TEN YEARS OF CHILD LABOR REFORM IN THE SOUTH.

By A. J. McKELWAY.

The organization of the National Child Labor Committee in 1914 followed the passage of the first child labor laws in Virginia, North and South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas, in the legislative sessions immediately preceding that year. Maryland, Kentucky and Tennessee had somewhat older standards, while Georgia, Florida and Mississippi had no child labor laws, and Oklahoma, New Mexico and Arizona were not yet states. The states in the first group were entirely satisfied with low standards of legislation, and no law enforcement; and the states without any protection for the working children had hardly any stirrings of conscience on the subject. From one point of view, great progress has been made. All these states now have child labor laws and all except the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama and New Mexico have reached the fourteen-year age limit for the employment of children in factories, with Mississippi prohibiting the labor of boys under twelve and of girls under fourteen. All of them have reduced the hours of labor for children to a ten or eleven hour day, and most of them have forbidden night work for children under sixteen. The enforcement of the child labor law has been put in the hands of some central authority, except in North Carolina and Mississippi, though the appropriations for factory inspection are still ridiculously small. Undoubtedly, also, the pressure of public opinion, growing more and more intolerant of this abuse of childhood, has had its effect in clearing of the smaller children those factories whose owners desired the good opinion of their fellow men. All this is gain.

But when we think what might have been accomplished by the simultaneous moving forward to proper standards of the whole body of southern states, a decade ago; when we consider the hundreds of thousands of children that would have been rescued from factories, stores and streets, and sent to school, children that have passed now beyond all such saving help, the conviction becomes

more and more compelling that this piecemeal state-by-state legislation each state afraid to move forward, for fear that the salvation of its children may involve some loss of profits through the competition of neighboring states-this may go by the name of states' rights but it is in reality a cloak for the children's wrongs. A little less than ten years ago, after accepting work with the National Child Labor Committee, the writer would watch the twelve-year old children at work in the mill and hope that the new law would reach them before they became fourteen. He was sanguine in the belief that the ten-year-olds would be kept out of the mill. But with the present experience he might have looked into the face of a new-born baby and known that the mill would claim him as another victim before the strong hand of an effective law would be stretched out for his defence. For ten-year-olds may still work legally in the factories of Georgia, and in violation of law they still labor in the other cotton mill states of the South.

States with a fourteen-year age limit for factory workers, now form a circle around the sore spot of the nation in respect to child labor: the Carolinas, Georgia and Alabama. Maryland, after long contentment with the twelve-year age limit applying to factories alone, and years of hypocritical enforcement of the law, suddenly waked up two years ago, passed a new child labor law, excellent except in the hours of labor allowed for children, and added to its force of factory inspectors. Virginia has moved up from a twelve to a fourteen-year age limit, though she allows twelve-year old children, of dependent families, to be employed. A more advanced measure of reform which was killed by the Senate two years ago, is now pending before the Virginia legislature. West Virginia has reached a fair standard of child protection, though she still allows boys of fourteen to work in her mines, and in her glass factories at night. Kentucky and Tennessee have very good laws, except for the hours of labor for the children between fourteen and sixteen;" and the Tennessee manufacturers complain bitterly of the competition of their rivals and the lower standards that prevail in North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi. They have frequently expressed themselves as desiring a federal child labor law. Arkansas has about the same law that Virginia has; Oklahoma and Arizona have excellent laws; New Mexico still clings to its territorial statute

forbidding the employment of boys under twelve in mines; and Texas has a fifteen-year age limit, fairly well enforced, for the employment of children about machinery in factories. Louisiana at one end of the sore spot, and Florida at the other, have good laws with good enforcement. But the factory children are mainly at work in the low-standard states, the Carolinas, Georgia and Alabama.

It is not for the want of asking that these states have refused to grant protection for their own toiling children. In North Carolina there was a slight advance in 1907 from the twelve to the thirteenyear age limit, except for apprenticed children, and presto, all the cotton mill children became apprentices. The bill to raise the age limit was defeated in 1909, 1911 and 1913, in two instances through the treachery of the manufacturers who had agreed to a compromise measure. In South Carolina the manufacturers have been skilful enough to complicate the child labor question with the compulsory school attendance problem. They pose as the lovers of education, while really denying the children in their employ all chance for an education after the twelfth year is reached, for they defeat child labor legislation, which might pass the legislature, by tying it up with compulsory school attendance bills which cannot pass. This has happened in one form or another in four successive biennial state legislatures in South Carolina.

In Georgia, the legislature meets every year, and since 1905, the agents of the National Child Labor Committee, working with the State Committee, have besought the legislature to enact an effective law. The result has been that Georgia has forbidden. children under twelve years to work in factories, unless they are orphans or children of invalid parents, in which case they may go to work at ten years of age and work an eleven-hour day. The Alabama legislature meets but once in four years. Since 1903, Alabama has made the great advance of prohibiting the labor of ten-year old children, and fixing the age of fourteen as the proper limit for night work in factories. Mississippi has the twelve-year age limit for boys and the fourteen-year age limit for girls. She has established, however, an eight-hour day for boys under sixteen and for girls under eighteen, and a cotton manufacturers' lobby at Jackson has been trying to get this provision of the law repealed. Though

it was passed two years ago, they have attributed every failure of a cotton mill in ten years to the working of this law, not yet enforced.

Eternal vigilance in forty-eight states is necessary to prevent the repeal of laws that have been passed at a tremendous sacrifice of time, energy and means.

What's the answer? Uncle Sam.

Some of the constitutional sharps say it is unconstitutional for Uncle Sam to prohibit the shipment of child-made goods from one state to another. As I read the history of our country, the original thirteen colonies were sovereign states, little nations in fact, until the compact between them known as the Constitution of the United States was agreed to, in which document the states surrendered many of their powers for the general good. Before the Union was formed, Maryland and Virginia had some trouble over commercial matters between themselves and sent commissioners to Mount Vernon to settle them. Out of this meeting at Mount Vernon grew the Annapolis Convention, and later the convention that adopted the Constitution.

Now, Virginia, as a sovereign state, before any of her power as such was transferred to the Federal Government, had a perfect right, which no one disputed, to prohibit the importation of child-made goods or convict-made goods or any other kind of goods, from Maryland or from North Carolina. Manifestly, Virginia does not possess that power today. The manufacturers at Richmond, where the legislature is in session, are doubtless even now complaining that Virginia is losing her families to North Carolina, where children may be employed at an earlier age than is possible within the bounds of Virginia. They are saying that they cannot consent to an eighthour day for children because the North Carolina manufacturers, their rivals, can keep their factories running an eleven-hour day. Virginia could not have prevented the North Carolina factories from operating in the days before the Union was formed, but she could have said, "You shall not send your goods manufactured under such conditions to my people, in competition with my more humane manufacturers." What has become of the power that Virginia once had? Was it lost in the shuffle when the states merged into a nation, or does the nation possess it in its entirety in the interstate commerce clause of the Constitution?

That's the answer: Uncle Sam. And when Uncle Sam says, "Thou shalt not," the shadow of the federal prison at Leavenworth or Atlanta falls athwart the would-be violator of law. Child labor will become as unfashionable as the hoop-skirt, or any other relic of bygone days, once Uncle Sam decrees it to be a crime.