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TABLE II.-States weakening or nullifying standard provisions by exemptions.

(a) 14-year limit in factories with exemptions specified:

California, weekly school holidays and

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South Dakota, poverty.
Tennessee, canneries.

Texas, 15-year limit applies only to fac-
tories with "dangerous machinery."
Utah, 14-year limit applies only to to-
bacco fatories and those making goods
for immoral purposes.

Vermont, exempts places employing less
than 10 persons.

Virginia, (Î) canneries; (2) special permit.
Washington, poverty.

West Virginia, special permit.

(b) 16-year limit for night work in factories with exemptions specified:

Colorado, (1) vacation; (2) special permit.
Maine, perishable products."
Mississippi, 16-year limit applies only to
girls.

(e) 8-hour day under 16 in factories with Colorado, (1) vacation; (2) special permit. Indiana, consent of parents.

Tennessee, canneries.

Virginia, (1) canneries; (2) special permit.

exemptions specified:

Mississippi, applies only to girls.
Washington, applies only to girls.

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1 Reported by the Census of 1910 as having mine products valued at $2,500,000 a year or more.

So we claim that a clear majority of the people of this country have already said, through State legislation, that these standards are reasonable and just for the protection of children.

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Mr. Chairman, perhaps you may have wondered why there has been this opposition from one industry to this measure. It was not brought out clearly in the testimony, merely being hinted at by the first witness, Capt. Smyth. It is pretty generally agreed that the 14-year age limit would not make any difference. North Carolina, since South Carolina enacted this day a new child-labor law, is now the last manufacturing State in the Union which permits children under 14 to be employed in factories. Mississippi has halfway stopped it; they make it 14 for boys and 12 for girls.

What is the opposition to this bill based upon? Why does Capt. Smyth object so strenuously to interference by Federal inspectors with "our internal affairs"? It is because, Mr. Chairman, a Federal law would be effective. It is because this law would mean the enforcement of child-labor legislation throughout the United States.

If every State in the Union had adopted legislative standards proposed in this bill still there would be 48 different standards of law enforcement. The southern cotton manufacturers, whom Gov. Kitchin represents, do not come with clean hands asking that Congress do not pass a Federal law, because, first, they have resisted in every State of the South, except Arizona, where there was no cotton factory, the passage of adequate State legislation for the protection of children; and, second, because they resisted even more strenuously efforts to enforce State legislation through factory inspection and adequate appropriations for State factory inspection. Two of the gentlemen who have appeared as witnesses before this committee, Mr. Patterson and Mr. Ruffin, I have met before in the manufacturers' lobby before committees of the North Carolina Legislature. They were in Raleigh a year ago opposing the adoption of these very standards in the Weaver bill, and when the Weaver bill was unfavorably reported by the committee a bill introduced by Senator Nash to provide for factory inspection was also defeated. They claim that the present law of North Carolina, inadequate as it is for the protection of childhood, with its nominal 13-year age limit, with the impossibility of prosecuting manufacturers who do not knowingly and willfully violate the law-that is, who do not take the pains to learn the age of another man's child-with its 11-hour day for 12-year old children and its 12-hour night for five days in the week, from which recently by statute children under 16 were protected, is not violated. Every governor of North Carolina-Gov. Glenn, Gov. Kitchin, Gov. Craig-have all urged factory inspection. Gov. Kitchin in his message to the North Carolina Legislature in 1913, his third message on this subject, said:

Factory inspection is absolutely essential to the enforcement of our child-labor laws not that all manufacturers fail to obey them, but that some violate them. You should provide ample inspection.

Nevertheless, in spite of Gov. Kitchin's great influence with the legislature, the manufacturers' lobby was more powerful than he was, and up to this day they have no factory inspection in North Carolina, except a provision that anyone may report violations to the county superintendent of education. It would be only reasonable to expect. therefore to find violations of the child-labor law in North Carolina. I call your attention to the Bureau of Labor report, volume 1, page 186.

