Social legislation and social activity

by American Academy of Political and Social Science

In the case of the aged workman the situation is specially hard, as he cannot find any place in an industrial system in which alertness counts for more than skill. He cannot profit by accumulated experiences as others do. It is the tragic side of the question, this grievous predicament of the worker who has spent his energies adding to the nation’s wealth. It can and ought to be overcome, not by any system of alms-giving which must always prove inadequate, not by retiring him to idleness, but by keeping him employed at such work as his long training and peculiar abilities fit him for. As his earning power declines at a certain period, some system of insurance could supply the deficiency.

In respect to the material advantages of machinery, it surely has enlarged the capacities of the people and multiplied their opportunities. The possibilities are such as to make the mind tremble in anticipation. It is the agency which alone can raise wages, reduce the working time and enhance the buying power of money—a threefold gain.

The feeling against machinery will not cease until the workman profits more directly as a producer as well as a consumer, until he is treated as a human being and not as a mere animated tool, until he becomes more than a tender, an incident in production. The human element must become more evident and the toiler made to feel his partnership. The true mission of machinery, would then be revealed to all as the only means which liberate man from drudgery, increase his control over nature and provide the leisure essential to a higher culture.

One of the acknowledged evils of machinery is the exploitation of child labor which usually follows its introduction. Such was the case in England, and we find it repeated to-day in the new industrial districts of the South. In such industries where the repetition of a small mechanical process enables child labor to be employed, the temptation to take advantage of the opportunity is great; for children have no rights to assert, no wage scale to uphold or working time to protect. In that respect child labor is akin to slave labor. It must be added for fairness that the capitalists utilizing such opportunities are not alone to blame, for shortsighted and grasping parents often drive their children into the mills because of the paltry sum which can be added to the family income, and in time they get into the habit of depending upon the pittance purchased at so terrible a price.

The inducement of a “plentiful supply of cheap labor” is also held out to capitalists by small communities as a means of persuading them to locate factories in their neighborhood. These are the two chief obstacles in the way of reform. In course of time, however, as the consequences become more evident and the exultation over the establishment of a new factory wears off, the public conscience revolts against this debasement of the helpless children and the law is eventually evoked to suppress the evil. The strenuous efforts being made in the South upon the part of the labor organizations and sympathizers to enact protective laws lead us to hope that we will at least be spared the dreadful experiences of England during the first half century of the factory system.

V. Tendencies of Factory Legislation and Inspection in the United States

By Sarah S. Whittelsey, Ph.D., New Haven, Conn.

TENDENCIES OF FACTORY LEGISLATION AND INSPECTION IN THE UNITED STATES

By Sarah S. Whittelsey, Ph.D.

The introduction of the factory system in American industry acted in this country, as it had in England, to develop certain abnormal conditions of labor that in the end required government interference. Thus in the manufacturing states, chiefly in the North and East, there has come into existence a very considerable body of factory law. The enactment of such regulative statutes is the prerogative of each of the several states acting independently and according to the discretion of its own legislature; in consequence there is great variety in these laws and in their scope,—from the comparatively complete codes of Massachusetts and New York to absolutely no regulation whatever.