This is the system which an employer in West Virginia can force upon his employees liable to the contraction of silicosis. There is nothing to compel an employer to do so because if he does not elect to come under the statute he may nonetheless retain his common-law defenses.2 But there is no reason why employers should not "elect." 23 The West Virginia workmen's compensation silicosis law is probably unconstitutional. It cannot be said to proivde for the safety of workers or to make the costs of industrial physical injuries costs of the industry. The first workmen's compensation laws were attacked because it was feared that they imposed an unreasonable burden on employers. Were the fears justified, the Supreme Court said, it would have declared the law unconstitutional." Whether or not the West Virginia workmen's compensation silicosis law is declared unconstitutional, the subservience of the West Virginia Legislature to the interests of employers is almost unparalleled in its hypocrisy, and the statute should be wiped out. Mr. RANDOLPH. You would say, I suppose, that such statute is unconstitutional? Mr. MARCANTONIO. In view of the judicial jockeying which has been going on here since the N. R. A. decision, I do not know what is constitutional. Mr. GRISWOLD. May I suggest for the information of the committee, because it is relevant and important, that the committee has no authority to attack a State law of West Virginia. Mr. MARCANTONIO. I am putting this in the record just to show the background in which these men find themselves. We have heard testimony as to their physical conditions and as to their working conditions, and now I am presenting this analysis of the legal conditions under which they find themselves. Mr. RANDOLPH. In connection with this matter of the actual wording of the law in West Virginia, I should like to say for the record that in my study of the last 2 days I find that only 11 States in the Union have a law under which silicosis is compensable, and that West Virginia is one of them. Of course, there is need for revision of statutes, as we find each year; but only 11 of the 48 States of the Union have any law on the subject. Mr. MARCANTONIO. That is true. There is no question about that. I hope that, as a result of this hearing, we will have 48 States of the Union with a proper law in this respect, and that they will not follow the West Virginia example. Mr. RANDOLPH. I am sure that if we of West Virginia find that we are wrong we will correct it. Mr. GRISWOLD. I may say that the State of West Virginia has followed the usual procedure that is followed in other States with regard to compensation laws. The live man is worth more than the dead man. Mr. DUNN of Pennsylvania. I believe that every State in the Union has ample room for improvement in respect to its compensation laws. I hope those improvements will be enacted speedily. Mr. GRISWOLD. We thank you for coming before the committee, Mr. Finke. If there is nothing further this morning, let us adjourn, to meet tomorrow morning at 10.30 o'clock sharp. (Thereupon at 11.55 a. m., Tuesday, Jan. 21, 1936, the subcommittee adjourned, to meet at 10.30 a. m., Wednesday, Jan. 22, 1936.) 23 Laws 1935, ch. 79, sec. 3: The silicosis statute is made an exception to the provision in the general West Virginia compensation law. It is also an exception to all other known systems of workmen's compensation. 24 See cases cited, note 14, supra. INVESTIGATION RELATING TO HEALTH CONDITIONS OF WORKERS EMPLOYED IN THE CONSTRUCTION AND MAINTENANCE OF PUBLIC UTILITIES WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 22, 1936 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, The subcommittee met at 10:30 a. m., Hon. Glenn Griswold presiding, for further consideration of House Joint Resolution 449, to authorize the Secretary of Labor to appoint a board of inquiry to ascertain the facts relating to health conditions of workers employed in the construction and maintenance of public utilities. STATEMENT OF HON. RUSH DEW HOLT, A SENATOR OF THE UNITED STATES FOR THE STATE OF WEST VIRGINIA Mr. GRISWOLD. The committee will please be in order. We have with us this morning Senator Holt, and the committee will be glad to hear from the Senator concerning the Gauley Bridge situation. I believe, Senator, that is what you are prepared to talk about. Senator HOLT. Yes. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, I have part of the information here that I have agreed to keep confidential so far as the public is concerned, but I shall be glad to give it to the committee so that members of the committee may check it and see whether it has any bearing or ground to it. The Hawks Nest Tunnel project, as you realize, started as the result of an order of the Public Service Commission of the State of West Virginia in 1928. That order granted the right to construct this tunnel. On April 5, 1930, the final order of the commission was signed authorizing the construction of this tunnel, which is a subsidiary of the Union Carbide & Carbon Co. Soon after the construction of this tunnel started I was a member of the legislature of the State of West Virginia, and we received a number of complaints, written and personal, at Charleston, discussing the sickness and the particular matters that we have before us now relative to silicosis. I find that silicosis was not a compensable disease, but in the 1933 session of our State legislature Senator Fleming introduced a bill to make it compensable, and the bill passed the Senate. The bill was referred to the house of delegates, and on the last day of the session Delegate Randolph, of Harrison County, made a motion to take up the bill and pass it so that these men could be properly protected. That motion was defeated on a point of order that it did not have a properly constituted group. The bill was reintroduced in 1935 and finally passed on March 8, 1935. Before that time there was no compensation