Ohio History Journal

PATRICK D. REAGAN

 

The Ideology of Social Harmony and

Efficiency: Workmen's Compensation

in Ohio, 1904-1919

 

 

From 1912 through the early 1920s, progressive reformers tried to

enact social insurance legislation through a state-by-state and step-

by-step strategy to ameliorate the industrial conditions of work acci-

dents, sickness, unemployment, and premature old age. An integral

part of the campaign concerned the workmen's compensation move-

ment in Ohio from 1904 through 1919. The successful conclusion to

reform efforts in Ohio stemmed from the growth and implementa-

tion of a conservative ideology of mutual accommodation between

the Ohio State Federation of Labor (OSFL) and the Ohio Manufac-

turers' Association (OMA). This ideology encompassed an interlock-

ing set of concepts now becoming familiar to historians of the "orga-

nizational society" in Progressive America.¹ Social constructs in-

creasingly acted upon by the OSFL and the OMA included the ne-

cessity for social harmony between conflicting industrial classes,

reliance upon administrative centralization and expertise, and a

heavy use of rhetoric aimed at promoting techniques of business-

like economy in new spheres of public life.

Recent studies of the workmen's compensation movement argue

that this reform grew out of the desires of the business community

 

 

Patrick D. Reagan is Visiting Instructor of History at Kenyon College. The author

wishes to thank Robert H. Bremner and K. Austin Kerr for their assistance in

preparing this article.

 

1. For a review of the literature, see Louis Galambos, "The Emerging Organiza-

tional Synthesis of Modern American History," Business History Review, XLIV (Au-

tumn, 1970), 279-90. For works dealing with this subject in the areas of business and

labor, see Glenn Porter, The Rise of Big Business, 1860-1910 (New York, 1973);

Robert H. Wiebe, Businessmen and Reform (Chicago, 1962); Gabriel Kolko, The

Triumph of Conservatism (New York, 1963); Warren R. Van Tine, The Making of the

Labor Bureaucrat (Amherst, 1973); and Melvyn Dubofsky, Industrialism and the

American Worker, 1865-1920 (New York, 1975).

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318                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

to rationalize one of the costs of production and to better labor-

management relations through the manipulation of the political

arena or that similar motives among a number of interested groups

led to compromise of reform.² Case studies of the movement in Mas-

sachusetts, Minnesota, and New York, however, reach somewhat

different conclusions. The 1911 Massachusetts law established a

voluntary and privately run system through a "compromise mea-

sure ... supported by labor and either endorsed or tolerated by

employers." Although Minnesota's 1913 law was "originally viewed

by sophisticated, class-conscious employers, politicians, and middle-

class reformers as a method for averting revolution and radical

reform," the state's federation of labor and the Non-Partisan League

nevertheless sought to obtain more liberal legislation in 1919. New

York's system began as a compulsory compensation law in 1910, but

was ruled unconstitutional in a 1911 State Court of Appeals' deci-

sion. Undeterred, social progressives and organized labor fought

back in New York to gain a moderately liberal elective compensa-

tion system allowing for state insurance, employers' mutuals, pri-

vate liability policies, and self-insurance. The Ohio case revealed

some similarities with the stages of the course of reform in Mas-

sachusetts, set the pattern for the second round in New York after

1911, and served as precedent for the 1919 battle over compulsory

compensation legislation between Republicans and a labor-farmer

coalition in Minnesota.³

While one remains hard-pressed to trace the exact picture of the

development of the "Ohio Plan" due to incomplete records and

sketchy secondary accounts, the rough outlines clearly show active

cooperation among progressive Democratic politicians in search of

votes, the business-unionist oriented OSFL, and the politically ac-

tive OMA.⁴ Ultimately, the proponents of workmen's compensation

 

 

2. James Weinstein, "Big Business and the Origins of Workmen's Compensation,"

Labor History, VIII (Spring, 1967), 156-74, and Roy Lubove, "Workmen's Compensa-

tion and the Prerogatives of Voluntarism," Labor History, VIII (Fall, 1967), 254-79.

