require the factories and mercantile establishments to keep on file lists of employes between fourteen and sixteen, with certificates showing that these employes meet the educational and other requirements.

After children have reached the work age, other laws still try to safeguard them. Some of the States have graduated age scales, according to the hazard of the industry, thus preventing them from working in mines or with machinery until they have reached a more mature age. With moral protection in view some of the States have prohibited night work for children and have regulated the hours during which minors may be employed as night messengers for telegraph and telephone companies. When the work age period begins, women and children, considered the special wards of the State, are sometimes safeguarded by special legislation requiring that employers furnish seats for women. A rather significant clause occurs in the South Carolina legislation on this subject, providing for unidentified inspectors to visit the various establishments to see whether seats are furnished and whether employes are permitted to use them. California passed a similar law specifying for the women employes the right to use the seats provided. This legislation is rather an illuminating commentary upon the experience working women have had with certain employers who posed as philanthropists ostentatiously displaying the comforts furnished their employes, comforts kept for show purposes only.

Several of the States, during these two years, have enacted laws dealing with sanitary conditions, ventilation, toilet arrangements, washrooms and lunchrooms. The loss of life in factory fires is reflected in the laws dealing with fire escapes and fire protection. The most highly specialized of these is that of New York.

Diffusion of the theories of modern science has resulted in legislation dealing particularly with the so-called occupational diseases. Consciousness of public responsibility aud duty upon these subjects has developed with recent years. The possibilities of legislation in this new field have been opened up through the instrumentality of the organized labor movement and the work done by the United States Bureau of Mines and the able committee of Illinois. One

of the methods of getting a line on occupational diseases is through requiring physicians to report cases coming under their care. California, Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, New York, and Wisconsin have enacted laws requiring physicians to report such cases under penalty of fine or prosecution. Information from this source can be only partial and is often unusable because of the lack of standardized reporting. The most complete law passed was that enacted by Illinois. The law was formulated by a commission which inquired into the existing conditions, sought expert information, and drew up devices for the prevention of occupational diseases among people working in poisonous and injurious materials. Some of these devices are to require that special-work clothing be furnished the employes, that monthly medical examination be made of the workers exposed to such hazards, that washing and dressing rooms be provided for them, and that special precaution be taken in connection with the meals. Such legislation is in response not only to the demands of the workers for protection, but also to the realization of the employers that the health of the employes, besides having an important bearing on prosperity, becomes of financial interest to them as a reflex of the workmen's compensation laws.

Other legislation promotes the safety of the workers by requiring report of accidents. Maine, Wisconsin, Oregon, Nebraska, Ohio, New Jersey, Washington, and Massachusetts have enacted legislation requiring all industrial establishments to report accidents. California, Connecticut, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, and Washington have passed laws requiring that public service corporations report all accidents. Information so collected, when tabulated, forms a basis for conclusions to be embodied in still further protective legislation. Again, however, there appears the necessity of establishing uniformity and standardization in reporting. In this field, also, the reflex action of employers' liability will be felt. It is a most needy field, for America has ever taken life and chance lightly, and of all nations has been the most wasteful of human life. In our country the industrial waste of life has increased in the last few years at an appalling rate, while. that in other civilized countries has de

creased. Our laws and their enforcement, regulating the safety of workmen, are most unsatisfactory. It is said that of the 8,893 miners killed in Pennsylvania in the period from 1899 to 1908 inclusive, the lives of 4,447 could have been saved by merely increasing the cost of production to the extent of 1 cent per ton. Such a condition of affairs could only result from placing the higher valuation of 1 cent upon material things than upon human life. It is against such a state of affairs that the workers have sought protection through regulative legislation. They would have the sympathy and co-operation of all the humanitarian-minded, if people could interpret the statistics of those injured and killed in work accidents, in terms of human beings and visualize the results in human suffering and misery.

Several of the State Legislatures in 191112, enacted railway legislation to safeguard the workers, providing for the block system, headlights on engines, regulating caboose construction, etc. Illinois has revised her mining codes, while Pennsylvania has revised the code for the bituminous mines and appointed a commission to report a revised code for the anthracite workers. There is need of much intelligent improvement in mine regulation. Experts say that hardly a mine in the country could stand the test of the ordinary mining regulation of foreign countries.

