with children when I first went there to investigate conditions, may thank us, in part, for the elimination of the children by the present Georgia law, which now prohibits children under 13 to work and within another year will prohibit children under 14. And I wondered why the three Congressmen from South Carolina who asked, according to their testimony, the mill operatives what they thought about this law-which as we know now was misrepresented to them in the public press and in public speeches-did not take occasion to tell their people, even the fathers, who put their children to work and who are the voters of the cotton-mill districts, that this law would be for their benefit in simply raising the wages of employees to a normal scale, so that the whole family would not have to work to support life, but that the family with the younger children at school would get the same wages finally that they get to-day.

I must pass over the other gentlemen who spoke concerning their benevolence. I was glad to note the promise given by Mr. Long and other South Carolina gentlemen that the 14-year-age limit would be put into effect at this legislature. I wondered whether the agitation for the Federal law was not already helping the manufacturers to come to an agreement to allow this long-deferred measure to pass their State legislature. I call attention to the superintendent who represented the labor people in an organization in which only 7 out of the 320 employees of his mill were eligible for membership.

In regard to that statement made concerning the optional compulsory-education law in North Carolina, I wondered how many mill counties had put that law into operation since the legislature allowed them to do it. I call attention to Mr. Joseph Bradley's statement concerning the Merrimack Mills, in Huntsville, Ala., who thought it was really possible to put the eight-hour law into effect, but who was apparently ignorant of the fact that the same corporation, in Massachusetts, employing these foreign children who were so contemptuously described by another speaker, had put the eight-hour law into effect there, and that this New England corporation, living under a humane law in Massachusetts, allowed its representative to appear before a congressional committee to prevent the same law from going into effect in Alabama by Federal action. It seems to me that Mr. Bradley's statement that you can hardly find a family that comes from the country that does not live in a one-room house is rather extreme, and I am fairly familiar with the rural conditions in the South. I call attention to Mr. Patterson's statement that he was opposed to child labor, thought there was no money in it, and again I wondered at the benevolence of these mill men in employing an attorney-for a large fee, I hope and paying his expenses purely in behalf of their operatives, at a financial sacrifice so far as the employment of children was concerned.

With regard to the junket which has been offered to the committee, I was somewhat amused at the suggestion that the committee should go to Roanoke Rapids and Henderson and Durham and Greensboro and Charlotte and Greenville and then return. Some of the mills which Commissioner Watson, of South Carolina, dubbed "show mills" are to be found in these very cities. I call your attention to how these witnesses seemed to contradict each other. From some you heard statements about the friendly relations between employer

and the employed and that the organization of mill employees was not necessary or desirable. Then, when it came to the question as to whether the employees had signed these so-called petitions because they thought the millmen wanted them to sign, it was claimed that that would have been a sufficient reason for their not signing them, on account of the antagonism between operatives and the mill owners. Mr. David Long, of Rock Hill, S. C., was one of the South Carolina gentlemen who appeared before this committee two years ago. It was Mr. Gossett, however, who said frankly that the parents were inclined to misstate the ages of the children. So, of course, nobody knows just how many children under 12 or under 14 or under 16 are employed in these mills. Mr. Gossett was also ignorant concerning the child-labor law of his own State, believing that there was a 14year age limit in South Carolina, with exemptions.

Concerning the testimony of Dr. Long, of Roanoke Rapids, I was interested to note that the Federal Government can be called upon by the cotton mills to help, through its Public Health Service, in preventing the epidemics of malaria. The question of State rights never seems to lie in the way of an appropriation. I have no doubt that Dr. Long is doing an excellent work at Roanoke Rapids, though I could not help thinking that it was highly convenient to the employers to have one of their young employers also one of the town commissioners and concerned with such disagreeable questions as the fixing of the tax rate.

