To do more would constitute an unreasonable use of the police power and would result in an unjustifiable deprivation of property....without fair compensation.
[The strong Democratic bill will] bring about conditions in the business community which will be chaotic…and could bring about a breakdown between government and those in labor and management with which it deals.
Under the [Democratic] bill, according to the [Chamber], ‘employers would be treated worse than criminals,’ and there would be ‘penalties on the innocent’
The industry representatives also object to a requirement in [the Democratic] bill that employers provide ‘a place of employment which is safe and healthful’ as being ‘vague and undefined’ and possibly unconstitutional.
Mr. Ankeny, a former director of the Bureau of Mines, has made the statement publicly that passage of bills would not be expected to reduce the accident rate. Therefore, how can we, in logic or in good conscience, say that we are going to pass…a bill to improve the safety record, when two previous directors of the Bureau of Mines said that passage of laws would not reduce the accident rate?
We are particularly intrigued by the term byssinosis a thing thought up by venal doctors who attended last year’s ILO [International Labor Organization] meetings in Africa, where inferior races are bound to be afflicted by new diseases more superior people defeated years ago...As a matter of fact, we referred to the ‘cotton fever’ earlier, when we pointed out that a good chaw of B.L. dark would take care of it, or some snuff...Well, we want to tell Mr. [James] O’Hara [D-MI] that, and for all our life, we have hated federal interference in our lives businesses…Congressman O’Hara is typical of the lousy representation we get from time-serving Northern Democrats who sell their souls to the venal labor leaders.
Enforcement of Federal standards through Federal inspectors would result in the most intimate involvement of the Secretary of Labor in all operations affecting interstate commerce….easily result[ing] in blowing up the most minor grievances to very substantial proportions. A minor complaint can very well become a ‘federal case’. Provision of this kind of authority in the Federal government would tempt many an employee representative to boost his stock by calling on the federal government, since the very presence of a federal inspector could be used to demonstrate his importance and influence.
Under the proposed bill, industry is held guilty until proven innocent.
Centralized control could not take into account the wildly divergent conditions, hazards, processes, and environmental problems which may be peculiar to a given industry or given geographic area.
There is no evidence, in our opinion, which requires or justifies the imposition of a Federal police system for safety upon industry at this time...This program will be economically wasteful. There will be duplicate Federal and insurance programs. The program offered...is essentially a policing program, it is designed to force compliance with federally imposed standards.
