[Americus (Ga.) Times-Dispatch.]

CHILD-LABOR LEGISLATION.

The lower branch of Congress is said to be ready to again pass the Keating child-labor bill, which would prevent shipment across State lines of the products of the labor of children under a certain age. It is the belief that the Senate will attempt to die without action, just as it did last session. This will be more difficult, however, because the life of this Congress-two years-began in December, and friends of the measure in the Senate, if they be sincere in their desire to get the bill on the statute books, can make life very miserable for its opponents.

Southern Congressmen are, as a rule, against the measure. Some of their biggest industries employ children extensively and the claim is that if this class of labor is denied the employer the industry would be compelled to close.

There has been a marked advance in Congress in the past few years against the highly objectionable kind of child labor. When Senator Beveridge demanded restrictive legislation along about 1906 he was looked upon as a visionary and his bill went to the Judiciary Committee, where it was put to death on the ground that it was unconstitutional and therefore not fit to be even discussed in public place.

The thing is very much alive, however. Some day it will become a law.

[Augusta (Ga.) Herald, Feb. 11, 1916.]

GOOD REASONS FOR DISCOMFORT.

"We pray for the uncomfortable, who do not care for anything so long as they are left at ease." From a prayer by Rev. Levi M. Powers at the inauguration exercises of the Gloucester, Mass., municipal council on January 17. There are many classes of these comfortable persons, and sometimes it becomes society's duty to stir them up a little bit. Just now there is the Keating-Owen bill, concerning which some prosperous, charitable, and altogether complacently comfortable persons prefer to remain in ignorance.

The Keating-Owen measure was introduced into Congress with the object of prohibiting the shipment in interstate commerce of goods in the production and manufacture of which child labor has entered.

Many very comfortable persons do not care to know that State legislation has not protected little children from exploitation. There are, in fact, a dozen States with very good child-labor laws-from which the canning industries are carefully exempted.

And so tots of 5 and 6 are permitted to snip beans or top cans from 4 a. m. for just as many hours as they can be kept awake in the season of ripe vegetables; and in certain fish canneries children of 8 and 10 work 15 and 16 hours a day in the busy season.

Details of some of the glass works of Pennsylvania, the coal mines of West Virginia, and the textile mills of Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi would stir up a considerable amount of unrest among the comfortably ignorant if they would read the reports of the national child-labor committee.

The main opposition to the Keating-Owen bill in the Senate is expected from the southern cotton-mill interests, but--and this a most disturbing bit of information-these mills are often owned by members of New England corpora

tions.

How can you help, not being a Senator or a southern mill owner.

You can help to stir up the too comfortable about the condition of child labor and they will see to it that the Senate becomes uncomfortable enough to pass the Keating-Owen bill.

[Macon (Ga.) Telegraph.]

OUR WORKING CHILDREN.

Southern cotton mills are under fire, and defense as well, at the meeting of the Annual Child Labor Conference in Asheville. The child-labor workers contend conditions throughout the South are pretty bad-worse than anywhere

else while the representatives of southern textile manufacturers recriminates about terrible conditions in the tenements of New York and asks the childlabor workers if they have ever done anything to help the families so oppressed in the South. A bootless argument and designed to do harm to honest folks on both sides of the fence.

The Telegraph is not going to join the one-two-three-all-together-now-boys chorus of defense for the southern cotton mill, because there are a great many things about a great many of them that can not be defended. We do work a lot of children who are too young to work, even though Georgia, for instance, has a pretty fair sort of a law in this respect. The jokers in all child-labor legislation in the South, however, pretty well tie the hands of even those who would be militantly in favor of stopping the abuses.

As for Mr. Carter, he is declaiming against the charge that children work to keep grown folks in idleness and comfort. Is that not true? Cases like it in Macon are constantly cropping up, and this is not a city of nonresident mill ownership. Nearly all operators and owners of Macon cotton mills live on the spot with their mills, and for that reason watch for abuses and remedy them where possible. In other cities, however, where hired officials are in sole charge, the situation is pretty bad-an old story to Southern people, who open their eyes every once in so often and take a look around them.

