later act also contains a provision, absent from the earlier act, by which no statement contained in an accident report is admissible in any damage suit arising out of the accident. Section 24 of the act is as follows:1 It shall be the duty of the owner or lessee or superintendent or person in charge of any factory, mercantile establishment, mill, or workshop in this State to send to the chief State factory inspector, in writing, an immediate report of all accidents or injuries resulting in death. It shall also be the duty of the person in charge of such factory, mercantile establishment, mill, or workshop to report between the 15th and 25th of each month all accidents or injuries occurring during the previous calendar month, which entailed a loss to the person injured of 15 consecutive days' time or more. All reports shall state the cause and character of the injury, character of employment, and the age and sex of the person injured. No statement contained in any such report shall be admissible in evidence in any action arising out of the death or accident therein reported: Provided, That any such employer who shall make the reports of accidents, required by this act, shall not be required to make such reports to any other State officer, board, or commission. The report of the State bureau of labor statistics for 1908 gives a full tabular presentation of the accidents reported to it under the act of 1907. The data are for the latter six months of the year only, and because of the newness of the law the records are recognized by the bureau as being "presumably incomplete." The following table is from the report referred to. It gives a summary statement of the accident reports received, classified as fatal and nonfatal, by industries, and by number of causes and number of reporting employers. As only such accidents were reported as caused a loss of at least 30 days' time, all the accidents here listed as nonfatal may reasonably be assumed to have been of a serious nature. 3 1Acts of 1909, p. 202, sec. 24 (Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 85, p. 550). 2 Fifteenth Biennial Report of Bureau of Labor Statistics, Illinois, 1908, p. 6. Idem, p. 14. 49450°-S. Doc. 645, 61-2, vol 19—24 FATAL AND NONFATAL ACCIDENTS IN SPECIFIED INDUSTRIES, PERSONS KILLED AND INJURED, WITH NUMBER OF CAUSES, OCCUPATIONS, AND EMPLOYERS, JULY 1 TO DECEMBER 31, 1907-ILLINOIS. [From Fifteenth Biennial Report of Bureau of Labor Statistics, Illinois, 1908, p. 13.] The form provided by the bureau of labor statistics for the reporting of accidents was as follows:1 (Please state as near as possible about how long this person will be disabled.) Residence.... Nativity........................... Age...... Married.. How many persons dependent upon such employee.. Single... NOTE. Each accident must be reported on a separate blank. Do not report any nonfatal injury until the expiration of thirty (30) days. This form can be used in reporting either fatal or nonfatal accidents by erasing the word "injured" or "killed" in accordance with the facts in the respective cases. For copy of the law see other side of this sheet. Address to SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS. Report received...... 19... SECRETARY BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS. 1 Fifteenth Biennial Report of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Illinois, 1908, pp. 7, 8. CONDITIONS FOUND. In 23 of the 47 establishments visited accidents resulting in injuries to employees were recorded as having occurred during the preceding year, the total number of accidents being 822. By 4 of these 23 establishments reports of such accidents had been made to the State authorities; by 2 no such report had been made; by 2 it was stated. that as none of the accidents recorded has caused as much as 30 days' loss of time, reporting to the State was not required by law; in the remaining 15 establishments information upon this point was not secured. INDIANA. SUMMARY OF LEGISLATION.1 The Indiana law regarding accident reporting directs that: It shall be the duty of the owner, agent, superintendent or other person having charge of any manufacturing or mercantile establishment, mine, quarry, laundry, renovating works, bakery, or printing office within this State, or of any floor or part thereof, to report in writing to the chief inspector all accidents or injury done to any person in such premises within 48 hours of the time of the accident, stating as fully as possible the extent and cause of such injury, and the place where the injured person is sent, with such other information relative thereto as may be required by the chief inspector. The chief inspector is hereby authorized and empowered to fully investigate the causes of such accident, and to require such reasonable precautions to be taken as will, in his judgment, prevent the recurrence of similar accidents. Penalty. First offense, not more than $50; second offense, not more than $100; to which may be added imprisonment for not more than 10 days; third offense, not less than $250 and not more than 30 days' imprisonment. The law thus requires all accidents to be reported. The inspection department, however, in order not to overburden the records, informed employers that reports were desired only in the case of accidents of a serious nature. No standard was suggested as to what constitutes a "serious" accident, and as a result a wide diversity of practice exists. It was found in the course of this investigation that some factories reported all accidents requiring medical attention, that others reported only those causing a loss of at least two weeks' time, while one establishment stated that its practice was to report only such accidents as caused death or permanent disability. 1 The law here referred to is as in force at the time of the investigation, February and March, 1909. The text of the laws in force Jan. 1, 1912, is given in the appendixes at the end of this volume. 2 Ann. Stat. of 1894, Rev. of 1901, sec. 7087h and 7087y (22d An. Rept. Com. of Labor, pp. 399, 402). The law specifies certain data which each accident report must contain, and in addition it authorizes the chief inspector to require such additional information as he may consider desirable. The form used by the inspection department is in blank, as follows: DEPARTMENT OF INSPECTION, STATE OF INDIANA. At what employed when injured............ Cause (by what kind of machinery, or otherwise, and how done). Was machine or other cause guarded......... If not, why. Was injured person regularly employed on such machine. Had injured person worked on similar machinery prior to this employment. Date of reporting.. [Signature of firm or person reporting.] The following table shows the number of accidents reported for the years 1905, 1906, 1907, and 1908, classified according to seriousness. The data of this table are derived from the annual reports of the State factory inspection department for the years named. NUMBER OF ACCIDENTS REPORTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF INSPECTION OF INDIANA, BY SEVERITY OF INJURY, 1905 TO 1908. [Compiled from Annual Reports of the Department of Inspection, Indiana,: 1905, p. 8; 1906, p. 12; 1907, p. 10; 1909, p. 8.] The next table classifies the fatal, serious, and slight accidents reported for the year 1908, by the industrial divisions in which they occurred. The table is condensed from a table given in the report of the State inspection department for that year. The slight discrepancies in the figures here given for serious and slight accidents as compared with the totals given in the preceding table occur in the original report. ACCIDENTS RESULTING IN FATAL, SERIOUS, OR SLIGHT INJURIES REPORTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF INSPECTION OF INDIANA, BY INDUSTRIES, 1908. [From Twelfth Annual Report of the Department of Inspection, Indiana, 1908, pp. 244-248.] In 25 of the 47 establishments visited accidents resulting in injuries to employees were recorded as having occurred during the preceding year, the total number of such accidents being 491. In 17 of these 25 establishments all such accidents had been reported to the State factory inspection department; in 1 in which 15 accidents were recorded, only those causing more than one week's disability were reported; and in the remaining 7 establishments none of the accidents had been reported. In 1 of these latter establishments, in which 15 accidents were recorded as having occurred during the preceding year, it was stated that only such accidents as caused permanent disability were ever reported. The authority of a factory inspector was claimed for this interpretation of the law. MICHIGAN. There was, at the time of this investigation,' no law requiring accidents to be reported to the State. The State factory inspectors, however, are instructed by the chief of the bureau to obtain at every visit to a factory a list of the accidents that have occurred since the 1 March, 1909. The text of the laws in force Jan. 1, 1912, is given in the appendixes at the end of this volume. |