had heard or seen here, told me that he had not read this bill. There are, however, indorsements from industrial commissions that never deal with this problem.

It would seem to me that an act could be devised, where we can get together in a mutual "give and take" proposition that will be fair to all sides.

There is no disposition to be unfair to the workmen; there is no such disposition on the part of the employers at least I have never found that so-and I have sat on commissions and decided hundreds and thousands of these cases myself, and it seems to me perfectly fair that this bill should not be given passage for the simple reason that if you start to amend it there is hardly a line or a paragraph or a sentence in it that does not need amending. The CHAIRMAN. Does that conclude the witnesses?

Mr. HUNTER. Mr. Chairman, that concludes the witnesses we have here to-day, and I would like to reserve the right to submit a memorandum on some questions which have not been touched here to-day. I have stepped aside and permitted these men to speak on the details.

The CHAIRMAN. Of course, the committee would be very glad to receive any brief or memoranda that you may want to submit. Do you desire a further hearing?

Doctor ANDREWS. I desire the same privilege, to submit a brief memorandum on some of the points that have been raised.

The CHAIRMAN. But do you not desire to have any further oral hearing?

Doctor ANDREWS. No.

The CHAIRMAN. Then the hearings upon this bill are closed.

STATEMENT BY COUNCIL OF AMERICAN SHIPBUILDERS (INC.) AND NEW YORK AND NEW JERSEY DRY DOCK ASSOCIATION IN OPPOSITION TO THE ENACTMENT OF SENATE BILL 3170, KNOWN AS THE LONGSHOREMEN'S AND HARBOR WORKERS' COMPENSATION BILL

The Council of American Shipbuilders (Inc.) is composed of corporations whose shipyards are situated on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and shores of the Great Lakes.

The New York and New Jersey Dry Dock Association includes in its membership nearly all of the shipyards engaged in building and repairing ships in the port of New York.

State workmen's compensation laws provide compensation to shipyard workmen for accidental injuries arising out of and in the course of their employment while on land or while on a vessel in the course of construction. The admiralty courts have exclusive jurisdiction over actions commenced by workmen to recover damages against an employer for accidental injuries arising out of and in the course of their employment on board a ship.

The shipbuilders and ship repairers generally favor a workmen's compensation law that will cover their workmen now within the jurisdiction of the admiralty courts provided it contains provisions for compensation that are fair both to employer and employee and a procedure for the adjustment of claims that can be administered easily and expeditiously.

The Council of American Shipbuilders (Inc.) and New York and New Jersey Dry Dock Association are opposed to the bill now under consideration, and the reasons for such opposition are briefly as follows:

Section 3 of the proposed law reads as follows:

"SEC. 3. This act shall apply to any employment performed on a place within the admiralty jurisdiction of the United States, except employment of local concern and of no direct relation to navigation and commerce; but shall not apply to employment as master or member of the crew of a vessel."

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This provision is indefinite. The exception of employment of local concern and of no direct relation to navigation and commerce is vague and will be the subject of continual litigation. Innumerable claims will become legal questions requiring determination by the courts.

Instead of excepting seamen, it should include all maritime employment under the admiralty jurisdiction of the United States court. The burden of such legislation may then be properly distributed over the maritime industry. The bill, if enacted, will present constantly to employers and the courts the