8 The First 25 Years Issue Highlight: Uniform Act From 1919-1921, IAIABC members debated several times the necessity of adopting a “Uniform Act” where there would be a nationwide standard of compensation laws. The “Uniform Act” was never enacted. The Commissioner of the U.S. Department of Labor, Royal Meeker, who supported a “Uniform Act”, said: “A miner whose leg is broken in a gold mine in Colorado half a mile below the surface of the earth suffers no different sort of a disability from a lumberman whose leg is broken on a skidway in Louisiana or a motorman whose leg is broken by a street car in Brooklyn.“ Issues of Interest Discussed by the IAIABC Accident Prevention and Promoting Industrial Safety Restoring the Injured Employee to Work Uniform Industrial Accident Statistics Lump-Sum Settlements “Uniform Act” Inclusion of Occupational Diseases and Poisonous Injuries Self-insurance The Impact of the Great Depression (payrolls, premiums, and average weekly wage calculation)

9 1914-1938 Issue Highlight: Occupational Diseases “If the compensation principle is limited to its own proper sphere and is not enlarged to include all the ills of the flesh, it is practical, workable and beneficial. If it invades foreign realms, it is bound to grow into a veritable Frankenstein that will harm principally those it was supposed to abide and at the same time will promote waste, fraud and industrial demoralization” ~ President J. Dewey Dorsett Excerpt from the ABC Reporter, April 1937: