they would do that than to tell them "you can not work "-a negative law that says, " you can not work." Senator THOMPSON. Have you a local law prescribing any period of time? Mr. DAVIS. It is 12 years of age. Mr. THOMPSON. You can not employ anyone under 12 years? The CHAIRMAN. Are there any further questions? If not, what is the pleasure of the committee? Senator CLAPP. I move that the committee do now adjourn until to-morrow morning at 10 o'clock. (The motion was agreed to, and accordingly the committee adjourned until to-morrow, Wednesday, February 16, 1916, at 10 o'clock a. m.) INTERSTATE COMMERCE IN PRODUCTS OF CHILD LABOR. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1916. UNITED STATES SENATE, COMMITTEE ON INTERSTATE COMMERCE, Washington, D. C. The committee met at 10 o'clock a. m., pursuant to adjournment. Present: Senators Newlands (chairman), Pomerene, Robinson, Brandegee, Clapp, La Follette, and Poindexter. The CHAIRMAN. Gov. Kitchin, who is the next gentleman that you desire to be heard? Gov. KITCHIN. I will ask the committee to hear Mr. Patterson. STATEMENT OF SAMUEL F. PATTERSON, TREASURER OF THE ROANOKE MILLS, ROANOKE RAPIDS, N. C.; ALSO ROSEMARY MANUFACTURING CO., OF ROANOKE RAPIDS, N. C. Mr. PATTERSON. Mr. Chairman, the first thing I want to say is that I am chairman of the executive committee of the southern cotton mills, and I am authorized by that committee and the friends of the southern cotton mills' employees and the millmen of the South to extend to this committee an invitation to come South and visit the cotton mills. You are at liberty to designate what mills you would like to visit or go without any designation whatever as guests of this committee. In other words, I mean to say that your entire expenses will be paid from the time you leave Washington until the time you return. The object of this invitation is that we want this committee, as many as will come, to see the true conditions of things in the South for yourselves so that you may act upon this matter intelligently. Of course, we take it that you gentlemen are seeking the truth, and we think the best way you can ascertain it is to come and see for yourself. Senator CLAPP. That reminds me that I want to ask you two or three questions. These will not apply to the legal argument because that goes to the merits of this legislation as a whole. You people do not ask to have the cotton mills of the South excepted from this legislation, do you? Mr. PATTERSON. We are not asking to have them excepted. We have not asked it as yet. Senator CLAPP. Do you think the cotton-mill condition in the South, where the mills are now-and I am inclined to think that the 59 work is conducted as fairly as it possibly can be reflects the industrial situation of this country in reference to what we call child labor? Mr. PATTERSON. I do not think it properly reflects the industrial conditions in this country with respect to child labor, because I think we are very much better than other districts and other sections. Senator CLAPP. I take it that that is true. Now, do you consider that the relative importance of the cotton-mill industry of the South to the industrial situation of this country, with reference to what we call child labor, requires that it should dominate in our policy in dealing with child labor? Do I make myself clear? Mr. PATTERSON. The idea I had in mind was this, that we have been accused-that is our State-with being one of the so-called outlaws, States that have not recognized what is called a modern child-labor liw. Senator CLAPP. I had not heard of that accusation. Mr. PATTERSON. There have been four States mentioned as being beyond the pale, so to speak-North Carolina, South Carolina, New Mexico, and Wyoming as if we were behind the procession, so to speak, in the way of passing legislation in regard to child-labor laws. If that is true, then we earnestly solicit either the whole or a subcommittee to come down and see whether these so-called dilatory States are as bad as they are painted. Senator CLAPP. That would go more to relieving those States of a charge that is invidious to them than to our action on child-labor legislation. Mr. PATTERSON. Well, if you will pardon my saying so, I do not think this bill touches the heart of the real child-labor proposition. In the first place, I suppose I have not the right to ask you a question? Senator CLAPP. Certainly you have. Mr. PATTERSON. Are you familiar with the southern cotton-mill conditions? Senator CLAPP. I am not. Mr. PATTERSON. Have you ever been there? Senator CLAPP. Only in a most incidental way. I have never been there and studied those mills, but this occurred to me yesterday. We sat all day yesterday and heard about the southern cotton mills, and it was interesting information; but unless the southern cotton mills are to be excepted, or unless the relation of the southern cottonmill industry to the industrial situation in this country is such that it should dominate in our policy, I confess I could not see yesterday why we should take so much evidence in regard to the southern cotton mills. Mr. PATTERSON. Senator Clapp, I want to call your attention to the fact, with all due respect to you, that the reason we are talking about the southern cotton mills is because we have no coal mines, practically. It is not a question of child labor in the coal mines in our State, and it is not a question of child labor in the canning factories in our State, because we have no factories, but we have industries in which child labor is employed. That is not touched at all by this bill any more than the sweatshops in New York are touched by this bill. that Senator CLAPP. It occurred to me yesterday, I am free to say, a great deal of this talk about not giving youth an opportunity to be industrious could have no reference whatever to the terms of this bill. I quite agree with that. Mr. PATTERSON. Now, I will tell you: It does not make any difference what is said to the contrary, we have invited you now down there to see for yourselves. The fact remains the same, no matter how many people dispute it, that there are a certain number of children in the South