Safety-first' movement, irrespective of how valuable and how necessary that movement is.

Industry lists its machinery as an asset on its balance sheet. If a machine breaks it is repaired and again repaired until it is obsolete or becomes absolutely worthless and is scrapped. But we do not list on our balance sheets the biggest asset which we have, human energy, the productivity of our employees.

It is human energy that ties together all our machinery into the vast intricate system of production. The productivity of its citizenship is the biggest resource that any nation has and its prosperity varies directly as that productivity.

We hear much of the elimination of waste and the need of conservation in respect to all our resources. Secretary Hoover has taught us much in this direction. Civilian rehabilitation is merely applying the spirit of conservation to the problem of human effort and to the productivity and asset value of the 80,000 employees who annually would otherwise be eliminated from employment by reason of the hazards of their occupation.

Each employee and the executives of each industrial establishment must cooperate and assume full responsibility for civilian rehabilitation. With the right amount of education and the right knowledge of what is being done, each will assume that responsibility. To the slogan "Safety first" and "Do everything possible to prevent accidents," industry must now add "Do everything possible to rehabilitate into some useful, equally gainful occupation every man or woman who suffers handicap by reason of the hazards of employment."

Chairman WRIGHT. The Hon. James J. Davis, Secretary of Labor and chairman of the Federal Board for Vocational Education, was to have been here with us this afternoon to give us his message on "The responsibility of government in the program of vocational rehabilitation." Mr. Davis has found it impossible to be with us, but he has sent to us his message, a message which shows the degree to which he is interested in this great program. Your chairman will read the message to you.

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF GOVERNMENT IN THE PROGRAM OF
VOCATIONAL REHABILITATION

Hon. JAMES J. DAVIS, United States Secretary of Labor

[Paper read by J. C. Wright, Director, Federal Board for Vocational Education]

I am advised that this meeting is the third national meeting to be held for the purpose of discussing State and Federal programs for rehabilitating the disabled civilian. On such occasions it is always a good thing for us to take stock and ask ourselves the question,

Have we accomplished what we started out to do? Have we stimulated the States to undertake a new and needed form of service, that of providing for the vocational rehabilitation of the disabled civilian? Have we been able to equalize, in part at least, the inequalities of the financial burden among the States carrying on the service? Have we established and maintained efficient standards and minima below which the program for the disabled man has not been permitted to fall? Have we provided the promised service through cooperation, advisement, and guidance? And last, but by no means least, have we given the necessary thought and energy to the development of more efficient methods of rehabilitation? These are some of the problems to which answers should be sought as we enter upon our inventory of progress.

The responsibility of Government with respect to the disabled man is not that of the Federal Government alone, nor of the Federal and State Governments alone, but includes all kinds of organizations through which society functions in a democracy. The responsibility of the Federal Government has been one of stimulating the States to undertake a new and needed form of service, to equalize the inequalities of the burden among the States carrying on the service, to secure a reasonable degree of participation in the carrying on of this work in which it is so deeply concerned, and to establish standards of efficiency. These standards of efficiency can not be arbitrarily established, but must be set up in keeping with the experience secured through rendering this form of service to the disabled man.

The responsibility of Government likewise becomes a State and local problem, for the Federal Government is engaged in a cooperative enterprise with the States in which the States have undertaken to carry on the actual work of rehabilitation. Theirs is the responsibility for advisement, for guidance, for placement, for follow up, and for an active cooperation with all of the many public and private social and economic agencies whose energies can be directed. toward the furtherance of this program.

Rehabilitating vocationally the disabled man is a new solution of one of our many old, old problems. From the beginning we have had disabled men and women who were more or less dependent upon their families and upon society. As the population increases and the struggle for existence becomes more difficult, as the inventor has made possible the use of more and more modern machinery, as we have devised ways and means for more rapid transportation, and as the working conditions have changed from the individual mechanic to mass production, the number of disabled men and women have continued to grow. The old problem of what to do with the dependent, not the dependent child in its infancy or adolescense, but the dependent adult who perhaps has not only himself, but a

family for which he is responsible, becomes more and more acute than in former times.

I like to think of education in a democracy as being a form of education which helps the individual to help himself, rather than as a form of service which tends to increase dependency upon someone else. To the extent that this is true with able-bodied men or women, it is even more true with the disabled man. An appreciation on the part of a disabled man that the Government, be it Federal, State, or local, is interested in helping him to help himself, is interested in enabling him to become a self-reliant worker, is interested in assisting him to prepare for wage-earning in some occupation for which he is not handicapped physically, even perhaps to a greater degree of efficiency than before becoming disabled, will open a door of hope and opportunity to the otherwise despondent.

Restoring and reclaiming the abilities of disabled workers has been a nation-wide undertaking since 1920. Then, as now, it was realized that an unproductive group in our citizenry is a serious financial loss to the Nation. The possibility of utilizing the working abilities of all members of society should be looked upon as a community or Government obligation. Little argument is needed to show that it is not only bad economics, but also inhuman to permit imperfect persons to remain dependent upon relatives, family, or society. Making it possible for each member of society to pay his own way is a moral obligation of organized Government and should be developed on that basis, rather than on the basis of impulsive charity or misdirected sentiment.

