Among the most advanced restrictions upon the hours of labor of children is that of New Jersey, which prohibits all persons, men, women and children, alike, from working in manufacturing establishments longer than fifty-five (55) hours in any week, or after one o’clock on Saturday. This provision applies throughout the year. Massachusetts and Rhode Island prohibit the employment of women of any age and of youths under eighteen years, longer than fifty-eight hours in any week, or ten hours in one day, or after nine at night or before six in the morning.
These laws have the advantage of precision. They require that the hours of work of the persons concerned must be posted conspicuously, and that the posted hours shall constitute the working day—work beyond the posted hours constituting a violation of the law—thus rendering the enforcement of the law simple and easy.
The statute of Utah prohibits all persons from working in mines, smelters and factories longer than eight hours in one day and forty-eight hours in one week. This statute has been sustained by the Supreme Court at Washington, in the decision in the case of Holden vs. Hardy, 1896. It does not, at present, affect any considerable number of children, because child labor hardly exists in Utah. But with the development of manufacture, now proceeding with startling rapidity, the value of this enlightened law for the children who must inevitably find employment is quite beyond computation. And as a precedent for similar legislation elsewhere, this statute and the extremely strong decision of the Supreme Court at Washington sustaining the validity of the statute are of epoch-making importance.
Night Work of Children.
The extent to which children are employed at night is not generally recognized. In any state in which such employment is not explicitly prohibited, it is very general in all branches of industry in which children are employed by day. Glassworks, nut and bolt works, tin can factories, furniture factories, cutleries, and scores of miscellaneous industries employ boys regularly at night. Girls are regularly employed in garment and candy factories during the busy season; and in some factories this work continues all through the year, as in the cotton mills of Georgia, Alabama and the Carolinas. Wherever the prohibition is not explicit and sweeping, the night work of children is the rule, not the exception. In Illinois and Indiana boys are not prohibited from working at night, and are regularly employed in the glassworks in both states under circumstances of great hardship. In Indiana, girls are forbidden to work after ten o’clock; but Illinois, cruelly belated in this respect, merely restricts the work of children under sixteen years of age to sixty hours in any week, and ten hours in one day, failing to proscribe night work even for girls. It is, accordingly, very common. Even in Boston, where the hours of labor of boys under eighteen years engaged in manufacture and other forms of commerce are strictly limited, a recent attempt to pass an ordinance requiring that newsboys under fourteen years of age shall not sell papers on the streets after eight o’clock at night failed utterly, and small boys are to be seen upon the streets at all hours. The place of honor in the matter of legislation prohibiting night work for children properly belongs to Ohio, which provides that minors under eighteen years of age, may not be employed after seven o’clock at night.
Children Not Yet Protected.
Large numbers of working children remain wholly unprotected by legislation. Not only have the four great cotton manufacturing states, Georgia, Alabama and the Carolinas, defeated all bills presented to their legislatures for the purpose of protecting young children, but in the North, also, newsboys, bootblacks, peddlers, vendors and the thousands of children employed in the tenement houses of New York and Chicago, and in the sweat-shops of Philadelphia, remain wholly outside of the law’s protection, so far as statutory regulation of the conditions of their work is concerned. The problem of abolishing the overwork of school children in tenement houses, under the sweating system, appears at present insoluble except by a prohibition of all tenement house work.
Enforcement.
To secure the enforcement of child labor legislation, there are needed factory inspectors, both men and women, equipped with ample powers and supplied with adequate funds for traveling and other expenses. These inspectors need good general education, long experience, and vigorous public opinion reinforcing their efforts. Massachusetts enjoys the unique distinction, among the American states, of possessing a large staff of factory inspectors meeting all these requirements; and Massachusetts is, accordingly, the only state of which it may be confidently asserted that its child labor law is uniformly and effectively enforced at all times and in all its provisions. A faithful officer serving a full quarter-century at the head of the department, with subordinates equally assured of permanent tenure of office during good behavior, has been able fearlessly and intelligently to enforce the laws securing to the children of Massachusetts fourteen full years of childhood, with opportunity for school life, followed by safety of life, limb and health after entering upon the years of work.
In all the other states it is extremely difficult for an inspector who faithfully enforces the law to retain his position. The interests which oppose such legislation and object to its enforcement, are enormously powerful and are thoroughly organized. The people who procure the enactment of child labor laws are usually working people unacquainted with the technical details of the work of inspection; busy in the effort to earn their own living; not able to keep vigilant watch upon the work of the inspectors, the creation of whose office they achieve. Thus the officials are subjected to pressure in one direction only. If they are idly passive, they may be allowed to vegetate in office several years. If they are aggressively faithful to the oath of office, enforcing the law by prosecuting offenders against its provisions, the children who profit by this are unable to reward their benefactors; the working people who obtained the creation of the office have no arts of bringing pressure to bear effectively to reward faithfulness in public service by appointed officers; while the offending employers are amply able to punish what they decry as officious overactivity, if they do not go farther and charge persecution and blackmail. For these reasons it may almost be stated as a general proposition that the more lax the officer, the longer his term of office; and the history of the departments of factory inspection, the country over, sadly substantiates the statement.