A distinctly retrogressive step in legislation for the workers has resulted in creating a favored industry. New York, Washington, Virginia, California, Utah, Maryland, and Maine have, during 1911 and 1912, determined that the laws regulating the working hours of women shall not operate in the case of industries engaged in canning or preparing perishable fruit or vegetables for market. Such legislation is based on the theory that perishable fruit is of more value than perishable women and children. Instead of meeting the problem in a scientific and humane manner, the legislators accept present conditions and permit women to be the sufferers. These canning factories belong to the class of work known as "seasonal occupations,' an as yet uncontrolled element in our problem of unemployment. A much more enlightened method of dealing with the canning industry would be to seek some definite control

over planting and marketing and distribution of materials, rather than forcing women, and even children, to forego the protection to which they are entitled.

Massachusetts led the way in this species of legislation. In 1911 she enacted laws providing minimum wage for her employes of the Water and Sewerage Board and also for the employes of the Metropolitan Park Commission. In 1912 the Commonwealth provided machinery for securing a minimum wage for women employes. This new legislative venture is not compulsory, but depends upon publicity provisions for its effectiveness. It provides for a minimum wage commission which, whenever it deems it necessary, shall appoint a local wage board to investigate conditions and make recommendations prescribing a wages scale. If the employers fail or refuse to adopt the wages scale recommended, the wage board must publish their names in four county papers. The results of this experiment will be watched with interest, particularly in the light of such conditions as have been revealed by the recent strike investigation in the textile industry.

The proposed constitutional amendments for Ohio, to be voted upon in a special election in September contain a provision making minimum wage laws legal. This legislative policy marks a deepening of the feeling of social responsibility to the end that those who benefit from social production are obligated not only to protect the workers physically, enable them to develop intellectually, but also to secure for them a fair return for their part in social production.

Society has long felt its obligation to provide for those who have suffered in giving military protection, and is now becoming conscious of the duty it owes its industrial veterans. Workers who have expended their energy and life in work that has a social value, and yet have not been paid enough to enable them to accumulate a reserve for the time when they are unable to work, should be assured that they will not be left to want, misery, or charity. Our State Legislatures are attacking this problem. In 1911, New Jersey appointed a commission to inquire into old-age insurance and to aid in its establishment for factory workers, for municipal, county, and State employes.

The housing problem is constantly

attracting more attention. Standards for the highest social development require for every family a comfortable, sanitary home. Where industrial workers are crowded into tenements and immigrants are huddled in rooms there can not exist that physical and moral health necessary to our greatest prosperity. Accordingly, Massachusetts, in 1911, appointed a homestead commission to inquire into the practicability of plans to enable every workingman to own a plot of land and his own home.

The immigration question in itself is one that in many of its phases has been particularly annoying to workers and legislators. Immigrant workers, frequently illiterates, with standards of living and wages far below those of the American workingmen, have proved great sources of danger to the progress of the American as well as the immigrant laborers. New York, in 1911, provided a graduated license for immigrant lodging houses. New Jersey appointed a commission authorized to inquire into immigration conditions, the welfare and distribution of industrial aliens of the State.

The securing of the right of contract marked for the workers the change from slavery to freedom and any menace to this right Labor vigilantly opposes. New Hampshire, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania have enacted laws prohibiting foremen or superintendents from taking from their employes fees, paid for the purpose of retaining employment.

Colorado, New York, and Wisconsin have enacted laws regulating employment of labor, penalizing any false representation as to employment. New York legislation specifies that in urging workers to accept employment, due notice of existing strikes should be given. Several legislative acts have regulated the giving of service letters to employes leaving employment. These are in the nature of protection against blacklisting, use of water-marks on paper or any secret code of information. Several States have regulated private labor bureaus and established free public bureaus.

Legislation affecting labor organizations directly was enacted in New York in 1911, providing penalties for bribing labor officials not to perform their duties in connection with strikes. Massachusetts has legalized trade union fines, providing they are reasonable and for legal purposes. Colorado

has made illegal all contracts restraining employes from becoming members of labor organizations. Wisconsin, Ohio, Colorado, and Oregon have passed laws making it possible to use the trade union label on State printing. California, Ohio, and Oregon have passed laws protecting trade union labels and insignia.

One class of legislation provides for the safety of the community and raises the working standards, thereby protecting the workers and the public-examination and licensing in particular lines of work. Illinois has made this provision for chauffeurs as have several other States. Indiana requires that all miners pass an examination before the county board of mines. Pennsylvania provides for the licensing of plumbers and Massachusetts for licensing stationary

engineers and firemen.

