I am sure of what I am saying and I am going on record. I want every manufacturer and employer to investigate what I am saying here. I say that you can get insurance by mutually organizing and having some provision in your bills for mutual organization of employers a great deal cheaper and with a great deal more regard for humane conditions than you can by the private proposition, unless you compel all insurance companies by some other statute to make inspections before they place their risk.
I also want this suggestion to appear on the record. Some sort of provision should be made so that the private insurance companies will not knock out the old men on poorer risks. When they started in England they did knock out some of the old men in the employments, but now that thing has been settled. It ought to be put here in statutory form, because when you get the third party in here between the manufacturers and the employes, you are getting people who do not put their hearts into the thing.
I know this will be a matter of controversy, but I want to offer it here. I want to tell you not to fear this bugaboo of interstate competition. Nobody wants to see the State of Wisconsin more prosperous than I do, and I am sure that if our Wisconsin manufacturers go forward and make that investment, they will put intelligence into the product and add a happiness to the people that will build up the State. If it were not so then the principle of tariff would be no good; if it were not so then China and Japan with cheap labor would have been beating us to-day; if it were not so slavery would have been the best thing for this country instead of the worst.
MR. DAWSON: An investigation as to the cost of insurance in the various countries of Europe will be undertaken by the United States Bureau of Labor, as requested by this Conference at its session at Washington.
CHAIRMAN MERCER: Gentlemen, is it not true that we have the best judgment of the great financial interests in this country to the effect that this interstate competition amounts to very little, and that that judgment is best evidenced by reason of the fact that nearly all of the big industries that are doing business both locally and throughout the United States are adopting a scheme that voluntarily places a greater burden upon their shoulders than the law has been providing?