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to get a job, because if they had an accident it would be more serious. Every employer tried to keep down the cost of the accident by only hiring perfect people who would tend to recover very quickly from an accident.

Also, we had the problem of the super-imposed injury. There would be a man who had lost an eye when he was a boy. You don't employ him because if he should have an action to the other eye, it would be a total loss of vision, which is total permanent disability and very expensive.

These all came to a head and I was trying to introduce legislation to prevent this merit rating. That was not popular. The insurance companies had come to love it. The employers had come to love it. They had been sold the idea that it cost them less. Actually, I don't think that as an over-all group it cost them less because these people find a way to earn their living somehow and if they don't they get supported out of public charity, although they themselves suffer greatly.

I had a very hard time getting Roosevelt's assent to it, but he finally did and we did introduce legislation, I think. I'm not positive about this, but I think that in one of his annual messages he said that we must abolish this merit rating in workmen's compensation as it had led to practices which did not socialize the cost and the hazards.