for these men so far as the workmen's compensation law of our State was concerned. These men only had the right to sue in court. I find that when they first took the cases up the company was not particularly interested in the passage of the silicosis bill, and it actually fought it, but when the supreme court of our State decided that the men had a right to sue I find that in the next session of the legislature the delegates from that section who had gone against making silicosis compensable turned and were then willing to make it compensable in order to protect the company. I have been receiving many letters about this important matter, and I should like to read a statement that I have just received this week. This statement is by a man who worked there as a foreman and who knows what he is talking about. Writing under the caption of Money Versus Human Life, this man said: On March 16, 1930, the Hawks Nest, W. Va., power project for the New Kanawha Power Co., was started by Rinehart & Dennis Co., Charlottesville, W. Va. Mr. P. H. Faulconer, president, and Mr. E. J. Perkins, general superintendent, were stopping at the Glen Ferris Inn, Glen Ferris, W. Va. The writer of this article arrived at Glen Ferris, W. Va., on March 18, 1930. The first few days were spent talking to job seekers and salesmen who were trying to sell their wares. About April 1, 1930, the job got started and in regular course the job went along very well. The tunnel was actually started or turned under about July 1, 1930. The size of the tunnel was to be 32 feet in diameter. After the rock was tested the report showed better than 90 percent silica (glass). At this time, when the workmen were 800 feet or 1,000 feet in, the New Kanawha Co., agents for the Union Carbide and Carbon Co., New York City, had the tunnel size enlarged to 46 feet, the surplus rock to be shipped to Alloy, W. Va., for byproduct purposes. No precaution was taken to protect human life after the contractors knew they were working in. In most every shift some of the workmen had to come out of the tunnel, some in very bad condition, and at times the Coal Valley Hospital, Montgomery, W. Va., was nearly filled with whites and blacks from this tunnel job. Respirators were never used in camp no. 1 cr camp no. 2. Respirators were used at camp no. 3 only, and Mr. Blank called the writer and told him it was wasting the company's money to try to use respirators. Many deaths occurred on this job, from superintendents down to the common laborers. The company used a 24-inch vent tube for furnishing fresh air to the headings, and they used boosters about 800 feet to 1,000 feet apart to take out the stale air. These boosters were not used except when the West Virginia mine officials were coming into the tunnel, for to each booster running, cut out one drill. You know no contractor would waste that much air. The West Virginia Bureau of Mines has control over certain drillings and certain mining operations; but the company maintained that the West Virginia Bureau of Mines did not have control over the construction of the tunnel. It was denied that the State Bureau of Mines had been granted that legal authority. Mr. RANDOLPH. They took the position that this was a construction job instead of a mining operation. Senator HOLT. Yes; that is right. [Continuing:] The contract called for all drilling to be done wet. No contractor would drill bench holes wet if he could get by in drilling dry. Mr. O. M. Jones, chief engineer, New Kanawha Power Co., complained many times about the dust inside the tunnel. The only thing Rinehart & Dennis Co. could see was money, and they did not give a damn whose life they took or what else they took. Money, money, money was all they wanted. Now as to the crooked lawyers, the article from St. Louis, could you say that the lawyers who were with the workmen were or were not crooked? These are just a few remarks as to this particular job dealing with silicosis, and these remarks can be very much enlarged upon. I have some other letters that I think will prove of interest to the committee, and I shall quote briefly from them. This letter is dated December 12, 1935, and reads, in part, as follows [reading]: The tunnel was dark, being poorly lighted with electric bulbs strung on wires attached here and there to the ceiling and side walls Many of these bulbs were burned out and had not been replaced. The diameter of the tunnel ranged from 35 to 42 feet, and there was no shoring or bracing of any kind. At one point Mr. Blank and his friend had to leave the boardwalk laid between the railroad tracks in order to circumvent a pile of rock lying on the floor. Mr. Blank estimated this to be about a 2-ton drop from the ceiling, and his friend Mr. Blank told him it was a recent fall not yet cleared up. Another quotation reads: Well, what about those poor fellows who die on the job? Do you not check up on your crews and discover some of the men missing? The answer was: No; when we find out they are not there, we do not bother much. We know there are always plenty more. Another quotation reads: Dr. Hayhurst declares he has been out of close touch with the Gauley Bridge case for some 18 months. The last time he gave it particular attention about 200 deaths had occurred. He was interested when I quoted the figure from the People's Press, and declared I had later information that he had received. "These men did not need to die", he emphatically asserted. When I queried whether the remaining workmen would die, he felt sure they would, except in the case of those who did most of their work in the upper tunnel. "The upper tunnel", he declared, "had only about 25 percent silicate-rock content on the average." He stated that silicate dust becomes more or less dangerous according to the kind of earth with which it is mixed. "Strangely enough," he said, "there are some kinds of mixtures which minimize the danger of silicosis, and even overbalance the