Union has disbursed more than $4,000,000 in sick benefits since organization, aside from more than $4,250,000 paid on account of payments at death. An astonishing number of established benefit funds and sick benefit societies have been organized all over the country, by means of which wage-workers and their dependents are providing for the cost of illness and pecuniary support during sickness, in their own way and at their own cost. Group insurance has come into existence, under which untold millions of dollars of voluntary insurance are being provided for through the liberality and far-sightedness of employers for the benefits of employees. The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics has published a list of over four hundred superannuation funds maintained in connection with American industries-and the list is admittedly incomplete.

All of the various forms of voluntary sickness and life insurance are making progress and developing into methods and means by which the social value of insurance may be further improved and made still more universal than is the case at the present time. Of industrial policies alone there are more than thirty-five millions in force at the present time, providing more than four and one-half billions of insurance protection in the event of death or at maturity. In addition, the industrial life insurance companies have developed an enormous ordinary life business, including nearly three million policies, insuring more than $3,000,000,000, of which approximately two-thirds is on the lives of wage-workers of America and Canada.

If the trade unions have heretofore made only relatively limited progress in the direction of voluntary sickness insurance, it is because they have clearly realized it to be more to the advantage of American wage-earners that the struggle should be for higher wages and shorter hours. They also, however, have made a determined struggle for better labor conditions and the better enforcement of labor laws. By an improvement in the social condition of labor and the health conditions of the community, a large amount of prevailing sickness can be made unnecessary, as is best illustrated by the remarkable reduction of late years in the mortality from tuberculosis, typhoid fever, malarial fever, industrial accidents, and practically all the acute infectious diseases of infancy. Further progress in this direction will be of far greater benefit to American wage-workers than the establishment of compulsory health insurance, which

will leave matters much as they are at present. By the more rational development of labor laws and their more rigid enforcement, further measurable progress can be achieved in the health of wage-workers, who now suffer more or less from occupational diseases, because of indifference and neglect on the part of the constituted authorities. Compensation for occupational and industrial diseases is demanded by the highest considerations of public welfare and is easily provided for in conformity to the principles of the Massachusetts Workmen's Compensation Act.

By concentrating effort upon these measures of social and economic reform, much greater benefits can be realized by American wage-workers and their dependents than by the establishment of a bureaucratic, burdensome and coercive system of compulsory health insurance. It is, therefore, decidedly to the interests of the American people that the propaganda for compulsory health insurance should be intelligently and persistently opposed as un-American because of the vicious class distinction it implies, as uncalled for by the social or economic necessities of our wage-earning population, as needless because of our satisfactory health conditions, and as contrary to public policy because of the resulting discouragement of any and every form of voluntary thrift.

NOT EVEN COMPULSORY BENEVOLENCE WILL DO1

Social insurance cannot remove or prevent poverty. It does not get at the causes of social injustice. The only agency that does get at the causes of poverty is the organized labor movement. Social insurance in its various phases of sickness insurance, unemployment insurance, death benefits, etc., only provides the means for tiding over an emergency. The labor movement aims at constructive results-higher wages, which mean better living for the workers and those dependent upon them; better homes, better clothing, better food, better opportunities and shorter hours of work, which mean relief from over-fatigue,

1 By Samuel Gompers, President American Federation of Labor. National Civic Federation. Annual Meeting Addresses. p. 5-10. New York. January 22, 1917.

time for recuperation, workers with better physical development and with sustained producing power. Better physical development is in itself an insurance against illness and a degree of unemployment. The short hour workmen with higher wages become better citizens; better able to take care of themselves.

The real permanent benefits that come into the lives of the workers, those which are felt from day to day and not merely during times of special need, are brought about by the trade union movement. The trade union movement represents the organized economic power of the workers. Through the development, the organization and the exercise of this economic power the workers themselves establish higher standards of living and work. Although this economic power from the superficial standpoint seems indirect, it is in reality the most potent and the most direct social insurance the workers can establish. It is the only agency that really guarantees to them protection against the results of the eventualities of life and gives them a feeling of security.