The Telegraph stands to defend Georgia and the South from unjust attacks, but where we are weak and where we are wrong our own aroused public consciousness of it is the only thing to do us any good. Even if somebody in Illinois or Wisconsin tells us something unpleasant about ourselves, we have no holler coming if the charge is true. And a good many things said about us are true, and when they are the Telegraph does not propose to "patriotically ' demagogically-lie about it just to keep the sinners feeling comfortable.

[Macon (Ga.) Telegraph, Feb. 8, 1916.]

MILLS AND CHILDREN.

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The Telegraph realizes the seriousness of the cotton mill as a factor in the social development and progress of the South. Increasingly industry is following its natural bent and getting the manufacturer as close to the producer as possible, and so we are getting more and more textile mills each year because we are the textile staple producers. There is much to be said against the cotton mill's coming. It really doesn't help the community much, if it does not actually injure the standard of the race itself. A few people are bettered by them, a great many are affected in just the opposite.

The worst feature, of course, is the effect of the work, the pay roll and its limitations, on those who tend to the spindles all day long. Not much is paid for this work, because it is not, as a matter of fact, worth much. Again, even these pay rolls can not be met unless the mill owner sells his product at a profit. If he makes any substantial increase in wages or reduction in hours and the other fellow doesn't, the only thing accomplished is the certain bankruptcy of the man who wanted to do better by his employees. But something has to be done. We've got to quit working our children, and that means raising the wages of adults.

For instance, let us look into the attitude engendered on the part of many mill owners by the necessities, if such they be, of their business, as exemplified in the hearings before the committee looking into Federal child-labor legislation. David Clark, editor of the Southern Textile Bulletin, is on the stand: "Congressman KEATING. Did the mill owners of North Carolina, in effort to ameliorate the condition of the employees, support Gov. Kitchin in his recommendation? (This was a recommendation for rigid inspection of factories.) Mr. CLARK. I did not favor inspection.

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Congressman KEATING. Was that because you did not have faith in the State inspectors, or because you had a good deal of faith in the mill owners? *

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'Congressman LONDON. What do you mean by a grafting proposition?

'Mr. CLARK. I am not prepared to give you the facts, but my understanding is that if you pay, you get a clean bill of health.

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'Congressman LONDON. You believe your mill owners would resort to corruption in order to escape a fair inspection?

"Mr. CLARK. Not more than any others; not more than was necessary.

"Congressman LONDON. You mean they would resort to corruption of a Government official?

"Mr. CLARK. Well, yes; if they were held up."

Asked about compulsory education-which in the opinion of the Telegraph is the only real solution of the problem-Mr. Clark gave voice to the following rather remarkable indictment against the statesmanship of North Carolina of which those who come from it boast so loudly and lustily:

"When these people (the families of the operatives) come from the mountains they do not believe in education. That is the reason we do not have compulsory education in North Carolina, because the isolated mountain districts would go Republican if we forced compulsory education upon them."

According to the New Republic, which is giving these rather remarkable confessions some passing but exceedingly keen treatment, ex-Gov. Kitchin remarked that "the cotton mill furnishes an opportunity for light and remunerative work for children "-on which the New Republic remarks: "That is, 10 hours work a day. A sort of light refreshment." Continuing, Kitchin, hired to represeent the mill owners, says: "Children 12 and 14 years old can do just as good work as a 30-year-old man with the work he is doing, and take care of the family. I think that is a blessing." Followed him a doctor employed by a cotton mill who said that a girl of 12 may be employed in a cotton mill 11 hours a day without injury.

The following are excerpts taken from the testimony of mill owners and their representatives at the hearing:

"If a mill operating 11 hours a day employs children only 8 hours it would probably require additional machinery.

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The cotton mill has done more than anything else in the South to save the people from the farm.

"If this law passed, and the younger children were taken out of the mills, the families would go back to the farm.

"If this bill passed it would affect 35 children between 14 and 16 in our mill of 400 people. This would necessitate our building eight new houses to take care of the new families that would be brought in.

