CHAIRMAN ROBINS: Whenever Mrs. Kelley stops talking I wish she would begin again. Will you take part now in the general discussion of this very important serious question. I am sure many of you here employ women or at least represent one and will want to talk to Mrs. Kelley. We are very fortunate in having here to talk to, such a representative of the Secretary of War as we have at the present time in Mrs. Kelley. Are there any questions to be asked on the important subject of Mrs. Kelley's address on "Married Women in Industry," particularly under the new Act signed by Secretary Baker? Maybe you will have some statement to make or some discussion of the subject. I think it is most important that we get all the knowledge possible from this convention on this important subject because it is one which will arouse a great deal of antagonism on the one hand and endorsement on the other. We must have both sides to know how you feel about it, not only because Mrs. Kelley can possibly answer whatever questions you ask but you may offer suggestions which will be of future value. J. STANFORD BROWN, Supervisor of Labor, Safety, and Welfare, The Carpenter Steel Co., Reading, Pa. I would like to ask Mrs. Kelley whether there are any figures showing relatively the number of married and unmarried women entering industry? MRS. KELLEY: No. I am very sorry to say that taking the country as a whole we have no such figures, and we have only here and there in special industries the individual inquiries, of which the most important are these little studies of infant mortality to which I referred. There is a great mass of information with regard to the domestic relations of wage earning people collected at every census but it is as yet not compiled. CHAIRMAN ROBINS: Are there any other questions? DR. BOLTON, I would like to ask Mrs. Kelley if there could not be a study made as to the fundamental endowments or natural strength of those women, who, with families, are required to enter into industries such as making uniforms or clothing in their homes? That there may be here a situation something like this: That these women whose children are dying in infancy are, after all, fundamentally weak; that they lack natural strength and endowment in comparison with the better class of women living perhaps in better homes and getting better wages; after all, does not the better wages simply correspond to the better endowments? MRS KELLEY: That is two questions at least, is it not? DR. BOLTON: Yes. MRS. KELLEY: First, whether it cannot be possible to make a study of women wage earners: Well, of course, sooner or later we shall have to come to making a study of all the wage earners. Now the people whom we physically examine on an enormous scale and with minute care are the youth of the nation who are in very great numbers, so far as we can see, about to go forth to death and disability; but sooner or later, under the pressure of the competition that is coming after the war, we shall have to know with regard to industry, as a matter of industrial life or death of the nation, the fitness of the men and the women, the youth and the girls who go into industry. It is unbelievable that we have been so reckless and so rash as we have been and there is no doubt in my mind that the relative failure of our crusade against tuberculosis is largely accounted for by the failure of industry to weed out before entering the indoor occupations those young people who are now being put out of the army but who are allowed to go pell mell into indoor industries with no questions asked as to the future effect upon their incipient diseases which no one even discovers. I think my answer has to be a very sweeping one, that it would be quite a dreadful thing to deal only with women in their homes who are asked to take work into the home. It is a huge national task that confronts us. As to the other question, the Chief of the Children's Bureau, Miss Lathrop, raises that question in each of the Monograph Studies of Infantile Mortality; how far these things interrelate, how far the children die because the father's wage is low, and where the father's wages are high, how far that is coincident; and how far the wages contribute to the physical incompetence of the father or mother. Now, of course, it is apparent that the children of drunkards have a slight hold on life and that the children of tubercular parents have a slight hold on life; and then the children with those diseases about which we have been so loathe to know anything in this country, those children have a slight hold on life. But there is the obvious fact that as the wage is low, and the wage is always low in the cotton industries and tobacco factories-I do not mean the cigar factories-I mean the tobacco factories -it is always low in those areas of the needle trades in which the woman in her home competes with the man. I believe it is very largely because we have allowed the mothers and the unorganized children to compete in industry unrestricted against the norma bread winners. CHAIRMAN ROBINS: Is there any other statement or question for discussion on this question, anything more you care to ask or find out about it? I am instructed to tell you that the evening session begins at eight o'clock and that the hope is expressed that you will all be here. General Lewis T. Bryant, Commissioner of Labor of New Jersey, will be here and preside this evening. I want to thank you for the kind consideration you have given me this afternoon and for all the interesting aspects and sidelights upon the subject presented. The meeting is adjourned. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1917. Chairman, GENERAL LEWIS T. BRYANT, Commissioner, Department of Labor of New Jersey, Trenton, New Jersey. ACTING COMMISSIONER PALMER: I call the evening session to order and I will ask Dr. Patterson to introduce the Chairman of the evening. DR. PATTERSON: In all the Commonwealths that are adjacent to the State of New Jersey it has been known for years that the administration of the laws of New Jersey or as we call it, "Jersey Justice," has become almost a proverb for efficiency. We all know that no matter what the laws in any state may be it is the way in which those laws are administered that results in either good or bad labor conditions. During the past fourteen years, the State of New Jersey has had the good fortune to have as its Commissioner of Labor, General Lewis T. Bryant, who, by the splendid quality of the work that he has done in the fire prevention and in accident prevention, has carried the fame of that Department of Labor everywhere throughout the borders of our land; and it gives me very great pleasure to present to you the able, the efficient, and the most competent Commissioner of Labor of the State of New Jersey, General Lewis T. Bryant, who will be the Chairman this evening. CHAIRMAN BRYANT: Dr. Patterson, ladies and gentlemen, after the very flattering introduction I just received I feel very much like one of two generals who were on the field of battle. Just about the time they were ready to order a charge a little rabbit was scared up at their feet and commenced to run away from the line. One general looked at the other and said, "Do you know if I had no more reputation to lose than that rabbit I would do the same thing." I feel it will be utterly impossible for me this evening to live up to the reputation that the distinguished Chief of the Division of Industrial Hygiene and Engineering has given me. I think it is most fitting that we should have gatherings of this kind at this particular moment and if there ever was a time in the history of this country, or of the world, when it was important to conserve the life, limb, health, and comfort of the industrial workers of our land and to promote their efficiency it is this very moment. Now, those of us who are living in this generation I think, perhaps, do not realize the comparatively short duration of the so-called factory practices. The lives of the oldest men or women present in this audience would not run back to the time when they did not see the large industrial establishments that are now surrounding us. But do you realize that the industrial life and the concentrated employment of the men, women, and children is a problem which is a little more than one hundred years old? If you will take up your history of Colonial times and read of the Colonial homes in this country you will find that the spinning wheel and the loom were just as much a part of the fixtures of the family as the kitchen stove, in fact, there were no kitchen stoves at that time and they cooked over open fire places. The wool was taken from the flocks on their farms and brought in to the housewife and the cloth was spun by her hands. Each village had its cobbler and shoes were made in small quantities; and so there was no necessity, no incentive for the gathering together of these large numbers of men, women and children into our so-called industries. The machine for spinning cotton invented by Arkwright in 1769 was the beginning of a revolution in this condition. This was followed in 1775 by the spinning mule, invented by Hargreaves; followed in 1787 with the power loom invented by Cartwright, and these, in conjunction with Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin in 1793 absolutely revolutionized this previous condition. There was an inducement to bring these men, women and children together and to make the best possible use of this new type of machinery which had been invented for doing in very big mills and in very large quantities that which had been done in small quantities in the homes throughout the land. It was the beginning of our present problem to care properly for life, limb, health, and comfort of large numbers of workers in concentrated employment. This commencement of industrial life was accompanied by the most unspeakable conditions. There was an inducement to bring small children into these factories and it is a matter of record that the very greatest abuses existed; that children as young as ten years of age worked fourteen hours a day ard under very trying conditions. Now I think any student of the industrial life of this or any other nation will agree that probably the most insidious and the most hurtful attitude of mind is the so-called acceptance of conditions as an inherent risk of the trade. If it were possible to impress upon the minds of the community, of the state, and of the nation, the evils which are attendant upon certain types of industry, there would I such a hue and cry arise and such an overwhelming demand made for the righting or correction of this condition that it would be impossible to stem the tide. They don't know it. They look upon the man going into mechanical industry, a munition plant, undertaking to work in the lead trade or metal polishing, or a myriad of other plants-they say it is an inherent risk of the trade; it goes with the job; you must expect this condition if taking up this type of employment. Do you realize, in considering the dangers to health and the injuries inflicted from this type of employment, the fact that so much is preventable? It is a problem that is deserving and should receive the very best thought of the best type of men in our country. Unfortunately, the accidents which occur do not arise of necessity from the industries which are in themselves normally the most dangerous. believe the highest building in this country, probably in the world, is the Woolworth Building in the City of New York, which is 790 feet high. That building was built from the foundations to the top of the dome without the loss of one single life and yet it has been said in the original construction of skyscrappers in New York City that they averaged about one life a floor above the tenth story. That was because they recognized the fact that it was an unusually dangerous undertaking. They were therefore unusually careful and made unusual preparations to prevent any accidents occurring. In the matter of ladders which are almost as much the furniture of the household as any other portion of household furniture-in the matter of slipping ladders in the United States during the year there were about six thousand people killed and two thousand people injured; and this on an implement which normally would be presumed to be very harmless in its character and in its use. So far as I know, the first legislation for the prevention of unhealthy or improper conditions of employment was enacted in the City of London about the last of the eighteenth century, almost coincident