are common, so that a lowering of wages or increase in hours is felt and resented by them as a body. But when the laborer works at home the question which confronts him is how can his immediate family earn more? The answer is natural-by increasing the working hours and by bidding for work. Against this apparent, momentary advantage the union spends its efforts in vain. The situation is rendered more difficult by the ignorance of the workers, most of them being unskilled immigrants.

In attempting to cope with sweatshop conditions the States have done little or nothing to improve the condition of the workers but have insisted only on clean rooms and that only members of the family shall work in the family quarters. All persons who secure work from employers to be done at home in a tenement house must have a permit issued by the factory inspector or the board of health. No work may be given out by the employer unless the permit-card is shown to him. This permit is only granted after an official inspection of the premises to see that they are properly cleaned, that the bedrooms are not used for manufacturing purposes, that the proper amount of cubic space of air per person is allowed, and that no contagious diseases are prevalent. The granting of the permit is made contingent upon the proper compliance with these conditions; the permit may also be revoked at a moment's notice, should the law be violated.

The law applies in most States to the manufacture of clothing, trimmings, tobacco products and to renovating establishments, and in some States also to bakeshops. Much still remains to be done. It will be seen that one of the gravest evils of the sweatshop, namely the excessive exploitation of child labor in the family, has not been prevented. This is a defect in the law itself and in the standards of life of the foreign immigrants. Furthermore, the administrative difficulties of the case are serious. In the first place the number of persons engaged in sweatshop industries is very large. In order to keep strict account of these, the inspector would be obliged to make visits to each establishment at least quarterly during the year, but this is impossible in most cities. In the second place the frequent change of location renders it unusually difficult to trace violators of the law. According to the legislation of all the regulating States on this point, a permit is granted separately for each location, but it is impossible to ascertain without an actual visit whether a person presenting a card at a tailor's establishment really lives at the residence named on the card or not, and the tailors certainly cannot be required to make inquiry.

Again the racial, religious and social ties of the persons engaged in sweatshop work tend to promote collusion to evade the law. News of the inspector's arrival in the neighborhood is usually spread with rapidity and cases of contagious disease are secreted, or if this is impossible, the work itself is hidden by the neighbors. It is the experience of deputy inspectors that the more ignorant classes are

prone to evade the law whenever possible. Finally, it is a common practice to borrow and lend permits when applying to tailors for work. Under ordinary circumstances the clothing firms giving out work cannot detect the falsehood, while the deputy inspector may not discover the absence of a proper card for six months or

more.

Nearly all these administrative obstacles might be remedied by an increase of the personnel in the factory inspection department. That the State will in course of time be obliged to go even further to insure reasonable healthful and comfortable conditions of home labor, can hardly be doubted.

The future development of factory and shop inspection must consist less in additional law making than in securing a reasonable execution of existing laws. There is no State in which a proper standard of administration has yet been reached. Individual employers of the better class frequently improve conditions on their own initiative, and would probably do so without a compulsory law, but those who conform to a lower standard require supervision and compulsion by some public authority. The need of a strong and enlightened public opinion is as great in this field as in any other department of administration. The formation and guidance of this public sentiment must depend primarily upon the employers' association and the labor union. While the unions have already done much in this direction, a systematic and methodical plan of aiding the factory inspectors in the execution of the law is needed. For the protection of employers much greater care should also be exercised by the Governor in selecting inspectors; a position such as this, on which the safety and even the lives of the workers depend and which so closely touches the employer's interests, should not be made the plaything of partisan politics.

In Wisconsin a new type of factory act has been tried with success; this requires that shops, factories, etc., shall be kept "safe" for both employés and frequenters, but it leaves the exact interpretation of "safe" to an industrial commission which regulates details and administers the law. The deputy inspectors are instructed by this commission how to enforce the law and a series of administrative regulations are drawn up and published by the commission. Employers and others may appeal, from the acts of any deputy, to the commission and from its decision to the courts. The advantages of this plan are greater reasonableness and elasticity of the rules governing safety. Other States are following the Wisconsin precedent. The New York law of 1913 establishes an “industrial board" consisting of the State commissioner of labor and four other members, which makes investigations of all matters affecting the enforcement of the State labor law and issues rules and regulations to execute the law. That is, the New York Act applies the excellent Wisconsin principle not only to safety, but to all important questions affecting the labor law and enables the industrial board by its

regulations to keep that law thoroughly up to date and fit it to the special needs of each industry. The various rules issued by the board must be immediately published and distributed, in a "labor bulletin"; they form "the industrial code" and have the binding force of law. The practical benefit of this administrative type of regulation, as compared with regulation by the legislature, is clear the moment that we glance at the work of the board in such a subject as ventilation. This is one of the serious difficulties of factory regulation, especially in the older and smaller buildings; in some industries it causes grave and even fatal illness of the workers. Most of the States have tried to meet the problem by a simple provision in the law that there must be 250 cubic feet of air space for each person, and that if the process of manufacture be a dusty one, air suction devices or fans must draw off the dust. This is an inflexible and inadequate solution of the question. The commission or administrative plan is much stronger and is well illustrated by paragraph 3 of Section 86 of the New York Act, adopted in 1913,-"The industrial board shall have power to make rules and regulations for and fix standards of ventilation, temperature and humidity in factories and may prescribe the special means, if any, required for removing impurities or for reducing excessive heat, and the machinery, apparatus or appliances to be used for any of said purposes, and the construction, equipment, maintenance and operation thereof, in order to effectuate the purposes of this section." This allows free play to the administrative officers, responsible for the execution of the law, to adopt any or all proper means necessary for its fulfillment. It has also been followed in the new Pennsylvania Act of 1913.