There is ample evidence that in the last decade the American people have recognized their responsibilities for those agencies in life that improve and advance the common welfare.

The civilian rehabilitation act passed by Congress in 1920 gave to the Federal Board for Vocational Education the responsibility for the promotion of the program in the country, and the implied. responsibility of assisting the States in the establishment of standards for the work. In its first attempt to meet the latter responsibility, the Federal board gave its attention to the gathering and interpreting of such rehabilitation experiences as had been had in this country and abroad, which would make for the building up of a practical program in the States. There was no disposition on our part to limit in any way the scope of the work as it might be developed by the States. Rather the objective was to increase its magnitude.

The time has now come, as I said in the beginning, when both States and Federal services should take stock of what have been their objectives and of what has been accomplished. We must also ask ourselves whether, in the last analysis, our joint programs have

been developed along the lines intended by Congress and the State legislatures. It is now our business to inquire whether we have built up, or have begun to build up. such a body of good practices and experiences as will make for the development of the work on a sound basis of economic and social administration.

It is our business to balance our books as Government agencies and issue a report to our stockholders. Society is interested in this undertaking in which the State and Federal Governments are annually investing between $1,000,000 and $2,000,000 each year in the same way that the stockholders of a corporation are interested to know whether we are conserving the man power, the human resources of the country, whether we are getting rid of the pittances, the "doles" issued to dependents, whether we are getting rid of the expense of maintaining dependent men and women in institutions all over the land, but above all of these, society is interested to know whether the morale of the individual who, disabled perhaps through no fault of his own, handicapped vocationally because of his disability, despondent and discouraged, even to the point of exhibiting Bolshevistic attitudes, or reduced to the status of a beggar, has been improved in morale through vocational rehabilitation so that he is now an optimistic, independent, self-supporting member of society. Where this latter situation has been brought about, it will unquestionably follow that the individual will profit, the community will profit, and the State and Nation will be bettered through having created better social conditions among the people.

Chairman WRIGHT. The remaining number on the program is on the subject of the "Relation of organized labor to the civilian rehabilitation movement" by Mr. J. M. O'Hanlon of Albany, N. Y. The Chair is informed that Mr. O'Hanlon is not present, but that Dr. R. M. Little, director of rehabilitation for the State of New York will deliver his paper. Doctor Little.

RELATION OF ORGANIZED LABOR TO THE CIVILIAN REHABILITATION MOVEMENT

JOHN M. O'HANLON, Secretary-Treasurer, New York State

Federation of Labor, Albany, N. Y.

Organized labor has participated originally, continuously, and constantly in the social efforts to prevent industrial accidents, to provide immediate relief for the personal distress they cause, and to restore, if possible, the victims of work-place dangers to vocational proficiency and satisfying earning power. All of the so-called labor and factory laws, requiring safe and sanitary work places with periodic inspection of ways and means, prohibition of employment of the immature and unfitted in hazardous processes and surround

ings, and the provision of compensation for lost wages and of medical care for the injured, have been conceived in the meetings of organized wageworkers and transmuted first into the customs of occupations and then into enforceable statutes by the purposeful cohesion of these workers on economic and political fields of action. The same intelligent unison that secured the shorter workday, with more remunerative wages and better results for all involved, was also employed to lessen the negligence and increase the legal liability of industrial managements so that the improvements gained in individual working and family living conditions might not be unnecessarily canceled by the occurrence of avoidable injury, disease, and death.

Vocational rehabilitation of the disabled workers is an organic development of workmen's compensation laws. It is a new science, having only a background equal in period to an ordinary apprenticeship in any one of our skilled crafts. Prior to 1910, when New York State pioneered unconstitutionally in a workmen's compensation law compulsory for designated hazardous employments and elective for others, there were no records worthy of the name of the experience of humans injured and killed in industry. We did not then know that no battle entitled to a place in history could equal in dead and wounded the number of slain and maimed of modern industry in a comparative sequence of time. Under the workmen's compensation laws a great body of such experience has been accumulated and its presentation of tragic facts has become the base and the inspiration of remedial policies.

New York State, which by constitutional amendment adopted in 1913, was authorized and did reenact an amplified workmen's compensation law, was the originator of the plan to assess insurance carriers a sum for accidental death of a worker who had no dependents. This was placed in a special fund created in 1916 to award extra compensation to those sustaining double disablements in different employments, and its purpose was to promote the reemployment of partially disabled workers by relieving the new employer of any liability for a prior disablement or its consequences. This act fostered the return of innumerable injured workers to sustaining employment. When the Federal civilian vocational rehabilitation act became operative in 1920 as an aid and encouragement to States engaging in the physical repair and vocational refitting of injured workers, New York State accepted its provisions in the same year and added a new section and purpose to its compensation law by increasing the amount assessable to insurance carriers in cases of death without dependents from $500 to $1,000 and providing that half of the sum should go to another special fund for the maintenance of