with the time our forefathers were fighting for liberty in this country. The condition which prompted this particular type of legislation was the frightfully inhuman treatment of a band of children who were exploited by a number of men in the City of London. These little waifs, who were gathered mostly from the asylums and from the parish houses, were herded together and taken about the City of London and forced to go up into the chimneys to sweep down the soot; little tots as young as four to five years of age. It is a matter of record that where these little children would not go up voluntarily into the chimney on account of fright they took whisps of straw and lit them and put them in the chimney flue under the feet of those children and forced them up the chimneys. At night these children were taken and herded in unsanitary rooms without proper washing facilities and as a consequence they contracted a disease known as chimney sweep's cancer. When an investigation was made and the good people of England were confronted with the facts there was such a tremendous uprising over conditions of this character that the first legislation was placed upon the statute books in London preventing this particular industry. Now, it is also hard for us to realize that at about this same moment, in the mines of Wales, women were working stripped to the waist, walking on hands and knees hitched with small donkeys as beasts of burden, going through the devious passageways of these mines. It is hard for us to realize that in a period of history which would produce such magnificent intelligence and such wonderful writers, such wonderful statesmen, that such conditions would have existed at the period of time and history when these men lived, but it is a fact; and I am perfectly satisfed in my own mind that if it were possible for us to look retrospectively over the conditions of employment as they exist now, say one hundred years from today, we would be struck with the fact that conditions were countenanced in our United States of America, England, France, Germany, and other industrial civilized nations which made it possible to have thirty thousand men killed in this country in one year, three hundred thousand men injured and about three million of our industrial citizens or workers ill during this period of time. We would say, "How was it possible, why did they permit conditions to exist in these industries which would take such a toll of life and cause such misery and care from sickness and make such suffering possible; why did they allow an industry to continue which would by reason of its conditions affect the health as some of our industries unfortunately do today?" I am perfectly sure in my own mind that the viewpoint of the employment of men, women, and children is going to be so much better in succeeding years that they will then have very much the same attitude of mind as we have when we look back upon the days of the chimney sweepers and women workers in the mines of Wales, which is a little over one hundred years from the time of our present civilization. Now, as late as 1821, in the entire British Isles there were only two factory inspectors and the duties and obligations of these men were very meagre, practically nothing to do with conserving the life, limb, health, and comfort of that exceedingly large army of workers. The United States was normally a rural country one hundred years ago. We were made up largely of rural people living upon farms but during this period of time the whole atmosphere of our land has 'changed. In that time we have become the greatest industrial nation in the world, both in the size of output and in the character of the factories which we have and, of course, the problems which have accompanied this tremendous growth industrially have been proportionate to its expanse. Unfortunately, the legislation, taken throughout the land as a whole has been more or less of the makeshift character. There has not been a co-ordination of effort. Very much of it has been predicated upon ignorance. I hold no particular brief for the Government management or for Federal legislation or Federal enforcement, but I do believe that in this country the Federal Government should set the way. If you will study the conditions in Germany you will find that in the capital of each of their states, for instance, Munich, Berlin, Frankfort, and the various other German capitals, what is known as the Workmen's Museum of Safety, Sanitation and Hygiene. You will find there practical illustrations of the best thought in the safeguarding of machines, the best methods of conserving the health of operatives in dangerous trades; you will find there the point from which the knowledge and method of operation permeates throughout that particular state; and I believe that is a condition which should exist in this country. I believe at Washington they should have the best workmen's museum, safety museum or museum of hygiene and sanitation that exists in the entire world. I believe that is one of the most crying needs of this country; that those of us who are conscientiously endeavoring to study the best methods of safeguarding the operatives in any particular craft or under any particular conditions should have some place where we could go to get a ̊practical illustration of the best thought and of the best methods of reaching that particular problem. I do not know of any one thing to be done in this country which I believe would conserve or promote the safety movement in its widest application more than a museum of this character. With this illustration before us and with this example set by our Federal Government there would be no excuse for the conditions which exist in some of our states at this time. Is it fair to the employer for various requirements to exist? For example, there was a difference in the State of New Jersey for some years between the working hours of minors under sixteen years of age in the textile mills in the City of Camden and the textile mills in Kensington, Philadelphia, of a full half day's time each week. In the State of New Jersey, we had the fifty-five hour law and in the State of Pennsylvania they had the sixty hour law. Now, was that fair to the manufacturers of New Jersey? If you go, on the other hand, however, 5 |