J. P. Kottcamp to Vandiver Brown on an Illinois Manufacturers' Meeting About the New Disease Law (1936)

A three-page "Personal & Confidential" memorandum of September 16, 1936, from J. P. Kottcamp, manager of Johns-Manville's Waukegan, Illinois, factories, to Vandiver Brown, J-M's attorney. At Brown's request Kottcamp had attended a luncheon of Illinois industry at Chicago's Union League Club on the new Occupational Diseases Act and the Health, Comfort and Safety Act. The meeting backed hiring an assistant for James L. Donnelly of the Illinois Manufacturers' Association to follow the law, help write the Industrial Commission's rules, and see that "men of proper caliber and integrity" were appointed to the Commission. One topic was what to do about "employees now on the payroll who are doubtless hazards and may become costly compensation cases later."

What it shows

On that question a Dr. Britton urged the manufacturers not to drop long-serving men: "so long as a man was able to work with any degree of satisfaction at all he should be kept on the payroll regardless of the fact that he may later become an expense to the Company." He warned that a "general house cleaning" would cause labor trouble costing more than it saved, and advised X-raying workers and moving them to the least harmful jobs. Kottcamp closed by asking Brown whether J-M should "come to some definite decisions as early as possible regarding action which should be taken at Waukegan" before October 1. The memo follows Brown's July advice that J-M could avoid liability by dropping workers with early dust disease.

In Johns-Manville's chronology

Johns-Manville's own chronology of what the company knew describes this document as follows:

Kottcamp in a memorandum to Brown, 9/16/36, asks what should be done about "employees now on the payroll who are doubtless hazards and may become costly compensation cases later." Kottcamp says that Dr. Britton (?) does not recommend discharge but a good medical program and transfer of workers to less harmful jobs. "So long as a man was able to work with any degree of satisfaction at all he should be kept on the payroll regardless of the fact that he may later become an expense to the company."

Editor's note: J-M's description presents the question about "employees now on the payroll who are doubtless hazards" as Kottcamp's own. In the memo it is one of the topics raised at the Chicago meeting; Kottcamp's own question, at the end, is what J-M should do at Waukegan before October 1.