And then, again, I wondered why Dr. McBrayer, who testified concerning the deporable tuberculosis conditions in a silk mill in North Carolina, was brought all the way here to testify by the southern cotton mills, when he said very clearly that he knew nothing of any investigation into tuberculosis in the cotton mills. The reason for it dawned upon me, however, when it was ascertained that this silk mill at Wadesboro was owned by a New Jersey citizen. Yet, again, it seemed to me rather a reflection upon North Carolina that she should have allowed a condition there which would not have been tolerated in the State from which this citizen had come, with 45 per cent of the mill workers infected and 45 per cent of the infected showing physical signs of tuberculosis, with a boy who had "a little trouble in his lungs" allowed to go back to work in the mill because he had not reached the stage in which he would certainly infect others. It seems to me that perhaps the passage of this bill would relieve the situation, at least to the extent of eliminating the younger children from the mill. I was glad to hear Dr. McBrayer's testimony as a medical man to the effecct that work for 11 hours a day would be pretty hard for a grown man, and that he did not mean anything he said to be an argument against shorter hours of labor. Perhaps the New Jersey citizen was also a Republican, and perhaps that was the reason why Mr. Parker, of New Jersey, was the only Republican who voted against this bill last year, having in mind the protection of a possible former constituent. I believe Mr. Parker was also a member of the Judiciary Committee of the House, which long ago decided, without any bill before it, with only an appropriation before it for an investigation into child-labor conditions-decided in advance of the Supreme Court, as a sort of junior supreme court-that a Federal child-labor law must be unconstitutional.

I was also glad to hear Dr. McBrayer's testimony to the effect that stonecutters and mine workers are liable to pneumonia because of their occupation. At least, the tender lungs of children should be protected against the dust and smoke of mines and quarries.

J. B. Harris, of South Carolina, was also clearly under the misapprehension that this bill contained a 16-year age limit for the employment of children, though he thought it not impossible to meet the problem of an 8-hour day.

I call attention to one thing in Mr. Ruffin's testimony, namely, that "young people advance to more congenial work, not to higher wages"; that is, that the maximum efficiency of the cotton-mill worker is reached at a comparatively early age.

With this attempted review of the testimony, may I ask the committee what it all amounted to as an argument that it was unjust to pass a Federal child-labor law. If the children in the mills whom this law would affect are so few as represented by some of those who made their statements here, why all this fuss about it? Why, out of the thousands of industries in this country, do the cotton mills alone protest against this measure? On the ground of its injustice to themselves? If the children are few, it can hardly affect them. If the children are numerous, it is a matter concerning which this Nation is properly concerned; for just as the citizen of the State is a citizen of the Nation, so the future citizen of the State is the future citizen of the Nation.

I append a table which shows how many children of the different States would have been affected by this bill if there had been no decrease in the number employed since 1900:

[Extract from hearing held in 1914 on the Palmer-Owen bill.]

COMMITTEE ON LABOR,

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

Washington, February 27, 1914.

STATEMENT OF HON. A. MITCHELL PALMER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA.

Mr. PALMER. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I want to call the attention of the committee to a bill introduced by myself, H. R. 13892, a bill to prevent interstate commerce in the products of child labor, and for other purposes.

In the short time I shall have it will be impossible for me to discuss this matter at great length.

The CHAIRMAN. I was going to suggest that inasmuch as the subject of this bill involves in a most vital way the manufacturing and labor and commercial interests of the country, that we would hear from you this morning a comprehensive statement of the object of its principal factors in order that the country might know what they have to consider, and we would not consider that we have gotten all the help from you we need from a brief statement from you this morning.

Mr. PALMER. It was my idea that all I should do to-day was to make a statement as to what this bill is, what it proposes to do, and, in a most general way, state the reasons for it, in the hope that the committee would give us a little further time to present some further facts and arguments on the part of the friends of this measure and to give a free, full, and ample opportunity to those who may be opposed to it, if any, to be heard before the committee. So, before I conclude, I shall ask the committee to fix some date when we can have a full hearing from both sides on the bill.

The proposition contained in this bill is a Federal child-labor law. It differs radically from former attempts at Federal child-labor legislation, and, in my judgment and in the judgment of many men of very much wider experience and very much deeper learning in the law than myself, this bill as framed will meet all the objections which have heretofore been raised against this sort of legislation. In a word, the proposition is to provide that it shall be unlawful for any person to ship or deliver for shipment in interstate commerce the products of any mill, mine, quarry, or manufacturing establishment where the labor of children below a certain standard is employed.

The standard fixed by the act is: In mines and quarries, 16 years; in mills, factories, workshops, or other manufacturing establishments, 14 years, with a further provision against the night work of children and a further provision for an 8-hour day for children between 14 and 16 years of age. In other words, this bill, if it becomes a law, will keep out of interstate commerce the products of any mine or quarry where children under 16 years of age employed; the products of any mill, cannery, workshop, or manufacturing establishment in which children under 14 years of age are employed, or where children between 14 and 16 years of age are compelled to work more than 8 hours a day, or in the nighttime between 7 o'clock at night and 7 o'clock in the morning.

