things which may be inherently unfair or immoral. If trade unionists and employers do not permit this legislation to blind their moral judgments, and remember that the removal of a legal ban from an action does not necessarily make that action under all circumstances either expedient or justifiable, then it is probable on the whole that the new legislation will result in more good than harm.

The new law has the virtue of equalizing things. The sympathetic lockout and the black-list cannot in practice be denied to the employers. They can use them because they can use them secretly; because the president of a great corporation or a small board of directors may maintain a black-list or order a sympathetic lockout so quietly that it would be impossible to prove their nature or for exactly what purposes they were declared. The trade union, on the other hand, must act in open concert, after legislative action, the nature and purpose of which can with difficulty be concealed. Many of the proceedings must be formally recorded. The new federal law puts the employer and the union on a more equal footing; although it ignores the vast interests of the public and removes legal penalties from actions which are often morally wrong and socially dangerous. In the end it will probably lead to the full exercise by the state of the right to suppress any black-list, lockout, strike, or boycott which becomes so extensive or offensive as to shock the public sense of fair play or seriously menace public welfare.

Child Labor Laws. The class of laws which we have been considering has been designed to relieve the laborer from ancient disabilities, so that he may be enabled in combination with his fellows to help himself. Most modern labor laws, however, are of a different type. They assume that the welfare of labor is of peculiar importance to society and that the state is therefore warranted in protecting the wage-earning classes, openly and frankly. Perhaps the earliest and most typical legislation enacted in this spirit is the child labor law.

The problem of child labor is frequently misconstrued. The principal reason why children work is not found in the needy

widow, the abandoned wife, or the stony-hearted employer. The principal causes of child labor are the restlessness of the child; the failure of ordinary school training to hold his attention and arouse his ambition; and the ignorance or selfishness of parents. And the evil consists, principally, in the fact that the child who goes to work early usually gets into a "blind alley" occupation, and is thus prevented from developing his full potential earning power. His ability to serve both himself and society is curtailed by his excessively early start. "The better occupation either will not receive the young child at all, or wants him with more schooling, or offers such a low initial wage that both child and parent turn to the mill, with its greater present wage opportunities." The wage in the low-grade occupation is at first relatively high, but in three or four years. the boy has reached his maximum earning capacity and early marriage fastens him to the job. The boy who begins at sixteen years or later soon catches his less fortunate brother, and in a comparatively few years is earning a superior wage. As a foundation for real promotion and advancement the work which children between fourteen and sixteen years of age do has usually little value.

1

It is thus plain that the problem of child labor is positive and constructive, not merely negative. It avails little to prohibit children from working at this or that; agencies must be provided helpfully to guide their activities. Already the most advanced states have incorporated in their laws a provision requiring employers of child labor to give the children a specified amount of vocational training, or time to secure such training, in institutions provided by the state. More important still, agencies are being established to determine by physical and psychological tests whether children who have completed the required schooling are really fitted to enter industry, and what kinds of work they are best fitted to undertake.2

1 Susan M. Kingsbury, "The Relation of Children to the Industries," in Report of Massachusetts Commission on Industrial and Technical Education, p. 44.

1 See Mental and Physical Measurements of Working Children, by Helen Thompson Wooley and Charlotte Rust Fischer.

The beginnings are tentative and the work difficult. But the period draws to an end in which ignorant children drift or are pushed by ignorant parents into the work which lies nearest at hand; and the time approaches when the most careful thought will be given to the selection of one's life work and the training for it.

Child labor laws differ greatly in the different states, and the resulting inequality of burden upon competing employers so complicates the problem that, in 1916, Congress enacted a law debarring from interstate commerce goods produced by very young children - leaving each state to legislate as it sees fit about products confined to intrastate trade. This, in our opinion, should be productive of far more good than evil. But the constitutionality of this new federal legislation is involved in grave doubt, and the new statute is in some respects unfortunately worded, so that its exact scope is not yet clear.