who, through no fault of their own-cortainly no fault of the cotton manufacturers-must work for a livelihood, for that is the only way they have of getting it. There is a law against going without clothes, and there is a natural law against going without food. Now, then, they must be fed. It has been sneered at and laughed at when the word "widow" is used, but the fact is that we have nearly one-third of our entire population at our place the families of widows. I took a census some time ago and found that if we had two more widow families in our village, one-third of our houses would be occupied by the families of widows. Why? It is the most natural thing in the world that those poor renters in the South, when the breadwinner dies, are up against a condition, not a theory, and the condition is this, that some one must provide the necessary clothes and food that those people need every day, and the cotton mill is the best place for them. It has been proven so. The reason I say it has been proven so is because there is no law in the State which says, "Thou shalt work in a cotton mill." They are at liberty to exercise their rights as human being and citizens of the State, the same as anyone else. If there were some other field open to them that was just as attractive and just as remunerative as a cotton mill, they would not go into the cotton mills. They would not live on the farms, even if the cotton mills were as bad as they have been painted. So they come in there. Why? Because the girls can make good wages in the cotton mills, whereas they can not make good wages on the farms. It does not take any argument to prove that. Farm work is not suited for girls, whereas mill work is. Now, to illustrate that, some of our witnesses were criticized for saying, for instance, that they did not think this work, this spinning millwork, would injure a child of, say, 10 years, 11 years, or 12 yearsI mean injure the child physically. Now, he has a perfect right to say that. He not only had the right to say it, but he told the truth, because the work is of such a nature that it can not injure the child physically. Of course, there is a point at which you must stop, just as I judge the friends of the bill would not continue to say that you must not work below 14 or 15 or 16 and continue the age up to 29 or 70. But the nature of the work in the cotton mill is of such character that there is nothing about it that can hurt the child physically, and when you speak of the climatic condition in these mills, I want to say that the climatic condition in the average Southern cotton millI do not mean all of them, I mean the extremely modern mills, I should say the atmosphere-is better than it is in nine-tenths of the best residences in the State, because not only is the temperature automatically controlled, but also the humidity. The children are not the poor, downtrodden, half-starved things that they have been pictured to you. Senator CLAPP. You are all the time speaking of a controversy that I do not think the Senators here have ever heard of or given any thought to. Mr. PATTERSON. Well, it has been published a great deal if the Senators are reading what is being published. The CHAIRMAN. Yes; I have read a good deal on that subject. Senator CLAPP. It still seems to me that either the effort should be made to relieve a kind of industry which you people have pointed out as very favorable or the effort should be made to show that in the Nation-wide equation of child labor there will be more harm done to childhood by the prohibition, such as in this bill, than there will be good done to them. Now, the feeling is quite general that it is bad for children, who are too young, to work indoors. That is the basis of the sentiment, I think, of the child-labor legislation. Mr. PATTERSON. I do not want you to understand, Senator, for one minute that the Southern mill manufacturers are in favor of child labor as ordinarily conceived. Senator CLAPP. Then, what do you propose to meet the situation? Mr. PATTERSON. What I want to tell you is this, that this bill does one of two things, positively and absolutely. It either puts the mills of the South on an eight-hour system or it puts the children on a 16-year age limit. Now, do not let anything else be in your minds than that. Senator CLAPP. Now, conceding that, does it not still leave the situation Mr. KITCHIN. If you will permit me, I will explain one of the reasons why the cotton-mill men are being heard here, and perhaps the only men being heard in opposition to the bill. If you will read the testimony and the arguments before the committee of the House, you will be led to the conclusion that except for the conditions of child labor in certain Southern States, the manufacturing States, that in all human probability this bill would not have been agitated. I think from à full consideration of what has been said about it in the journals and in the other parts of the press, you would be led to the belief that if you were satisfied that there was nothing wrong, nothing injurious in the southern cotton factories, that there would be no necessity for the passage of this bill. As your attention was called yesterday to the fact, perhaps 25 States have the 16-year law. In the report they show how many States have practically what this bill proposes to establish as the law or compel the States to establish, and I do not know that it would affect, my recollection is, five States materially, and if I tell you those States do not need the chastisement of the Federal law, probably you would not feel prepared to chastise any of them. Senator CLAPP. Now, that throws light upon what yesterday—I could not exactly understand why we were hearing so much about the southern cotton mills. Mr. KITCHIN. I will say, however, that the view that you had in the intimation of exception in the southern cotton mills, as I recall, prevailed in one State. I think that probably Arkansas originallyI do not know how the law is now-had a pretty good child-labor bill, but excepted factories, cotton factories, just as many States have excepted canneries. They recognized that the canning business was a |