The Ohio bill includes, also, the street trading provisions of the uniform law. Special street trading bills are pending in Iowa, Nebraska, New York and also, we understand, in Michigan and Minnesota. Their outcome is doubtful because the average legislator seems to be blind to the bad results of street trading and cheerfully reflects the popular view that these “sturdy, little merchants” are all supporting widowed mothers and headed straight for the White House.
Many states are coming to recognize the needs of children over fourteen. This is evidenced not only by the wide discussion of vocational schools and the bills before the Legislatures of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Massachusetts, New York and other states, but also by the extension of child labor laws. Thus California, having proved the advantage of the eight-hour day for women and boys under sixteen, is considering the eight-hour limit for all under eighteen. Wisconsin is proposing to enlarge the list of hazardous occupations forbidden under eighteen and to provide for continued revision in the future by the Industrial Commission. The prohibition of night messenger service for those under twenty-one is included in the uniform law, as pending in Pennsylvania and passed in Delaware, but not in Massachusetts and Utah, where it has already been enacted. In Connecticut, a dangerous trades bill is pending and the bill for a general sixteen year limit includes an age restriction of twenty-one years for night messenger service. The same night messenger prohibition was included also in the bills based on the uniform law that went down to defeat this year in Utah, Idaho, Arkansas, Texas and West Virginia. Iowa, the only other state in which a night messenger law has been introduced this year, proposes an eighteen year limit.
Regulation of hours for all under sixteen was proposed in Nevada. In Tennessee, there is a bill now before the House Committee on Labor, providing for an eight-hour day under sixteen instead of the present sixty-hour week. A second measure adds mercantile establishments and the stage to the occupations prohibited to children under fourteen. Still another bill has passed in Tennessee, enlarging the Factory Inspection Department by adding a clerk and two deputy inspectors. The matter of enforcement has not received as wide consideration as it deserved. Industrial commissions are under discussion in many states, notably California and Ohio. In Iowa it is proposed to create within the Labor Department a bureau of women and children. Montana’s educational bill would provide for truant officers to enforce the child labor law. In Wisconsin a bill is pending covering some details of the issuing of employment certificates and in Utah it was proposed to increase the number of inspectors. Most important in this connection is the bill in Missouri to extend the jurisdiction of the Factory Inspection Department over the entire state (it is now confined to cities of 10,000 or more inhabitants) and to abolish the present fee system.
Two of the bills recommended by the New York Factory Investigating Commission and directly affecting child labor are still pending: one to prohibit work in cannery sheds by children under fourteen, and the other to prohibit the manufacture in tenement houses of dolls or dolls’ clothing and articles of food or of children’s or infants’ wearing apparel. Other bills recommended by the commission and already passed and signed standardize the issuing of employment certificates throughout the state; give the commissioner of labor power to inquire into the thoroughness of this work as carried on by local health officers; provide for physical examination in factories of children fourteen to sixteen. This last provision promises to be better than the present Massachusetts law because it permits the cancelling of employment certificates of children whom the examination reveals to be physically unfit for factory employment. Following the recommendation of the commission the present Legislature has also reorganized the Labor Department, established an industrial board, increased the number of inspectors and extended the jurisdiction of the Labor Department to cover the enforcement of the labor law concerning women and children in mercantile establishments in second class cities.
In a few states there is a fair record of progress in the legislation already enacted this year. New Jersey and Indiana have brought their educational requirements and provisions for working certificates up to the standard of the uniform law. Vermont has established a nine-hour day and Rhode Island a ten-hour day. The Vermont law also does away with the twelve year limit in certain occupations and substitutes the provision that
“A child under sixteen years of age, who has not completed the course of study prepared for the elementary schools shall not be employed in work connected with railroading, mining, manufacturing or quarrying, or be employed in a hotel or bowling alley, or in delivering messages, except during vacation and before and after school.”
Along with this the law has an absolute fourteen-year limit in “mill, factory, quarry or workshop, wherein are employed more than ten persons.” In North Carolina a bill was introduced with a fourteen-year age limit and a prohibition of night work, but the age limit was immediately amended back to the old thirteen (twelve for apprentices), the increased appropriation for inspectors was cut out, and only the night work prohibition was passed. The Child Labor Commission in Delaware drafted a bill based on the uniform law, which, in a much mutilated form, was finally passed and signed.
Only a few backward states show no progress whatever. Georgia defeated a child labor bill last summer. Alabama has no legislative session until January, 1915. The Florida Legislature has just convened and a bill based on the uniform law will be introduced. No child labor bill was introduced in South Carolina but a compulsory school attendance law was passed by the Legislature, only to be vetoed by the governor. The House passed it again over the governor’s veto, but it failed in the Senate by two votes. In New Hampshire, the only northern state with a general twelve-year age limit, a bill providing for a fourteen-year limit has been unanimously reported to the House and there seems to be a good chance of passing it.
The National Child Labor Committee is watching the situation and helping where it can in these campaigns. It hopes to report many more victories when the legislative season closes. Meanwhile it appeals to the citizens in every state to aid in the enactment and the enforcement of these laws.