| Show CRIMINAL negligence the recent disaster at the union pacific coal mines at hanna wyoming adds another horror to the long list of tragedies for which the coal mining industry is held responsible with the sixty miners who lost their lives in the recent accident the death record of this one mine reaches nearly to three hundred the total damage suits to which the company has been liable amount to Is this appalling record due to carelessness and indifferent regulation of the mine officials or is it due to unavoidable accidents the real cause can only be determined by close and rigid examination of the conditions by competent and totally uninterested authorities it would seem that a great deal of the blame can be attributed to the criminal negligence of the mine management such a statement can be supported by the record of the utah coal mines since the scofield disaster these mines mine have shave been equipped with safety appliances that in a great measure prevent just such accidents the success of these preventive measures has made the utah mines among the safest in the country in speaking of the debate in the senate regarding the bill for federal examination of mines the butte news has the following it is but another argument for an effective and constitutional employers habib ity law the decision of the supreme court of the united states annulling the previous statute makes the enactment of a few of this character indispensable preaching and teaching to corporations are slow methods of progress the only thing to do is to make man killing bad business to make industrial murder able the employers corporate and otherwise must be taught as they have been taught in england by the liability law that they have no right to risk killing men for the sake of saving money that it is for them to pay when a family is deprived of the earning power of the father that the support of the helpless widows and orphans must not fall needlessly upon the community the employers themselves will profit in the end they will learn that the obsolete fellow fell ow s servant ervant rule and the doctrine of contributory negligence and the practice of invoking the laws delays so that a claim for personal injury is a hopeless task for a mangled workman to fight through the courts are all part and parcel of a barbaric outgrown profitless system let them be taught that they must pay for the lives and limbs lost by unsafe and obsolete machinery it will not take them long to learn that the extra care and cost of safety appliances will exact from them less than it now takes to contest damage suits and ultimately pay out to lawyers and claimants the doctrine of the employers liability cannot be controvert ed nor its progress checked even by a supreme court decision it is a part of the higher civilization and despite all legal technicalities sooner or later it will prevail in the laws of the nation and of every state |
