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of the lungs so that they furnish a fine field for a tuberculosis germ.

So the employers were very anxious to evade silicosis as an occupational disease, because of the fact that it is so easily confused with tuberculosis and because the two do run into each other. They didn't want to be stuck with all these long, long tuberculosis cases of total, permanent disability, nor the death rate from tuberculosis cases.

So they fought shy of a general coverage of occupational diseases. That was the principal legislative battle that we had throughout the Roosevelt administration, because we recommended continuously the general coverage of all occupational diseases. The previous law that was on the books specified a list of occupational and industrial diseases which were covered. Except for lead poisoning and a few things like that they were diseases that didn't occur in the State of New York. They'd been copied out of the English law. We wanted to abolish all that list and make one clause that any disease which was disabling, for which there was proper medical testimony, and could be said to be the result of the exposure in the employment was an occupational disease.

We didn't get it, but we finally got a greatly amended law which covered almost anything except silicosis. We finally got silicosis covered, but only under certain