Both authors expanded their ideas in, respectively, Weinstein, The Corporate Ideal in

the Liberal State: 1900-1918 (Boston, 1968) and Lubove, The Struggle for Social

Security: 1900-1935 (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1968).

3. Robert Asher, "Business and Workers' Welfare in the Progressive Era: Work-

men's Compensation Reform in Massachusetts, 1880-1911," Business History Review,

XLIII (1969), 473; Asher, "Radicalism and Reform: State Insurance of Workmen's

Compensation in Minnesota, 1910-1933," Labor History, XIV (Winter, 1973), 25-26;

and Robert F. Wesser, "Conflict and Compromise: The Workmen's Compensation

Movement in New York, 1890s-1913," Labor History XII (Summer, 1971), 365-66.

4. The standard account is H.R. Mengert, "The Ohio Workmen's Compensation

Law," Ohio Archaeological and Historical Publications, XXIX (1920), 1-48. Uneven

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Workmen's Compensation                                      319

 

in Ohio used the ideology of social harmony and efficiency through-

out their campaign: at the 1910 public hearings to garner initial

support, during the 1911 and 1913 legislative sessions to enact the

system, and between 1913 and 1919 to conserve the new administra-

tive system.⁵

The overall course of reform occurred in six general stages: ren-

ovation of nineteenth century common law statutes; social inves-

tigation under the auspices of a temporary state commission; leg-

islative activity by a coalition of aroused interest groups centered on

leaders of institutionalized labor and manufacturing seeking a

tolerable accommodation; defense of reform in the courts and by

popular referendum; revamping of the system through a turn to a

compulsory law backed by new administrative structures; and con-

solidation of reform through sound business practices. In the main,

the Ohio developments followed the reform pattern set by earlier

elective compensation laws and set the precedent for later compul-

sory systems.

During the nineteenth century, employees injured in industrial

accidents sought compensation through civil actions in Ohio's

courts. However, workers rarely won awards when they managed to

get their cases to the courts. Employers benefited from three com-

mon law defenses usually interpreted in their favor: "assumption of

risk"-in accepting work, employee assumed the hazards of the job;

the "fellow-servant doctrine"-fellow workers including laborers,

foremen, and managers would be personally liable if involved in the

accident; and "contributory negligence"-the employer was not li-

able if the worker were in any way responsible for the accident as

determined by the court. Starting in 1904, reformist legislators

tried to balance the scales of liability in Ohio by enacting legislation

shifting some of the burden from the individual worker to the manu-

facturing concern in order to cut down on legal costs, eliminate

increasingly larger and more frequent judgments in favor of a few

fortunate workers, and improve worker-management relations

through a series of employer liability laws.

 

 

historical accounts can be found in Louis Levine, "A Twenty-Year Appraisal of the

Ohio Workmen's Compensation Fund," (Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University,

1934), 1-134 and William Elbert Biggs, "The Handling of Workmen's Compensation

Claims by the Ohio Industrial Commission," (Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State Uni-

versity, 1956), 1-41. Some additional material is found in Hoyt Landon Warner,

Progressivism in Ohio: 1897-1917 (Columbus, 1964), 282-83, 401-02.

5. For perceptive insights about progressive ideology, see Samuel Haber's excel-

lent Efficiency and Uplift: Scientific Management in the Progressive Era: 1890-1920

(Chicago, 1964).

