mined. The proceeds make up a state fund for the generous compensation of accidents in the coal-mining industry.

g) Compensation payments should be conserved.-Many persons left dependent are incompetent to care for large sums of money suddenly acquired. Courts of proper jurisdiction should be given authority to determine whether lump payments should be made or the sum invested in annuities. The pension systems of the continental European states are rich in the suggestion of administrative methods for accomplishing this purpose.

235. LABOR LEGISLATION IN ONE STATE

That the public has a stake in industrial questions and should shoulder its responsibility was recognized in a substantial manner in Illinois when in 1893 a State Department of Factories and Workshops was created and laws were enacted prohibiting employment of children under fourteen years of age, or of women, in the manufacture of wearing apparel, for more than eight hours a day and forty-eight a week. Previously in 1877 and again in 1891 there had been efforts at child labor legislation, but failure to provide state inspectors to enforce the laws rendered the acts ineffective. Since 1893, the extension of state control over industry has been almost continuous. Following are some of the more important acts which mark this development:

1897. Child labor law enacted covering not only factories but offices, laundries, mercantile establishments, and stores, and fixing maximum hours of labor of children under sixteen years of age at ten per day and sixty per week.

1897. Act passed requiring the installation of blowers to remove dust from metal polishing, buffing, and grinding wheels.

Child labor law strengthened and all establishments required to provide suitable seats for women and girls.

1903. Present child labor law enacted.

1907. Factory Inspection Department established as separate department of the state government and its powers extended.

1907. Present law providing for health, safety, and comfort of workers in factories, mercantile establishments, mills, and workshops enacted.

I

Adapted by permission from Industrial Conditions in Springfield, Illinois, pp. 141-43. (Russell Sage Foundation, 1916.)

2

In 1895 the latter provision was held unconstitutional by the state supreme court. In 1910 the same court declared a ten-hour law for women constitutional (Ritchie & Co. v. Wayman and Davies).

1907. Act passed to provide for the safety of persons engaged in construction, alteration, or repair of buildings, bridges, viaducts, and other

structures.

1908. Act passed preventing employment in coal mines of persons who have not been passed by a State Miners' Examining Board.

1909. Law enacted fixing hours of work of women in factories and laundries at ten per day.

1910. Act passed providing for fire-fighting equipment in coal mines. Later amended and strengthened.

1911. Women's ten-hour law extended to cover mercantile establishments, hotels, restaurants, offices, and other enumerated places.

1911. Law enacted to protect workers from occupational diseases. 1913. Act passed consolidating and strengthening laws to provide for safety and welfare of workers in coal mines.

1913. Present workingmen's compensation law enacted.

Examination of this list shows a fairly rapid extension of the field of labor laws and a gradual strengthening of requirements-but an extension that is not at all unique for an industrial state. Other states have legislated in fields not yet entered in Illinois, as seen, for example, in their establishment of minimum wage boards, the prohibition of night work by women, the limitation of the workday to eight hours for women, the guaranty of one day of rest in seven to all workers, the enactment of compulsory compensation laws, and other measures. That the public will exercise increasing influence through legislation for improved industrial conditions appears certain, and should be encouraged, particularly with reference to the strengthening of the child labor laws, the reduction of the hours of working women, the protection of workers from physical hazards, and the establishment of minimum wage boards.

236. OTHER FORMS OF COMMUNITY CONTROL'

The influence of the community is potent in ways other than through legislation. Important, in this connection, is the existence of a public opinion that insists upon the fair and full enforcement of legislation touching industrial matters; that demands intelligent and even treatment of the interests of both employer and employee before the courts and by court officers; that, in other disputed issues where no official tribunal has jurisdiction, will guarantee to both sides equal consideration before claims are decided; that Adapted by permission from Industrial Conditions in Springfield, Illinois, pp. 143-144, (Russell Sage Foundation, 1916.)

I

would make it hard for industries and commercial enterprises maintaining conditions below a reasonable standard to do business in the community; and that would work through other channels as occasion demands. Some of these may take form in the establishment and maintenance of agencies to furnish pertinent information on the quality of present law enforcement (through bureaus of government research, committees and commissions on public efficiency, industrial surveys, etc.); in the selection of persons for judicial positions who recognize the importance and complexity of industrial questions and have gone to some pains to make themselves intelligent upon them; in the creation of machinery for arbitration and conciliation of industrial differences; and in the organization and support of quasipublic institutions, such as consumers' leagues, civic improvement societies, and an independent press, which afford opportunity in the public interest to thresh out acute industrial situations and to take organized action.