Mr. Chairman, there is a peculiar obsession about this Federal Bureau of Labor report concerning the condition of women and child wage earners in the United States, namely, that Senator Beveridge's speech in the Senate on child labor caused the investigation, costing the Government $300,000. This was mentioned by one of the witnesses from Alabama, a day or two ago. As a matter of fact, Senator Beveridge was opposed to the investigation, believing that the time had come for action, and as to his speech being the moving cause for the passage of the bill, the following dates are significant: The bill authorizing the investigation was introduced in the Senate April 2, 1906. It passed the Senate December 18, 1906, and passed the House January 21, 1907, Senator Beveridge began his speech on January 23, 1907, resumed it on January 28, and finished it on January 29. I know the Senator to be a very capable man, but I have never been able to figure out how he could have caused the passage of a bill by a speech which was delivered after the bill was passed. The report resulting is in 19 volumes, devoted to the cotton industry, the glass industry, the clothing industry, etc., and the only part ever disputed is that relating to Southern cotton mills. Taking up again the question of the violations of law, the report says, on page 186, volume 1, concerning South Carolina, which then had the poorest child-labor law of any manufacturing State in the South and no enforcement, both the law and its enforcement having been greatly improved since:

The most extensive violation of the age-limit law was found in South Carolina. In addition to 42 children under 12 years of age who were orphans, children of widows, etc., and who were therefore legally emploved, 405 other children under 12 were found working in the establishments investigated in that State. As shown by the table on page 171, such children constituted 12.3 per cent of the total children employed in the 36 establishments investigated, and 2.8 per cent of the total number of employees. Children under the age of 12 years were employed in 34 of the 36 establishments investigated in the State, and 33, or 91.7 per cent of these 36 establishments employed such children illegally. In 7 of these 33 establishments less than 1 per cent of the employees were children under the legal age and not legally excepted from the provisions of the law. In 20 establishments between 1 and 5 per cent were thus illegally employed. In 3 establishments between 5 and 10 per cent and in 3 others over 10 per cent of all employees were children under 12 years of age who were not legally excepted from the provisions of the law.

Now, the report goes on to say:

In North Carolina the law was only slightly less flagrantly violated. Of the 59 establishments canvassed, 44, or 74.6 per cent, were found to employ children under the legal age. In 13 of these establishments less than 1 per cent of the employees were children under 12 years of age, in 19 establishments from 1 to 5 per cent, and in 11 establishments between 5 and 10 per cent. In 1 establishment in North Carolina (No. 44) 12.05 per cent of all employees-a higher percentage than in any other cotton mill investigated in the South outside of Mississippi, which had no child-labor law-were under 12 years of age. In the 44 establishments illegally employing children a total of 1,751 children were employed, 202 of whom, or 11.5 per cent, were under the legal age. These constituted 8.6 per cent of all the children in the mills invesigated in North Carolina, 2.61 per cent of all employees in the establishments illegally employing children, and 1.77 per cent of all the employees at work in all establishments investigated in the State.

In Georgia 20 of the 31 establishments investigated, or 64.5 per cent, employed children under the legal age. Two other establishments employed children under 12, but all were employed under legal exceptions. A total of 107 children under 12 years of age were found at work, and of these, 41 were under legal exceptions, the remaining 66 were illegally employed. These 66 constituted 5.8 per cent of the children and 1.05 per cent of all employees in the 20 mills illegally employing children. Of all the children employed in the mills investigated in the State, these 66 children constituted 3.6 per cent and of all employees in these mills 0.58 per cent. This is a much

lower percentage of illegally employed children than in any other southern State except Virginia. In 1 establishment more than 5 per cent of the employees were under the legal age, and 9 establishments less than 1 per cent were under 12 years and not legally excepted from the provisions of the law.

In Alabama 8 of the 13 establishments investigated employed children under the legal age. This is a smaller proportion of establishments than were found thus violating the law in Georgia, but a much higher proportion of children were illegally employed, although this proportion was lower than in either North Carolina or South Carolina. A total of 71 children were found to be under the age of 12 years. This was 7.5 per cent of all children and 1.59 per cent of all employees in the establishments illegally employing children under 12 years of age; it was 6.1 per cent of all children under 16 years of age and 1.27 per cent of all employees in the 13 establishments investigated. Of the 71 children under the legal age, 48 were at work in one mill. This was the only establishment in which more than 5 per cent of all employees were under the legal age, as against 1 in Georgia, 6 in South Carolina, and 12 in North Carolina.

Alabama now has a fairly good factory inspection, although two or three inspectors are unable to cover the whole field. Georgia has practically no factory inspection. The last legislature refused to provide for it.

Mr. KITCHIN. Doctor, suppose you put in the date of this investigation.

Mr. McKELWAY. Yes. During the last six months Miss Eunice Sinclair, of Fayetteville, N. C., made an investigation-of course an incomplete one-and I would like to correct an impression that was made on the committee by Gov. Kitchin's questions to her. The children she reported upon were or had all been illegally employed when she found them. There were some 14 years of age employed more than a year, and there were some at 12 years of age, but all of those that were employed had been illegally employed, whether they were illegally employed at the time she found them or not.