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320                                               OHIO HISTORY

 

The Ohio General Assembly enacted three such laws between

1904 and 1910. The 1904 Williams bill modified the assumption of

risk defense by making employers liable for injuries resulting from

their failure to enforce safety standards set by the state. The 1910

Norris-Mathews Act abolished the assumption of risk defense in a

limited number of "dangerous trades" and implied the abolition of

the fellow-servant doctrine by ruling that foremen and managers

acted as agents of the employer, who was now liable. This act substi-

tuted a doctrine of "comparative negligence" for contributory negli-

gence, making employers liable if the court ruled employer negli-

gence was more than 50 percent-meaning that employees could

potentially recover proportional damages in court. The capstone to

these laws came with the 1910 Metzger Act which made employees

equal recipients of contractual rights under an employer's private

liability insurance policy.⁶

The General Assembly passed a bill in that same year creating an

Employers' Liability Commission to be appointed by then

Democratic Governor Judson Harmon. This typically progressive

tripartite commission of employer, employee, and public representa-

tives investigated industrial accidents in Cleveland, heard testi-

mony from employers and labor leaders indicating dissatisfaction

with the current state of liability procedures, and drafted a bill

calling for the Legislature to establish a compulsory workmen's

compensation system.⁷

With the New York State Court of Appeals' ruling in the 1911

Ives case that that state's compulsory system was unconstitutional

under the due process of law clause in the state's constitution and

the Fourteenth Amendment, Ohio needed to turn elsewhere. Ohio

legislators considered four alternative voluntary and elective com-

pensation bills to circumvent possible constitutional entangle-

ments. After a compromise caucus between the OSFL and the OMA,

state Senator William Green, past president of the Ohio District,

United Mineworkers of America, introduced what became the 1911

Workmen's Compensation Act by a vote of 29-1 in the Senate and

84-18 in the House in March-April, 1911.8 This law set several prec-

 

 

6. Mengert, "The Ohio Workmen's Compensation Law," 7-8, and Biggs, "The

Handling of Workmen's Compensation Claims by the Ohio Industrial Commission,"

19-21. For national developments, see Lawrence M. Friedman and Jack Ladinsky,

"Social Change and the Law of Industrial Accidents," Columbia Law Review, LXVII

(1967), 51-83.

7. Ohio Employers' Liability Commission, Report, Parts I-III (Columbus, 1911).

8. Proceedings of Twenty-Eighth Annual Convention of Ohio State Federation of

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Workmen's Compensation                                  321

 

edents: the elective feature was a compromise between voluntarism

and an incipient welfare state; in excluding small employers it did

not discriminate in favor of large manufacturers completely; in

creating a new state agency it centralized administration; and in

compromising the demands of the OSFL and the OMA it promoted

the notion of social harmony.

The 1911 elective act established a state insurance fund to be paid

into by all those employers choosing to participate who employed

five or more people-the principle of social insurance was now at

least partially accepted. The fund would be administered by a three-

member State Liability Board of Awards appointed by the governor

as full-time salaried bureaucrats serving for staggered six-year

terms. Employers would pay 90 percent of the total premium, while

workers would pay the remaining 10 percent. Thus labor's demand

that industry shoulder most of the burden was balanced by the

employers' desire to regularize the costs of accidents. Several other

compromises were included in the provisions of the elective law.

Employers who paid into the state fund would no longer be liable in

the courts for injuries other than those resulting from an employer's

violation of state safety standards. Employees would receive 66 and

2/3 percent of their weekly wage up to a maximum of $12 weekly and

medical costs adjusted according to administrative schedules for

partial and total disability developed by experts on the Board of

Awards after a one-week waiting period to rule out minor injuries.

What did each group gain by these rules? Participating employers

could now accurately account for accident compensation as a pre-

dictable cost of production in the annual premium and benefit from

a better image with their workers. Workers could avoid past prob-

lems such as the inability to afford expensive court battles, extended

litigation, and irregular or delayed awards from the courts. Addi-

tionally, workers' claims would be adjudicated by a public adminis-

trator working with predetermined, i.e., certain, schedules.