"A roll of cotton cloth made by child labor is just as long, just as wide, just as white, and just as good as if made by adults.

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Congress never tried between 1830 and 1860 to prevent interstate commerce in the products of slave labor.

You can't fix an age limit for child labor any more than you tell when a pig becomes a hog."

[Montgomery (Ala.) Journal, Feb. 19, 1915.]

CHILD-LABOR BILL AND OVERWHELMING SENTIMENT BEHIND IT.

The Keating bill to bar from interstate commerce the products of child labor, which passed the House February 2 by a vote of 337 to 46, a majority which even surprised friends of the bill, is one of the most stringent in some of its features of any reform measure that has yet passed that body.

The bill provides heavy penalties for interstate shipment of any commodity produced in whole or in part by children under 16 working in mines or quarries or by children under 14 working in mills, canneries, workshops, or manufacturing establishments.

Where children are employed at night or more than eight hours a day in this latter class of industries the minimum age is 16 instead of 14.

While a few Members of the South voted against the bill, the Record shows that, with the exception of one vote, that of Parker, of New Jersey, a Republican, not a single Member from the Northern and Western States voted against the bill.

The opposition from the southern Congressmen who opposed the measure was based upon the theory of State rights. Representative Webb, of North Carolina, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, speaking from that viewpoint in opposition to the bill, argued employment of the children in occupations that destroy health and prevent development was a matter that should be left for each State to decide for itself. He held that the unrestricted employment of children heretofore had not prevented the development of many successful men who had suffered the hardships of labor in their childhood.

This statement by Webb brought a very vigorous and effective protest from Representative Garland, Member at Large from Pennsylvania, who told the

House that he was one of the men referred to by Mr. Webb as having succeeded despite the hardships of his early life.

It was because of what he had to go through and the suffering he endured as a child that he wanted to aid in protecting all other children from similar experiences.

A Washington correspondent, in commenting on the passage of the bill, expresses the opinion that " the tremendous vote against the effort to invoke State rights to continue a national wrong must be regarded as evidence of the breaking down of the old State-rights sentiment, even among Democrats. The south ́ern men opposing this bill offered all the old arguments against the invasion of State authority by the Federal Government without making the slightest impression upon anyone but themselves."

Northern and western Democrats and a number of southern men also," he says, "merely laughed at the suggestion that an evil should be allowed to continue because it is sanctioned by a State."

This is the same argument that has been used aaginst the passage of a national prohibition amendment and the legislation against the conservation of natural resources.

[Galveston (Tex.) Tribune.]

THE CHILD OR THE MILL.

Quite recently the Committee on Labor of the House of Representatives at Washington approved a bill having for its purpose the discouragement of child labor. The provisions of the measure forbid the passage outside the State in which were originated the products of mines, quarries, or mills the result of child labor. It was expected that most of the opposition to the proposed law, if any opposition developed, would come from the factory regions of New England or the mining fields of Pennsylvania, but the surprising development in connection with the measure was that the most vigorous opposition to its passage came from Representatives of the Southern States. While the South has very few mines and not enough factories to be entitled to much space in tables of statistics, it is known that this section has for years been anxious that the cotton factories of the Nation be established where they logically belong-in close proximity to the cotton fields, in the section where most of the raw material is produced.

New England has succeeded in almost eliminating child labor from its mills and factories, substituting cheap labor from Europe. This still leaves New England fairly strongly entrenched against all efforts to wrest the cotton manufacturing business from that section, and this has apparently strengthened the opposition to the child-labor proposition, the Southern Representatives advanc ing the argument that the passage of this measure will kill forever any hope that the South may entertain for the establishment of cotton mills in the cotton belt. South Carolina is about the only State in the South in which cotton mills are being operated, and it is pointed out that these mills have been able to exist only because of the employment of children.

It may be true that conditions in the South Carolina mills are much better than they were in the New England cotton mills during the time children were worked, but even ideal conditions will not warrant the steady employment of children of tender age for long hours and in the close atmosphere of a factory with its lint-laden air and disagreeable odors which no factory has ever been able to entirely eliminate. There are men, plenty of them, who would not accept financial gain at the cost of a child's health, but they are never brought face to face with conditions as they actually exist and probably believe that their dividends are earned honestly, but there are others who would take advantage of anything that offers that their incomes might be made to show an annual increase, and it is against these avaricious ones that such laws as the one proposed are made.