The efforts of trade organizations are directed at fundamental things. They endeavor to secure to all workers a living wage that will enable them to have sanitary homes, conditions of living that are conducive to good health, adequate clothing, nourishing food and other things that are essential to the maintenance of good health.

In attacking the health problem from the preventive and constructive side they are doing infinitely more than any health insurance law could do which provides only for relief in case of sickness and yet the compulsory law would undermine the trade union activity.

There must necessarily be a weakening of independence of spirit and virility when compulsory insurance is provided for so large a number of citizens of the state. Dangers to wage-earners readily arise under the machinery for the administration of social insurance, one of which is the establishment of compulsory physical examinations. Such examinations have been perverted and made to result in detriment of workers. The necessary discretionary power in compulsory insurance lodged in the administrative board could readily be used in efforts to coerce organizations of wage-earners, for the administrative body must have the power to approve societies and also to withdraw approval at any time.

The trade union movement does not detract from the power or the opportunity of wage-earners. On the other hand, methods for providing social insurance delegate to outside authorities some of the powers and opportunities that rightfully belong to wage-earners. At first only a limited amount of authority and power may be delegated to and exercised by the governmental agent, but the application of even that little power constitutes a limitation upon the rights and freedom of wagecarners and creates a situation which has in it the germs of tyranny and autocratic power.

Governmental power grows by that upon which it feeds. Give an agency any political power and it at once tries to reach out after more. Its effectiveness depends upon increasing power. This has been demonstrated by the experience of the railroad workers in the enactment of the Adamson Law. When Comgress exercised the right to establish eight hours for railroad men it also considered a complete program for regulating railroad workers which if enacted would culminate in taking from them the right to strike and the conscription act providing for compulsory service.

Compulsory social insurance cannot be administered without exercising control over wage-earners. This is the meat of the whole matter. Industrial freedom exists only when wageearners have complete control over their labor power. To delegate control over their labor power to an outside agency takes away from the economic power of those wage-earners and creates another agency for power. Whoever has control of this new agency acquires some degree of control over the workers. There is nothing to guarantee control over that agency to the employed. It may also be controlled by employers. In other words, giving the government control over industrial relations creates a fulcrum which means great power for an unknown user.

Compulsory social insurance is in its essence undemocratic. The first step in establishing social insurance is to divide people into two groups-those eligible for benefits, and those considered capable to care for themselves. The division is based upon wage-earning capacity. This governmental regulation tends to fix the citizens of the country into classes, and even divide the wage-workers into classes, and a long established insurance system would tend to make these classes rigid.

There is in our country more voluntary social insurance than

in any other country of the world. We have institutions whereby voluntary insurance can and will be increased. It is true that in many of these institutions there are evils, but the cure of those evils is to make insurance companies organize for mutual benefit and to provide proper regulation and control, and in addition, if those who really have the welfare of wage-earners at heart will turn their activities and their influence toward securing for wage-earners the opportunity to organize, there will be no problems, no suffering and no need that will necessitate the consideration of benevolent assistance of a compulsory character.

The workers of America adhere to voluntary institutions in preference to compulsory systems which are held to be not only impractical but a menace to their rights, welfare and their liberty. Health insurance legislation affects wage-earners directly. Compulsory institutions will make changes not only in relations of work but in their private lives, particularly a compulsory system affecting health, for good health is not concerned merely with time and conditions under which work is performed. It is affected by home conditions, social relations and all of those things that go to make up the happiness or the desolation of life.

To delegate to the government or to employers the right and the power to make compulsory visitations under the guise of health conditions of the workers is to permit those agencies to have a right to interfere in the most private matters of life. It is, indeed, a very grave issue for workers. They are justified in demanding that every other voluntary method be given the fullest opportunity before compulsory methods are even considered, much less adopted.

The trade unionists who have considered the problem and expressed an opinion have advised against such compulsory institutions. The American Federation of Labor has had the question of social insurance under consideration for several years, and in the report of the Executive Council to the Philadelphia 1914 Convention there was a summary of investigations made up to that date. Because these investigations were not as thorough or conclusive as was deemed necessary before deciding so important a policy, recommendation was made to the Convention that the subject be given additional consideration.