Now, this measure differs from the Beveridge bill, or, properly, the Beveridge amendment, which was pressed in 1907, and upon which Senator Beveridge made his great argument in support of child-labor legislation. It differs from the Kenyon bill, which is the Beveridge proposition, in that those bills put the burden upon the carrier and make it unlawful for any common carrier to receive or ship goods manufactured under conditions of the sort fixed by the law. The Copley bill, introduced in the last Congress and in this Congress, and which, I think, is before the Interstate Commerce Committee-although it may be before this committee; I am not sure is quite a different measure, and it again puts the burden largely upon the carrier. It provides against what it calls "antisocial labor," and puts it up to the Secretary of Labor to determine whether the factory laws in various States are sufficient, and whether conditions in the various States are right, and gives him such enormous power and puts upon him such a tremendous burden that it seems to me it would be impracticable and impossible.

The simple method, as it strikes us, is to make it a misdemeanor for the producer, for the man who is responsible for the labor itself being employed, to put into interstate commerce the article which is produced under these conditions.

Now, I take it, Mr. Chairman, that what this committee will want to satisfy itself about before it reports favorably upon a bill of this character would be three things: First, whether child labor exists in this country in a nation-wide way; whether it is in the mills, factories, mines, quarries, and workshops of the land from one end of the country to the other; and, second, whether it is such an evil of a nation-wide character affecting the interests of the Nation and the future of our people as demands uniform, universal legislation to correct it, preferably Federal legislation; and, third, whether, assuming that these things be true-that child labor exists in the country and that it is a great evil that ought to be corrected, and as a national evil ought, if possible, be corrected by Federal legislation-whether it may be reached under the power of Congress under the Constitution to regulate commerce between the States. Now, 10 years ago, the first question-perhaps the second question-might have been debatable. Five years ago, perhaps, there would have been found men on both sides of the proposition, but to-day it seems to me there can be no argument upon it. The country has awakened to the fact that millions of our little children, despite some advance in the States upon this question in the way of regulatory legislation, are being employed in the mines and quarries and mills and factories of the land, and that the result has been and is bound to be in the future so appalling upon the health and morals of the children and of the men and women as they develop that it will constitute a great crying evil which calls for correction and remedy.

Now, in every State the question has been agitated; in every State attempts have been made at corrective legislation-vigorous, earnest attempts. They have met with opposition as vigorous and as earnest, and the principal opposition to this kind of legislation in the States presents the strongest argument which can possibly come before the Congress for legislation here upon this question. The campaign in every State in reference to this child-labor legislation makes it plain that it is interstate commerce which is at the very root of this great evil. It is absolutely a national question, because to-day, with our greater facilities for transportation for commerce between the States, production and manufacturing have become not a State proposition but an interstate proposition. No producer anywhere to-day of any size, especially of the kind where children are employed, is engaged in the production of articles the consumption of which is confined entirely within the lines of the State within which the production takes place.

The commodities of our manufacturing establishments go everywhere, and, consequently, when we go to a State and ask that State to make a law which will crush out this evil of the employment of little children on the mills and factories, we are immediately met by the answer on the part of the manufac turer and producing interests, "It is not fair to us and to our own people in this State to do this thing, because it puts us in competition, after you have done it, with the States which are not progressive and are not interested in humane legislation of this kind and which refuse to pass this kind of legislation. Those States are, therefore, able to produce our article at lower cost." And it is a good argument, and it has constituted a block in a great many States against this kind of legislation. The legislator says:

"If our State is going to be compelled to suffer by reason of putting good laws upon our statute books, if our business interests and industrial development and all that sort of thing are going to be at the mercy of other States, we will not put this kind of law upon our statute books."

A situation is presented which, it seems to me, aside from the constitutional and legal question, calls for some kind of uniform, universal, Nation-wide regulation of this evil.

Now, before we get through, Mr. Chairman, we shall ask opportunity to present to the committee evidence to show what I have here stated, that child labor exists to an enormous degree in the country and that it is a great evil. Mr. MAHER. Some of the States of the Union have laws preventing the employment of children?

Mr. PALMER. Yes.

Mr. MAHER. Not all the States?

Mr. PALMER. There are different standards.

Mr. MAHER. If this act were to become law, could not the employer or merchant take refuge in the Sherman antitrust law, that this act was depriving him of his rights to interstate commerce?