Evening Post. TUESDAY, JANUARY 26, 1909.

Evening Post, Volume LXXVII, Issue 21, 26 January 1909, Page 8

Evening Post. TUESDAY, JANUARY 26, 1909.

WILL THE EMPLOYERS EXPLAIN? Whether the request that a miner shall submit to medical examination before an employer takes him on with the liabilities Imposed by the new Workers' Compensation Act is or is not justifiable, it is plainly not justifiable to describe such n, request as a "nefarious proposal that a man shall be stripped naked and mauled by a doctor before he shall be allowed the primal right of working for a living." Such wild and misleading language, with its picturesque suggestion of methods like those of the Russian police when they get their hands on a political suspect, cai» only injure the cause which it is adduced to serve, and it is only natural that the cause of the West Coast miners should have suffered from vagaries of this kind on the part of their advocate, Mr. O'Regan. Stripped of rhetorical exaggeration, there is, however, a point in his letter published by us yesterday which demands serious attention Ther* is, of course, no special mention of miners or rrine-owners in the much-controverted section of the Workers' Compensation Act. It merelj extends the normal liaoility of the employers from accident to disease. By the Act of 1900 they had to pay compensation to a worker injured by accident arising in the course of his employment ; by this Act of last session the same principle, was extended to the case of industrial disease. But the section had a special interest for those concerned in the mining industry, because the miner is subject to a special form of lung disease known as " pneumoconiosis," the wide prevalence and insidious operation of which meant a serious increase of the mineowners' liability under the new law. It is, however, pointed out by Mr. O'Regan that as the liability thus imposed upon them was of a general character, so it was a general relief which they sought. The miner was not merely asked to submit to examination for pneumoconiosis, and, if found to be affected, then to sign an indemnity under section 17. The stipu- ! lation was that both the examination and the indemnity should be of a general character and cover all kinds of diseases and defects. Such, at any rate, is Mr. O'Regan's statement, and where he deals with specific statements instead of being j misled into eloquent generalities we nave no occasion to doubt his accuracy. In j other words, the Reefton mineowners were seeking a general indemnity from all their employees, which would really mean the restriction of the liability under which they laooured before the new Act came into operation, since the range and gravity of many ordinary accidents must depend on the existence of ailments or defects which a general examination might reveal. The public certainly did not realise that any such reduction of an existing liability was being sought, or its sympathy would not have run so strongly with the employers. That this attempt on their part in any way justified the Government in forcing the Insurance Department to take risks which it had declined on business grounds, we are quite unable to see. But an explanation is certainly due from the employers whose hold on the public sympathy appears to have been largely due to a misconception.

The name of Kenneth Elton Shorney, Wellington, Kb. 759, should have appeared in the list published last night di candidate? who ptveaed Use Civil Sel 1 ' ■^cc examination.