In 1907 four more Southern States attempt laws to control agricultural labor; the factory acts and child-labor laws continue to spread through the South; New York largely develops its line of sweat-shop legislation, and more child-labor laws and laws prohibiting the work of women in mines are introduced in the South.
In 1908 Oklahoma adopts the Kansas contempt statute, and Virginia provides for appeals to the Supreme Court in contempt cases. South Carolina makes it a misdemeanor to fail to work after being employed on a contract for personal services, or for the employer on his side to fail to carry it out. Oklahoma adopts a curious strike statute which, besides the usual provision for the closed shop, makes it a felony to bring workmen, i.e., strike-breakers, from other places in the State or from other States under false pretences, including, in the latter, concealment of the existence of the strike; and makes it a felony to hire armed men to guard such persons.
With this climax of labor legislation our review may properly end, but the reader will not fail to note the advantage that may be derived from experience of these extraordinary statutes as they are tried out in the different States and Territories. It could be wished that some machinery could be provided for obtaining information as to their practical working. The legislation of 1909 was principally concerned with the matter of employers' liability for accidents, a conference upon this subject having been held by three State commissions, New York, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Massachusetts extended the act of 1908 permitting employers and employees to contract for the compensation of accidents; and Montana established a State accident insurance for coal-miners. California and Montana exempted labor in a large degree from the operation of the State anti-trust laws; but Washington adopted a new statute defining a conspiracy to exist when two or more persons interfere or threaten to interfere with the trade, tools, or property of another, and proof of an overt act is not necessary. North and South Carolina, Texas, and Connecticut passed the usual statute protecting employees from being discharged because of membership in a trades-union, which, as we have said, has been held unconstitutional wherever contested. Arizona, California, Idaho, Washington, Wyoming and Nevada enacted or amended eight-hour measures for employees in mines, but little was accomplished for children in the Southern States.[1]
[Footnote 1: See "Progressive Tendencies in the Labor Legislation of 1909," by Irene Osgood, in the American Political Science Review for May, 1910.]
The labor-injunction question has been recently covered by an admirable study prepared by the Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics and published in December, 1909. The investigation covers eleven years, from 1898 to 1908, in which there occurred two thousand and two strikes. In sixty-six of these strikes the employers sought injunctions and in forty-six cases injunctions were actually issued. In only nine cases were there proceedings for contempt of these injunctions, while only in two cases out of the two thousand were there any convictions for contempt of court. In eighteen cases injunctions were sought to prevent employees from striking, but only in four of these were they granted, and one of these was later dissolved. Seven bills were brought by employees against unions for interference with their employment, etc., and in three cases unions sought injunctions against other unions. In one case a union brought a bill against an employer and in one case an employer sought an injunction against an employers' association. Under a decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Court it was declared unlawful for a trade-union to impose fines upon those of its members who refused to obey its orders to strike or engage in a boycott. In 1909 a bill was introduced in the Legislature with the special object of permitting this, but it failed of passage. The Bulletin contains a brief history of equity jurisdiction in labor cases and reprints all the decisions of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts down to the year 1909, and the actual injunctions issued by Superior Courts in five late cases, with a chronological summary of proceedings in cases concerning industrial disputes in all Massachusetts courts for the eleven years covered by the report.
The matter of labor legislation is of such world-wide importance that a word or two may not be out of place concerning recent legislation in other countries. Other than factory and sweat-shop acts and hours of labor laws, there are three great lines of modern legislation in Europe, North America, and Australasia: employers' liability, old-age pensions, minimum wage. On the first point, the tendency of modern legislation, as has been intimated, is to make the employer liable in all cases for personal injuries suffered in his employ without regard to contributory negligence or the cause of the accident. That is, it is in the nature of an insurance which the employer is made to carry as part of his business expenses. It has the great advantage of doing away with litigation and confining his liability to reasonable amounts, and in the writer's opinion is in the long run for the benefit of the employer himself. There is one exception. The employer is not liable when the injury was caused by the wilful misconduct of the workman injured.
Old-age pensions, or State insurance against old age as well as disability, now exist in several countries, notably Germany, New Zealand, and England. The German law[1] is much the most intelligent and the least communistic in that it provides that half the fund is raised by deductions made from the wages of the workmen themselves. It applies to all persons, male and female, employed under salary or wages as workmen, journeymen, apprentices, or servants; also to all industrial workmen, skilled laborers, clerks, porters, and assistants; also to all other persons whose occupation consists principally in the service of others, such as teachers who do not receive an annual salary of more than five hundred dollars; also to sailors and railway employees; also to domestic servants. No one is obliged to insure himself who is over the age of seventy, and no one is bound to insure who does not work in a required insurance class for more than twelve weeks or fifty days in each year. When women get married, they insist on reimbursement of one half of all the insurance assessments they have paid up to that time, provided such assessments amount to two hundred weeks, or four years—a provision which must very much help out marriages, and from which the amusing deduction may be drawn that the average value of a husband in Germany is considered to be about one-half the expense of supporting his wife for a period of two hundred weeks, or four years. On the other hand, the law has the effect of postponing marriage for the first four years of a woman's employment, as it practically imposes a penalty upon a woman marrying before four years from the time when she begins to pay to the State insurance money.
[Footnote 1: U.S. Industrial Commission Reports, vol. V, pp. 228-241.]
The English old-age pension law is a mere gratuity in the nature of outdoor relief, giving to everybody who has reached a certain age, without reference to any previous service, tramps or drones as well as workmen. It is a law indefensible in principle and merely the accident of a radical government. It provides that every person over seventy whose yearly means do not exceed thirty-one pounds ten shillings (i.e. income from property or privilege) and is not in "regular receipt of poor relief" and has not "habitually failed to work according to his ability, opportunity and need" nor been sentenced to any imprisonment for a criminal offence—all to be determined by a local pension committee with appeal to the central pension authority—shall receive a pension of five shillings a week when his annual means do not exceed twenty-one pounds, that is, thirteen pounds a year, down to one shilling a week when they exceed twenty-eight pounds seventeen shillings six pence.
The New Zealand law is more intelligent. It extends old-age pensions to every person over the age of sixty-five who has resided thirty-five years in the colony and not been imprisoned for a criminal offence, nor has abandoned his wife, nor neglected to provide for his or her children. It does not, however, appear that any previous employment is necessary. The pension amounts to eighteen pounds, say ninety dollars, a year and is not given to any one who has an income of fifty-two pounds a year. The machinery of the law is largely conducted through the post-office and the entire expense is met by the state. That is to say, there is no contribution from the laborers themselves.