The final compromise concerned legal issues. While the employer

could now choose among state insurance, private stock insurance, or

self-insurance, he would remain liable in the courts and unable to

use the remnants of common law defenses if he did not join the state

fund. On the other hand, if the employer did join the state fund,

injured employees suing for failure to live up to state safety stan-

 

Labor (1911), 16, 19, 97; Report of Legislative Agent Ike S. Byrum and Executive

Board of the Ohio State Federation of Labor (1911), 6-8; Ohio General Assembly,

Senate, Journal, CII (1911), 288, and House, Journal, CII (1911), 852; and Mengert,

10-11.

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322                                                   OHIO HISTORY

 

dards could either go to the courts or apply to the Board of Awards-

but not both, as workers in Great Britain could do.⁹

Governor Harmon appointed the respective employer, employee,

and public members of the Board of Awards in 1911-Morris

Woodhull, T.J. Duffy of the OSFL, and Wallace D. Yaple. Yaple and

Duffy began an educational campaign to attract employers, and

with Woodhull they developed bureaucratic rules, occupational pre-

mium rates, and disability schedules in order to institutionalize the

compensation system. In literature which they passed out to em-

ployers, the Commissioners stated the ideology of social harmony

explicitly:

 

In conclusion, we desire to suggest that the provisions of the new law are

worthy of the most careful consideration of every person engaged in indus-

trial enterprise, whether employer or employe[e]. Its general adoption will,

we believe, convert the only uncertain element in the cost of production into

one of absolute certainty, which cannot help but be of mutual advantage to

both employer and employe[e].

We therefore hope for the active cooperation of all classes in our efforts to

make the law successful in its operation.10

 

Proponents of the new system-politicians, leaders of the OSFL,

and many, but not all, employers represented by the OMA-sought

to meet the attacks directed against the law by private liability

companies and some personal injury lawyers who challenged the

constitutionality of the law on the grounds of the state's failure to

provide for due process of law. These opponents argued that em-

ployers were deprived of their property-their money in pre-

miums-and workers in work accident litigation were deprived of

their right to civil action through a trial by jury. This attack floun-

dered when the Ohio Supreme Court ruled on February 6, 1912, that

the act was constitutional under the police powers of the state and

that it infringed on neither employer nor employee rights.11

 

 

 

9. Mengert, 12-13; the text of the law is in 102 O.L., 524 (1911); Ohio State Liabil-

ity Board of Awards, Workmen's Compensation Act of the State of Ohio with Appendix

and Notes to the Sections (Columbus, 1911); Board of Awards, Ohio State Insurance

Manual: Rules and Rates Adopted November 20, 1912 (Columbus, 1912); Board of

Awards, Does the Workmen's Compensation Law of Ohio Protect the Employers of

Ohio? (Columbus, 1912); and Board of Awards, Some Prominent Features of the

Compensation Laws of the States of Ohio, Washington, Massachusetts, Michigan,

Illinois, New Jersey, Wisconsin, and California (n.c., 1912).

10. Ohio State Liability Board of Awards, Workmen's Compensation Act of the

State of Ohio (102 O.L., 524) (Columbus, 1911), 14.

11. Ohio State ex. rel. Yaple v. Creamer, Treasurer of State, 85 O.S. 349 (1912).

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Workmen's Compensation                                 323

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324                                              OHIO HISTORY

 