No one argues that a child should not be made to work, but the work should be suited to the ability of the child and ample provision should be made for the recreation of those who are to in the future carry the burdens of society, commerce, and State.

There are too many children whose parents have the wrong idea in connection with child rearing, and consequently deprive them of one of the greatest blessings God has given the human race-the privilege of work-but this is no justification of placing adult burdens on youthful shoulders and lengthening the hours of toil until the frail body weakens and succumbs to the load.

The child is not the chattel of the parent. The State has a right to demand that certain provisions safeguarding the life and health of the girl or the boy shall be observed. We see the justice of holding back the stroke that would inflict needless pain upon some dumb brute; we establish hospitals and resorts for the treatment of children who may be afflicted with insidious diseases, frequently when we know that these maladies have been brought on through ignorance or the avarice of parents or those who esteem a dollar above a life, and there is not the least inconsistency in our attacking this evil at its fountain head and seeking to prevent the spoilation of our young rather than to undertake the reconstruction of the weakened body after it has been subjected to a treatment acknowledged to be harmful, yet which is permitted because of financial or commercial considerations. A thousand cotton mills in the South would not begin to compensate for the life of one child, and we have good reason to blush that our Representatives see this matter from a different point of view.

[Dallas (Tex.) News, Feb. 8, 1916.]

THE HOUSE VOTES 337 TO 46 FOR THE KEATING BILL.

The Keating bill to exclude the products of child labor from the channels of interstate commerce passed the House by a vote of 337 to 46. The passage of the bill was clearly foreseen, but an agreement so nearly unanimous was hardly to be expected.

The measure now goes to the Senate. That body has been, in time past, something of a citadel for the opponents of child-labor legislation. Defeated everywhere else, they have been able to retire into the Senate and hold out against public sentiment. Undoubtedly the Keating bill will encounter the same stubborn opposition in the Senate that its several predecessors have. But the Senate must be somewhat impressed and persuaded by the size of the majority in the House, made up as it is so largely of men who are shrewd and unremitting in their efforts to find out what is wanted of them. To the Senate this huge majority must signify that public opinion not only desires but demands the enactment of this measure. If the bill shall fail in the Senate, it is likely to be because its opponents filibuster, for the indications are they will not be able to muster a majority.

Aside from the impressiveness of the vote, the most interesting incident in the House was the emergence of Mr. Cannon. Mr. Cannon bade the House take note of the circumstance that there are no child-labor laws in Canada. From that he advanced to the further proposition that American canners are in competition with Canadian canners. Thus fortified with premises, Mr. Cannon concluded, in the form of an amendment, that American canners ought to be exempted from the requirements of the law.

From which one must infer that, in the estimation of Mr. Cannon, it is proper to conscript from the schoolhouses when only an army of children can save us from commercial invasion. Happily, the House did not concur in this view.

[Galveston (Tex.) News, Jan. 28, 1916.]

PURPOSE OF THE KEATING CHILD-LABOR BILL.

Representative Webb, of North Carolina, says the Keating labor bill is an attempt to violate the Constitution of the United States, and that the success of it would mean that Congress could enter your State and take charge of its factories." Just what the statement last quoted means is not clear, nor is it likely that Mr. Webb could give any very explicit definition of it. If it is intended to express the belief that the passage of this bill would remove all limitations on the exercise of Federal power in the several States, the statement is quite absurd.

It ought not to be necessary to remind anyone that this bill, if enacted, would not forbid the employment of children, or even babies, in the mills of North Carolina or any other State. It would permit the working of children, since, indeed, no one pretends that Congress has the authority to forbid the working of them; but it would declare that the products of the labor of children under 16 years of age shall not be admitted into interstate commerce. Hence, it would result that the State would retain all of its present authority and determine whether it will permit the employment of children or not. There