FEMALE AND CHILD LABOR LAW EN FORCEMENT In the enforcement of the female labor law I have found the principle violators to be laundries and the large department stores in our large cities. Practically all of my notices of violations have been to such establishments. Other mercantile establishments have also required notices and visits, but in the majority of cases this is all that has been necessary to compel compliance with the law. As required by statute large notices giving the provisions of the law and the penalty for violation of the same, have been posted in every business establishment in the state which employs female labor. I have given formal notice of prosecution, in case violation did not cease, to nineteen establishments. Thus far this has been sufficient to cause the suspension of long hours, and I have, therefore, not been compelled to institute legal proceedings. The six o'clock closing scheme customery in Omaha and Lincoln eliminates, to a great extent, violations of this law. The packing houses of South Omaha constitute the greatest ground for infractions of the child labor law, and I have made annual insepections of these establshments in 1903 and 1904. Careful search into the status of all children employed has been made, and great numbers have been prohibited from working. The difficulty in the majority of cases in enforcing this law does not come from the operators of these establishments, but from the parents of the children, who persist in forcing their children to work, and very often resort to falsehood regarding age, period of school attendacne, etc., in making it permissable for them to be allowed to work. There are approximately two thousand manufacturing establishments of large proportions in Nebraska, and it is conservative to presume that twelve hundred of these employ child or female labor. Besides this number there are forty-five steam laundries in the state, all of which employ female labor to a great extent. It will, therefore, be seen that a stringent and proper enforcement of the child and female labor laws is not an easy task, for to secure proper compliance with the law, frequent inspections of each establishment is imperative. These inspections should be made each quarter. The personnel of the Bureau of Labor as now constituted by statute is absolutely inadequate to make such inspections. The force numbers three persons. The statistical work of the Bureau requires double this number, yet it has been performed thus far, as well as possible under the circumstances, by two per sons and the Deputy Commissioner has attempted to attend to child and female labor enforcement together with the enforcement of the fireescape law. Twelve hundrd and fifty establishments or factories to be inspected, and the law enforced therein, by one official. A performance of this duty would require the inspection of four establishments each and every day, a feat absolutely impossible, to say nothing of the preposterousness of expecting an inspection each quarter, which would demand the inspection of fifteen factories daily by one official. Other states throughout the Union have awakened, or are awakening to the importance of efficient factory inspection and to the irristible demand for child protection from the mind stunting and physical ruin resulting from constant employment in factories. It is to be hoped that Nebraska, the foremost state in the Union in the literacy of her people, will soon take steps to properly deal with this great question. |