Organized labor's growing legislative influence led the OSFL to

search for stronger compensation legislation and constitutional

safeguards in the form of a constitutional amendment allowing for a

compulsory system run by the state and paid for wholly by

industry.12 At the 1912 Ohio constitutional convention, labor dele-

gates gathered support for a referendum amendment calling for a

compulsory system, employer-financed premiums, state administra-

tion, and the total abolition of the common and employer liability

law defenses except with regard to the breaking of state safety stan-

dards. In the general election of September 3, 1912, the amendment

passed by a vote of 321,588 for and 211,772 against.¹³

With the aid of Democratic Governor James M.Cox, the labor

group in the Ohio General Assembly pushed through the Green

Compulsory Workmen's Compensation Act on February 26, 1913,

with a unanimous vote in both houses. In another series of prear-

ranged compromises, the 1913 law amended the 1911 act. Em-

ployers of five or more people now had to contribute 10 percent of

their annual premium to a new state catastrophe reserve fund cre-

ated to guard the solvency of the state system. In a trade-off with the

OMA, the OSFL agreed that employers could still elect to self-

insure beyond the required 10 percent to the new fund, but only

after the Board of Awards had approved the private plan to ensure

its meeting or exceeding the state's own insurance standards. Em-

ployers joining the state system would pay the complete annual

premium, but the premium would be adjusted by changes in the

merit rating schedules prepared by the Board of Awards. State em-

ployees also came under the new system. Additionally, employers

had to file annual employment and wage statistics with the Board,

whose increasing powers now became institutionalized.

Drawing on the administrative reforms in Wisconsin, Ohio refor-

mers provided the bureaucratic complement to the compulsory sys-

tem when they passed the Industrial Commission Act of Ohio on

March 12, 1913. The new tri-member Commission not only took

over the duties of the old 1911 State Liability Board of Awards, but

also those of a number of other state agencies. This centralizing

measure consolidated the functions of establishing safety rules, pro-

 

 

12. Proceedings of Twenty-Ninth Annual Convention of Ohio State Federation of

Labor (1912), 16. For the growth of the OSFL's political power, see Patricia Terpack

Rose, "Design and Expediency: The Ohio State Federation of Labor as a Legislative

Lobby, 1883-1935," (Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio State University, 1975), chapter IV.

13. Constitution of Ohio with Amendments Proposed by the Constitutional Conven-

tion of 1912 and Approved by the People September 3, 1912 (Columbus, 1912), 17.

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Workmen's Compensation                                      325

 

viding voluntary arbitration and conciliation services in labor dis-

putes, establishing state employment agencies and licensing private

ones, investigating unemployment problems, collecting all statistics

in regard to labor and industry, and censoring movies. In a move

supported by the OSFL, the reform forces had strengthened the

conservative functions of the compensation system. The Industrial

Commission now set and collected premiums, determined disability

schedules, adjudicated cases, and dispensed awards in a burgeoning

network of public administration of workmen's compensation.¹⁴

Governor Cox appointed Yaple and Duffy of the old Board of

Awards and M.B. Hammond, an economics professor at Ohio State

University, to the new Industrial Commission. By maintaining con-

tinuity with the old Board and recognizing Hammond's role as ex-

pert, Cox reinforced the ideology of social harmony and administra-

tive efficiency. In one of its early bulletins, the Commission drew

attention to its grounding in that ideology:

 

The creation of the Industrial Commission of Ohio was a development of the

idea that in order to secure the greatest efficiency and economy in the

administration of public affairs modern business methods should be applied

to the organization and conduct of the affairs of the state.¹⁵

 

Opponents of the compulsory system renewed their offensive

against reform, using traditional anti-monopoly rhetoric. Commer-

cial liability companies wished to profit from the expanding field of

accident compensation. They did not oppose the use of the insurance

principle in regard to dealing with industrial accidents, but they did

oppose a section of the 1913 law which excluded private companies

from writing compensation policies in Ohio. Various representa-

tives of these disgruntled companies canvassed the state to drum up

opposition to "state monopoly" amidst Ohio employers. For instance,

P. Tecumseh Sherman, onetime factory inspector in New York and

longtime opponent of any form of social insurance, argued to the

business community that state monopoly was unfair to private com-

panies accustomed to a competitive system. Arthur Vorys, ex-

Superintendent of the Ohio State Department of Insurance, spoke

 

 

14. Ohio General Assembly, Senate, Journal, CIII (1913), 213, 281, and House,

Journal, CIII (1913), 423, 601. For the OSFL's support, see Proceedings (1912), 44,

82-83 and (1913), 11-12, 19. The text of the laws and other pertinent information are

in Bulletin of the Industrial Commission of Ohio, I (August 1, 1914), 1-50. Also see

Warner, 401-02.