This Bureau of Labor report was made in 1908. Every State in the Union has advanced some in child-labor legislation since that time. North Carolina has not made any provision for enforcement by factory inspection. So the conditions in that State, while they have improved, have improved because of public sentiment. They have improved because Mr. Swift has shown that the age limit was 13 instead of 12. But still here are the official returns from North Carolina in the last report that we have on the subject, in 1908.

As a Southern man I have been resenting a little the idea that the South was opposed to child-labor reform, or that the South was opposed to the Keating bill which is before you. I have a pocket full of clippings here from Southern newspapers, although I do not know that I ought to cumber up the record with them. Some of them are very instructive, however, as representing the sentiments of the South. If there is no objection, I will put these in with my remarks.

The CHAIRMAN. I think you may put in a few of the more important ones.

(The clippings referred to are as follows:)

EXTRACTS.

[From hearing before House Committee on Labor.]

STATEMENT OF MR. OWEN R. LOVEJOY, SECRETARY OF THE NATIONAL CHILD LABOR

COMMITTEE.

Mr. LOVEJOY. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I am here rep resenting the national child labor committee, a volunteer organization which has been in existence nearly 10 years, and has for its purpose the studying of

child-labor conditions in various parts of the country, the drafting of bills, conferring with different State committees and organizations, campaigning to get these bills through in the different States, cooperation with the departments of factory inspection, labor commission, educational authorities, and others in the effort to get the laws enforced when they are enacted.

The national child labor committee is interested in this bill because, after 10 years' experience in helping to get better laws in the various Commonwealths, we have found that it is difficult, if not impossible, to get uniformity of action in the different States. In many instances we find that the interests opposed to the legislation sought are opposed, not because they would be opposed on their own ground, but because they feel if they passed laws that would be more stringent within their Commonwealth they would be handicapped in competition with the same interests in other States. To some extent we believe that opposition on this ground is not warranted. We take the position that child labor is the most extravagant form of labor to be employed ordinarily, and that the industries that are managed with reduced child labor, or that eliminate it, are working on more economical lines than the industries that em. ploy child labor extensively and for long hours. But opposition to enacting laws in the States is just as vigorous from that point of view as though it were not sometimes founded on a fallacy.

Now, Mr. Chairman, the points I want to suggest to the committee are the following: First, assuming that Congress is able to pass such legislation as this, assuming it to be constitutional, I want to present to the committee the suggestion that the bill we are arguing for is not an unreasonable, drastic piece of legislation. That is the objection that has already been raised against the measure by those who do not wish this kind of legislation enacted. It has been said that we are asking the Federal Government to establish a standard that is entirely unique and does not exist to any extent, and therefore that it is unreasonable to ask Congress to take action which would not be upheld, or has not been upheld by the standards of any fair number of the people of a Commonwealth.

I wish to meet that argument with data that I have to present to the committee, but which I shall present now only in summary and which I will leave with the committee.

The first standard is the prohibition of child labor under 14 years of age in the ordinary manufacturing occupations. There are at present 44 States that have enacted legislation of this kind, either relating to a large number of industries or to certain specific industries. In addition, the law exists in the District of Columbia and Porto Rico. The bill next seeks to forbid the employment of children under 16 years of age in mines and quarries. In addition to the 15 States that prohibit such work by children there are 6 States that have such small mining and quarrying interests that there are less than a thousand people altogether engaged in the industry in any one of these 6 States. Therefore there are 21 States that either have the standard or have such slight industrial interests in the matter as to prevent any so-called practical objection to this legislation.

The third is the prohibition of child labor under 16 years of age for more than eight hours a day. The attitude of the American Commonwealths and of the Federal Government on the subject of the eight-hour day is interesting in its present form and in its history. There are now 19 States that prohibit the employment of children under 16 years of age for more than eight hours a day. This of itself presents a strong argument for making it a national standard, that 19 States have taken this position. But it is not as strong as the correlated facts that out of the 26 States that prohibit the employment of adults on State contracts for more than eight hours a day 13 of these States do not appear in the list of the 19 States to which I referred. That is to say, whereas 26 States forbid the employment of adults for more than eight hours a day on State. contracts, only 13 of those are in the list of 19 States that forbid such employment of children under 16 years of age. In addition, there are 13 States that forbid the employment of convicts in our penitentiaries or other penal institutions for more than eight hours a day. Two of them limit the hours of work to six a day. Besides this, the Federal Government, after having for some years forbidden the employment of labor for more than eight hours a day on Government contracts, at the last Congress went even further and provided that no private contractor doing Government work should be permitted to employ labor for more than eight hours a day on private contracts or Government work.

We take the position that if eight hours a day are considered by 26 States long enough for every able-bodied adult man to work on State contracts, if eight

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