At the same time the community must be willing and expect to bear its share of the legitimate cost of maintaining good industrial standards. There undoubtedly are many cases in which employers are already doing all that they can. In such cases, where the cost of necessary improvements cannot be financed out of the reasonable proceeds of the business, the public, granting that the business satisfies a real need in the community, must be prepared to assume its part of the extra charges, which in most cases would take the form of increased prices. In other words, in addition to giving its preference to establishments meeting good standards as to work conditions, the public should be ready to pay its just share of the costs involved. We have then these three main forces or groups of interested parties the employer, the worker, and the public-which may be expected to act toward making industry contribute toward, and not detract from, the general welfare.

237. CONTROL OF POPULATION1

Of late we have heard a tremendous demand from would-be social reformers for a "living wage." We hear the employers on all sides denounced as heartless villains because they do not pay enough to allow their employees to live in decency and comfort. But this sentiment seems to arise from a superficial analysis of the difficulty.

Taken by permission from W. I. King, The Wealth and Income of the People of the United States, pp. 249–52. (The Macmillan Co., 1915.)

Why are the employees not in a position to demand a satisfactory return for their services? Whose fault is it? And the ultimate blame must be laid, not upon their employers, but upon the parents and grandparents of the workers themselves. Why did these ancestors of the present generation bring into the world children whom they could afford neither to educate nor to train for some occupation the products of which were sufficiently in demand to make a living wage easily secured? Why indeed! Simply because these same parents and grandparents were either incompetent, ignorant, or unwilling to restrain their animal passions. Here we have an excellent example of "visiting the iniquity of the father upon the children unto the third and fourth generation." But this fact is not recognized by many of the radical "social uplifters" of the present day, and, as a result, we hear American employers and American society in general denounced in unmeasured terms for misdeeds committed across the ocean by men the most of whom are long since in their graves. Yes, we should have a living wage, but we shall not get it by demanding that people pay for a limitless supply of labor which does not know how to produce the articles and services which consumers are willing to buy. The situation may be remedied by scientific treatment of the causes but never by bitter invective and passionate denunciation of those who are not primarily to blame. The price of any sort of labor will go up easily and naturally enough when the supply of that kind of labor becomes scarce, and will go down when more laborers appear upon the scene. In this respect labor does not differ from wheat or steel or cotton. If, therefore, we are desirous of bettering the condition of the workers in poorly paid occupations, we must, in some way, diminish the numbers desiring those kinds of employment. The wages will then take care of themselves.

It has been shown that the per capita income of the American people has been increasing steadily and rapidly during the period covered by our study; that it now amounts to the comfortable sum of $1,500 per family, but that it is very unequally distributed; that fairly equal distribution is at present impracticable because the lower classes of our population have, as yet, failed to substitute preventive for positive checks in controlling the population supply, and the general elevation of the standard of living of these lower classes has been prevented by the rapid multiplication of the defective and incompetent and the still more rapid influx of the ignorant and unprogressive classes of Europeans; that, as a result, a large section of our

people still remains in poverty; that the members of the unskilled wage-earning class have, during the last two decades, been compelled to satisfy their needs with a lower rather than a higher real wage; and that, in the meantime, the property-holding classes have seen their income in purchasing power continue to increase at a satisfactory

rate.

See also 271. The Standard of Living.

238. RESTRICTION OF IMMIGRATION'

1. The general policy adopted by Congress in 1882 of excluding Chinese laborers should be continued.

The question of Japanese and Korean immigration should be permitted to stand without further legislation so long as the present method of restriction proves to be effective.

An understanding should be reached with the British Government whereby East Indian laborers should be effectively prevented from coming to the United States.

2. The investigations of the Commission show an oversupply of unskilled labor in basic industries to an extent which indicates an oversupply of unskilled labor in the industries of the country as a whole, and therefore demand legislation which will at the present time restrict the further admission of such unskilled labor.

It is desirable in making the restriction that

a) A sufficient number be debarred to produce a marked effect upon the present supply of unskilled labor.

b) As far as possible, the aliens excluded should be those who come to this country with no intention to become American citizens or even to maintain a permanent residence here, but merely to save enough by the adoption, if necessary, of low standards of living, to return permanently to their home country. Such persons are usually men unaccompanied by wives or children.

c) As far as possible the aliens excluded should also be those who, by reason of their personal qualities or habits, would least readily be assimilated or would make the least desirable citizens.

Taken from the Reports of the Immigration Commission, I (1911), 45–48.