Another example of the strong authorities which are now being created to administer the State labor laws, is the Ohio Industrial Commission created by the Act of 1913. This body, which has three members, has been given all the combined powers of the six following departments: the Liability Board, which previously administered the workmen's compensation fund; the factory inspector; the examiners of stationary engineers; boiler inspection; labor statistics; arbitration and conciliation. The new commission will have control over all factories, shops, stores, telegraph and telephone offices, printing establishments, laundries, bakeries, hotels, depots, apartment houses, warehouses, churches, and the various infirmaries, hospitals, asylums and sweatshops. The Act requires these to be "safe" for both employés and frequenters. It marks an important innovation in labor law in that it authorizes the Commission to regulate the hours of labor of employés with regard to their health and welfare to such extent as the nature of the employment will reasonably permit, not inconsistent with law. These important provisions are a noteworthy step towards a satisfactory solution of the hours question. The fixing of hours like the settlement of any other industrial problem which involves constant and careful in

vestigation, should be left to an administrative body and not attempted by the legislature.

Another admirable feature of the Ohio Act is that it provides for hearings by the commission on any of its rulings, such hearings to extend to the reasonableness of the orders. An appeal may be taken from the commission only to the Supreme Court of the State. This aims to prevent unreasonable delays and suspension of the commission's orders by the lower Courts. The commission is also authorized to make suitable rules and regulations for safety and health of employés in the various establishments and to maintain a museum of safety and hygiene in order that employers may be aided and kept in touch with the latest devices in this field.

3. Workmen's Compensation for Accidents.-When injured in the pursuit of his duties, shall a workman obtain compensation, and if so, how and from whom? In spite of its seeming simplicity this problem has never been solved in this country. Its import to the community is clear from the fact that many thousands are completely, and hundreds of thousands partially disabled every year by industrial accidents. We must remember that most working families are living on the narrowest margin, and that even a temporary stop in earnings means immediate deprivation while a permanent or complete loss of earning power means acute poverty and destitution.

Three different answers to the question have been offered,-the old common-law suit for damages against the employer, in which the injured laborer was supposed to secure a verdict proportioned to the seriousness of the injury and the employer's neglect or fault in causing it; the modern Workmen's Compensation Act, which requires the employer to give the injured man a small or moderate sum, without a lawsuit and regardless of whose neglect or fault caused the accident; the system of State conducted insurance which collects from employers a certain tax or assessment based upon the danger of their industry and the size of their pay roll, and distributes this fund to the victims of accidents. In the first plan as set forth in the older laws and court decisions, the injured workman is unable to secure legal compensation from his employer without entering into extended litigation. The two have been pitted against each other in the courts in a legal battle which could not fail to embitter their relations and to create a dangerous feeling of class antagonism. In practice the injured man must prove:

a. That the employer was negligent,

b. That this negligence caused the accident.

Naturally if he failed in either of these he lost his suit against the employer and thereby his hope of relief. The technicalities of the law provided further that the workman lost if the accident was caused by his own negligence or by the carelessness of a fellow em

1 It is estimated that over 75,000 persons are killed and many more injured seriously every year in American industry.

ployé, or if the accident was of such a nature as to be part of the "ordinary risk" of the business. These last three doctrines of "contributory negligence," "fellow-servant rule," and "assumption of ordinary risk," effectually prevented the vast majority of injured men from securing any award of damages in case of accident.

A serious weakness of this first system is its delay, expense, uncertainty and insufficiency. Any relief which is granted to a workman should be immediately extended. Otherwise the injured workman is confronted by physical incapacity, a great increase in his expenses for the effects of the accident and the simultaneous withdrawal of his wages. All of these coming together are usually sufficient to shipwreck the family finances of any but the most careful and farseeing man on a higher standard of wages. This first plan therefore falls short in that it defers all relief until after a long jury trial with possible appeals to higher courts, retrials, etc. The case of Kane v. The Erie Railroad, 142 Fed. Rep. 682; 1906, was seven times before the Federal tribunals, four in the Circuit Court, and three in the Circuit Court of Appeals, but the family of the plaintiff were finally refused redress for the injury and death incurred by him while in the pursuance of his duty. The expense of the present system is due to the necessary employment of legal counsel and the court costs. In many accident cases counsel are paid by a contingent fee ranging from one-third to one-half of the amount which they may recover for the injured person. From the injured party's share is also deducted some necessary court expense. Where the case is appealed by the employer or where lengthy litigation follows, the cost is prohibitive to any injured workman. In practice most employers take out a policy of liability insurance in some large insurance company. This policy protects them against loss in case any court awards a verdict against the employer in an accident case. When a lawsuit arises the employer hands his case over to the insurance company which defends it, using its own counsel. One of the important results of this system is that the insurance company will often take advantage of every technicality of the law to avoid having to pay the accident damages which the court may award. These technical delays hold up the final decision of the suit and the workman soon finds that it would be cheaper for him to settle the case outside of court at a much lower figure than that to which he is entitled under the law. He does this to avoid appeals to higher courts and in order to secure a definite sum of money immediately, even though it be a small amount.

Equally harmful and injurious is the uncertainty of the law. As the law now stands the possibility of recovering damages is most uncertain,-technical questions either of fact, of procedure or of interpretation appeal with such varying degrees of force to different judges and juries, so that one claimant may succeed in winning sympathy or in concentrating attention upon the negligence of the employer, while another may fail in so doing and thereby lose his ver