15. "The Industrial Commission," Bulletin of the Industrial Commission of Ohio. I

(December 1, 1913), 2.

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326                                                    OHIO HISTORY

 

along similar lines in defending private insurers' interests. E.W.

Davis, secretary of the Insurance Federation of Ohio, went so far as

to openly misconstrue the "open liability" clause of the 1913 statute

in propaganda aimed at pressuring hesitant or reluctant employers

into opposing the new system.¹⁶

For the next decade Commissioners such as Yaple and Duffy

fought a seesaw battle with private liability insurance companies to

keep Ohio's compensation system within the purview of the state. In

1913 commercial stock companies filed petitions for a referendum to

repeal that section of the 1913 law forbidding private carriers, but

the state's Attorney-General and the Secretary of State threw out

the petitions on the grounds of forged and fraudulent signatures.

The stock companies did manage to write some workmen's com-

pensation policies in 1916-17 after a favorable ruling by a judge

friendly to these private interests. Only after a prolonged fight

through the courts, a referendum, and a legislative battle did

reformers thwart the efforts of private companies to practically

change Ohio's compulsory system to an elective one. Once again, the

OSFL in cooperation with the progressive Governor Cox and the

OMA led the reform coalition to victory.17

While opponents continued to challenge the state system, the In-

dustrial Commission formulated bureaucratic rules of procedure,

refined the complexities of merit rating to stimulate a "safety first"

movement and attract hesitant employers, and worked to put the

state fund and the new catastrophe reserve fund on a sound actuar-

ial foundation. In these years the Commission lowered premium

rates, handed out rebates or premium credits, and incorporated 90

percent of Ohio's eligible employers into the state system.¹⁸

 

16. P. Tecumseh Sherman, A Criticism of the Ohio Law of Workmen's Compensa-

tion Insurance (n.c., [1913?]); Arthur I. Vorys, State Insurance ([Cincinnati?], 1913);

E.W. Davis, Workmen's Compensation and Employer's Liability Insurance in Ohio

(n.c., [1914?]) and The Truth About Workmen's Compensation and State Insurance in

Ohio (Cleveland, 1915).

17. Wallace D. Yaple, "Workmen's Compensation-the Ohio Law," Bulletin of the

Industrial Commission of Ohio, I (August 1, 1914), 51-65, and "Evolution of Work-

men's Compensation Legislation," in Ibid., II (January 1, 1915), 3-12; Thomas J.

Duffy, "Advantages of Compulsory State Insurance," American Labor Legislation

Review, III (1913), 247-52, and "Ohio's Experience with State Insurance," U.S. De-

partment of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bulletin No. 210: Third Annual Meet-

ing of the International Association of Industrial Accident Boards and Commissions

(Washington, D.C., 1917), 227-36; M.B. Hammond, "The Ohio State Fund for Work-

men's Compensation," American Labor Legislation Review, XII (1922), 210-18. The

best account of private liability companies' opposition is in Levine, 18-90, along with

Mengert, 23-25 and Thomas J. Donnelly, Report of the Legislative Agent of the Ohio

State Federation of Labor (1917), 9-10.

18. See the Ohio Industrial Commission, The Ohio State Insurance Manual: Rules

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Workmen's Compensation                                 327

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328                                              OHIO HISTORY

 

Dissatisfied insurance agents shifted their attack to question the

financial solvency of the state fund, only to be rebuffed anew. Gov-

ernor Cox appointed the customary tripartite board of employer,

employee, and public representatives to find disinterested auditors

to investigate the state fund and settle the issue. The secretaries of

the OSFL and the OMA along with the Auditor of State chose Miles

M. Dawson, consulting actuary from New York City and longtime

social insurance advocate, and E.H. Downey, special deputy of the

Pennsylvania Insurance Department, to conduct the audit.¹⁹ The

application of the notion of social harmony again aided the reform

coalition in institutionalizing workmen's compensation in Ohio.