A good state child labor law, it is now generally conceded, should prohibit the employment of all children under fourteen, and of all children under a higher age limit who are undersized, weakly, or illiterate. "Young persons " who are deficient in the fundamental requirements of an English education should be compelled, where possible, to attend a continuation school. Work in "immoral" or dangerous occupations, at night, or in excess of eight hours per day should be forbidden for all children under the higher age limit.

The successful enforcement of such laws has been found difficult. Birth or baptismal certificates, or other similar evidences of age, have to be procured from parents; certificates of attendance and proficiency from school authorities; examinations of health and educational requirements must be made; and employers required to demand, file, and return employment certificates. The community must maintain and properly support factory inspectors and health and school attendance officers in adequate numbers, with power to prosecute violations of the law and with secure tenure of office. The community should further provide for dependent families which

need the earnings of their children, keep birth records, and maintain schools fitted to hold the attention of the child and properly train him for his life work. "The best child labor law is a compulsory school law covering forty weeks in the year and requiring the attendance of all children under fourteen years of age." 1

The Labor of Women.

The labor of women is not in itself

a problem which calls for legislation. The evil consists in working under conditions which undermine health and morals, or for inadequate wages. It is impossible to describe here in detail the various laws which have been passed relating to the employment of women. Women are subject to the "factory acts" relating to sanitation, safety, and occupational diseases, and to general statutes regulating production in tenement houses and the time, frequency, and character of wage payments. In the more advanced states also, the labor of women in manufacturing, mechanical, and mercantile establishments is likely to be safeguarded by laws limiting the hours of labor, prohibiting night work and continuous employment for more than six hours, for example, without an interval for meals; providing and permitting the use of suitable seats; requiring separate and sanitary toilet facilities; prohibiting the employment (knowingly) of women within two weeks before or four weeks after childbirth; and in Massachusetts for example directing local authorities to furnish responsible mothers having dependent children sufficient aid "to enable the mothers to bring up their children properly in their own homes."

Until very recent years, regulations similar to the above represented the extreme limit to which any American state had gone in the protection of women. And even the constitutionality of such regulation was in grave doubt, for an important statute limiting the hours of labor had been declared unconstitutional by the highest court in Illinois, and in New York a statute prohibiting night work had been similarly annulled, on the general grounds that they infringed the free

1 Cf. Florence Kelly, Some Ethical Gains Through Labor Legislation, pp. 98, 99, and passim.

dom of contract and were "unduly discriminatory between citizens," the court remarking (in the New York decision)" that woman is no more the ward of the state than is man." But under the more liberal leadership of the Supreme Court of the United States, both of the state courts in question have recently reversed these decisions and have sanctioned similar laws as reasonable health regulations, looking not only to the protection of the individual woman but to the "welfare of the race."1

Minimum. Wage Laws for Women. - In about a fourth of the states minimum wage laws have been passed, with the general object of requiring that wages paid in certain occupations shall be sufficient to provide for a woman's normal needs “regarded as a human being living in a civilized community." Whether these statutes will be effective time alone can tell, but their passage marks a revolution in the social and legislative philosophy of this country.

Minimum wage laws were first adopted by the Australian state of Victoria in 1896 to regulate wages and other conditions of labor in the "sweated trades." Trades or industries in which wages are particularly low are usually singled out by legislation, though in Victoria the government may apply the system to additional trades by administrative order. These wage boards, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, are designed to induce compulsory collective bargaining, in which the state participates by compelling employers and employees to fix standard conditions of employment. In England and this country the legislation is as yet much more tentative and restricted. "The outstanding characteristics of the American minimum wage legislation compared with that of England, Australia, and New Zealand are these: The first is its omission of men; the second is its reference to the welfare of the people as a whole; the third, which is responsible for both the others, is its subordination to the courts on the grounds of constitutionality, entailing the practice of placing upon American states the burden of proof that they 1 L. D. Clark, The Law of the Employment of Labor, p. 103.