effect of silicate in the mixture. We are not yet certain just how or why this is true." "Generally speaking", he said, "silicate begins to be dangerous when the content of the soil being worked contains 25 to 35 percent." The lower tunnel, Dr. Hayhurst declared, was a peculiarly pure formation of silicate rock. "It is 99-plus percent pure, so pure it was taken directly to the company's plant and used for industrial purposes without further refinement. Herein was the great danger to the health of the workmen, as they inhaled this dust in the lower tunnel." The lower tunnel was worked in three benches, he proceeded to say. One group of workmen pushed ahead at the top, a second group followed them at an intermediate level, and the third crew cleaned up the lower sides and the floor. The procedure was to drill for and set off the dynamite charges, and then after the explosions the electricians went right in and strung the lights, after which the workmen followed for the loading of the loosened rock. In drilling the holes for the insertion of the dynamite charges the dry process was used. Possibly a small stream of water was played on the drill points to keep them cool, but no quantity of water was flushed over the drill dust, as is the case in wet drilling. This meant, of course, that the air always was full of the dangerous silicate dust, being breathed in by the men all during the hours they were in the tunnel. This doctor confirmed the figures printed in the People's Press regarding hours of work and the wages paid. This doctor stated that considerable progress was made in the lower tunnel when the West Virginia Department of Mines began to concern itself with the Job and with the health of the men on it. But the utility company kept the State department of mines away from the construction on the premise that it was a tunnel that was being cut, and not coal being mined, and as the State department of mines had to do only with coal mines it could not interfere with this tunnel bore. The department persisted in interesting itself in the tunnel job and finally the company erected a canvas duct 2 feet in diameter with an 18-inch suction fan in it. This canvas duct was in 50-foot sections, and it was moved ahead as the work progressed. Pointing to an ordinary electric fan on the floor behind his desk, this doctor stated: "That is a 10-inch fan there, you can see what size fan they used in that duct. Totally inadequate. And besides the silicate dust there was the poison of the gases generated by the engines and air compressors inside the tunnel." The fan was not big enough to eliminate any part of these hazards from a distance hundreds of feet back under the mountain. Senator HOLT. I have a letter from Mrs. Roosevelt Evans, of Red House, W. Va., which contains information of interest. Writing under date of January 18, 1936, she told me that My husband was a workman in the Hawks Nest tunnel, he took sick and the contracting doctor sent him to the hospital. He died there and they did not even let me know that he had died. I went to see him and the nurse said that was at the undertaker's. I rushed to the undertaker's and found that they had carried him to Sommers and buried him. Will you please look after my case for me? My husband's name was Roosevelt Evans. I have a letter from Mr. C. C. Logwood, of Red House, W. Va. Mr. Logwood said that he worked at the Hawks Nest tunnel in 1929, 1930, and 1931, and he is now so disabled that he cannot work. He stated that they would not give him the compensation money; that they would take the money of the men and if the men complained about it they would discharge them. He further says that when anybody died on that job they would not try to find his relatives, but just buried him in the field or in the side of a hill. I have a letter from a man named Joe Martin, Red House, W. Va., who says that he worked as a driller in the Hawks Nest tunnel during 1929, 1931, and 1933. He states that the dust was so bad that he is now unable to work as a result of it, and he has not received anything since he quit that work. He states that the men could not see 3 feet ahead of themselves when they were drilling in that tunnel because the dust made seeing impossible, and the drills were always going. He speaks about the men being brought out of the tunnel dead or in a dying condition and about those who died being buried in the hillside or in a cornfield. He especially stresses the manner in which the colored people were treated on that job. I have an interesting letter from Mr. Buck E. Davidson, Bluefield, W. Va., written under date of January 18, 1936. It says: I have been following the Hawks' Nest investigation with great interest. In today's paper a statement is made by Faulconer that Rinehart & Dennis had been driving tunnels in this and other States for 35 years and never heard of disease caused by breathing silica particles until 1931. It has been repeatedly told us by doctors and nurses that it was not definitely known by medical science until about 1930 or 1931 that breathing silica particles into the lungs causes the disease known now as silicosis. Many well-educated persons today do not know the meaning of the word silicosis. I want to bring this definite case to your attention. In 1931, my brother, Powell Davidson, aged 21, was working for the Bethlehem Steel Co. at Sparrows Point, Md., and in September of that year he became very ill and had to quit work. He was examined by many doctors in Baltimore and his trouble pronounced tuberculosis. He was placed in a sanitarium at Endowood, Md., and left until May 1932, at which time he was removed to his home near Bluefield, W. Va. In the fall of 1934 Dr. Churchill Robertson, of Roanoke, Va., pronounced his trouble, for the first time, silicosis. Early in 1935 I tried to file suit against the Bethlehem Steel Co. for some financial help for this boy, but, due to the statute of limitations in Maryland, |