Dawson found the state fund to be both financially strong and

actuarially sound, while Downey, slightly more critical from a more

liberal standpoint, criticized delays in claims adjustment and casti-

gated the General Assembly's niggardly low appropriations for the

Workmen's Compensation Division of the Industrial Commission.²⁰

By 1919 elective and compulsory workmen's compensation laws

had replaced nineteenth century common-law defenses favoring em-

ployers and modifications of those defenses in the employer liability

laws of the first decade of the twentieth century. Social insurance

reform of a limited kind-workmen's compensation legislation of

any sort was considered by reformers as only the first step in social

insurance-resulted from the active cooperation of political progres-

sives mostly from the Democratic party such as governors Harmon

in 1911 and Cox in 1913, the conservative leadership of the Amer-

ican Federation of Labor affiliate, the Ohio State Federation of

Labor, and the astute legislative efforts of the Ohio Manufacturers'

Association. As early as the public hearings in front of the Ohio

Employers' Liability Commission in 1910, leading manufacturers

and business unionist leaders had indicated their interest in some

improved form of compensation for industrial accidents and death as

a means of both rationalizing their respective group's economic in-

terests and promoting social harmony in a society many saw as torn

by industrial warfare. Employers wanted stabilized and limited

costs in the form of low insurance premiums set by the state, while

labor leaders worked for certain and standardized awards from a

public administrative agency. Compensation standards in Ohio

 

and Rates (Columbus, 1914-16) for the annual revisions of the merit rating system

and the changes in rates for the various occupational classifications.

19. Mengert, 40-41 and Thomas J. Donnelly, Report of the Legislative Agent of the

Ohio State Federation of Labor (1919-20), 52-53.

20. E.H. Downey and Miles M. Dawson, Actuarial Audit of the Ohio State Insur-

ance Fund as of March 1, 1919 (Columbus, 1919).

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Workmen's Compensation                                         329

 

went beyond the more limited goal of competitive funds run both by

the state and private companies sought by the national middle-class

reform group leading the state-by-state campaigns, the American

Association for Labor Legislation. Yet success in Ohio arose from

the growth and application of the reform ideology of social harmony,

administrative efficiency, and business economy in public pro-

grams. Although disagreements between the OSFL and the OMA

over the setting of disability schedules and annual premiums

stretched mutual accommodation to the limit at times, the system

was institutionalized as an agent of social conservation by 1919.21

Organizational leaders of labor and industry voiced their accep-

tance of industrial cooperation at various times. State Senator Wil-

liam Green, who had introduced both the 1911 elective law and the

1913 compulsory law, went so far as to support the logical extension

of social insurance to state health insurance-although he back-

tracked on this position later when he moved up the A.F. of L.

hierarchy. In recognizing the import of the new law in 1913, the

OSFL combined the offices of secretary-treasurer and legislative

agent, making the new position a full-time salaried one which the

incumbent held well into the 1920s.²² So fully had the leadership of

the OSFL taken the principle of social harmony to heart that Presi-

dent John Voll stood before the assembled convention delegates in

1915 to denounce private liability companies' attacks on Ohio's com-

pensation system in words that the OMA's leaders might have

chosen:

Their policy and method of administering, intimidates and coerces the

working man and his family, and, in addition, creates dissension between

the employer and employe[e], thus breeding social unrest that tears at the

very vitals of society.²³

 

Following similar development, the OMA in January 1914 hired

Malcolm Jennings, ex-legislative correspondent at the statehouse

 

 

21. For background on the American Association for Labor Legislation, see

Lubove, The Struggle for Social Security, 29-44 and the group's journal, the American

Labor Legislation Review. For the 1910 hearings, see Ohio Employers' Liability Com-

mission, Report, Part II: Minutes of Evidence and Record of Public Hearings (Col-

umbus, 1911).

22. Charles A. Madison, American Labor Leaders (New York, 1950), 110; Proceed-

ings of Thirtieth Annual Convention of Ohio State Federation of Labor (1913), 121;

and Thomas J. Donnelly, "Methods and Accomplishments in Ohio." American Feder-

ationist, XXXIII (1926), 550-54. Warren Van Tine discusses the importance of this

step in relation to national unions in The Making of the Labor Bureaucrat, 143 ff.

23. Proceedings of Thirty-second Annual Convention. (1915). 24.

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330                                                OHIO HISTORY

 

since 1883 and key man in the 1911 and 1913 compromises, as its

new secretary to work alongside a like-minded general counsel. So

strongly did the Ohio State Medical Association feel about the possi-

bilities of state health insurance following on the heels of work-

men's compensation, that in 1913 it hired George V. Sheridan, a

newspaper reporter turned business administrator, as secretary,

journal editor, and legislative watchdog.²⁴

As the first step in social insurance in Ohio, workmen's compensa-

tion succeeded because of mutual accommodation between the lead-

ers of organized interest groups instrumental in building the new

"organizational society." By 1913 the path for compulsory work-

men's compensation had been cleared and institutionalization of the

system through the new Industrial Commission was assured. The

1920s and 1930s witnessed further such administrative structuring

with the creation of the Department of Industrial Relations in 1921

and the establishment of the Division of Industrial Safety and

Hygiene in 1925 as the two key stages.²⁵

The way seemed clear for the "next step"-state health insur-

ance-as reformers geared up in the years from 1915 through 1919.

Yet the triumph of the ideology of conservative reform encompas-

sing social harmony in an age of industrial violence, administrative

efficiency in an era almost obsessed with public order, and business

economy in a time which saw the first tentative expansion of gov-

ernmental functions beyond the confines of the business commun-

ity, eventually led to the defeat of that "next step" in Ohio.²⁶ That

reform ideology led politicians, labor leaders, and many manufac-

turers to accept social accommodation as a political reality in a

battle originally aimed at ameliorating the effects of industrial acci-

dents on those people immediately affected-workers. For the first

time the state of Ohio affirmed the idea that those workers deserved

social attention from public agencies. Yet so thoroughly did the

ideology of social harmony and efficiency take root that an anony-

mous investigator for the Ohio Health and Old Age Insurance Com-

 

 

24. James K. Mercer, Ohio Legislative History, I: 1909-1913 (Columbus, [1914?]),

660; Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Ohio Manufacturers' Association

(1914-15), passim; C.B. Galbreath, "Daniel Joseph Ryan," Ohio Archaeological and

Historical Publications, XXXII (1923), 571-89; and George V. Sheridan, "Conclusions

Reached as the Result of Six Years' Experience as Executive Secretary of the Ohio

State Medical Association," Ohio State Medical Journal, XV (1919), 410-17.

25. Levine, "A Twenty-Year Appraisal of the Ohio Workmen's Compensation

Fund," 119-34.

26. Patrick D. Reagan, "Early Social Insurance Reform in Ohio: 1910-1919," (M.A.

thesis, Ohio State University, 1976).

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Workmen's Compensation                                        331

 

mission of 1917-19 could discuss the role of the modern industrial

worker in terms that well might raise emotional tempers to a high

pitch in a time other than the Progressive Era:

 

These health problems were forced upon the attention of the country by

the national exigency. National needs required maximum production by

every industrial agency. It became a plain proposition that maximum pro-

duction could not be attained except by the physical fitness of every unit.

For the first time in generations man power was valued at its full worth.

The old system in which men disabled by sickness or accident were scrapped

and new men took their place, rapidly broke down. A "new industrial day"

came for the worker. He was raised to the level of the machine on which he

worked. Care was extended to keep him fit, just as care had always been

extended to keep the machinery fit and the dumb beasts well fed and

efficient.27

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

27. No author, "Health Problems in Industry," Ohio Health and Old Age Insur-

ance Commission Papers, Series 1120, Box 3, File 10, Ohio Historical Society, Co-

lumbus, Ohio.

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