Another kind of law shows the struggle that the workers have had to secure the payment of their wages even after they are earned. The history of this struggle is one of a well-nigh incredible greed in humanity. But step by step the workers have secured legislation protecting themselves from the fraud of company stores, pay checks, and delayed payments. During 1911, the Indiana and New Hampshire Legislatures stipulated that wage payments shall be weekly; the Missouri Legislature required that corporations pay wages semi-monthly; New Jersey required the same of the railroads; New Hampshire in addition specified that payments shall be in cash or checks acceptable to the employes. Several of the States regulated garnishment of wages; Massachusetts required that $10 a week be excepted from such garnishment; Montana and Minnesota required that a wife also sign an agreement to make it legal.

The passage of such laws shows how far we have traveled from that time when government was looked upon as the necessary evil and the extension of its powers as an indication of tyranny. That old idea has an historic justification. It originated in the time when the Government was in the hands of the few, when the extension of the power meant the tendency toward monarchic despotism. With the coming of democracy, when the people assumed control over the Government through their own agents, the extension of State functions and

scope of action can not be regarded necessarily as an evil, but as a method whereby the people, through their agents, may secure such regulations and laws as they are unable to secure as individuals.

This sketch of the labor legislation of 1911-12 reveals some of the things that the working people want for themselves and some of their social ideals. They have done much, but it does not yet appear what the ultimate development shall be. Representative laws of some of the States are tabulated

below. In some cases the more progressive and significant are given in detail and in other instances the laws are only summarized. Each dry, legal phrase, if you knew the whole story, would reveal its fringe of human suffering, persistent struggle, and unquenchable hope. These laws represent years, many, many years of insistent trade union endeavor and determination inspired by a vision of better things, not only for the toilers themselves but for all our people.

Tom Watson, down in Georgia, is still getting out his spicy magazine to the gratification of a goodly circle of the folks around his way who like the run of his thoughts and the vigorous English in which he clothes them. He had the following a month or two ago on the Referendum:

"Let the legislatures of all the States meet at once and adopt and ratify themselves, three amendments to the constitution of their several States, as follows:

"1. There shall hereafter be no Referendum to the people in amending this constitution, but the legislature, as the representatives of the people shall have that power.'

"

"2. There shall hereafter be no Referendum to the people of a county, parish, or municipality in the issue of bonds, granting of franchises or licenses to sell liquor and so forth, but the legislature as the representatives of the people, shall have that power."

"3. No petition shall hereafter be initiated by

the people for any local option or special election but the legislature shall have the power to repre sent them since their representatives are better judges of 'honest measures' than are the people."

When the principle of the people's power as the basis of our Government is put to the reader in this way he can hardly fail to bear it in mind thereafter. It will recur to him when he is asked to put his faith in one of the wonder-workers in politics, or on the bench, or in the legislature. Our Government was designed as a democracy mainly. The tendency today is to make it so, wholly. The one thing to have clearly in mind when weighing the question of the Referendum is, the principle. If the voters can be trusted to decide upon the fundamental law, the Constitution, they can surely be trusted to accept or reject the matters of less importance.

IN

N 1888 J. W. Sullivan studied the Initiative and Referendum in Switzerland. In the spring of 1889, on returning to New York, he began a movement for the introduction of this purely democratic system in America. Besides conducting for three years a department on the subject in the weekly Twentieth Century, he wrote numerous articles for the daily newspapers, the monthly magazines, and the labor and social reform press. He explained the system at meetings of the trade unions and before audiences, radical or conservative, whenever he could induce them to listen to what was generally an unknown scheme. In the fall of 1891 he published his book, "Direct Legislation in Switzerland." He set the type himself and bore the expenses of publication, and with successful sales lowered its price to cost or less. He loaned the plates to several social reform publishing houses, receiving a small royalty from the only one among them which could afford to pay anything, Wayland's Ruskin. The book had a yearly circulation of from 10,000 to 15,000 until 1895. Before its appearance no work had been published on direct legislation in America. Voting on propositions had been practiced by some of the trade unions. At the headquarters of the American Federation of Labor Mr. Sullivan obtained most of the facts for his chapter on this use of the Referendum.

From the first I recognized the value of the volume which Mr. Sullivan proposed publishing and advised the publication of a smaller work than the one which he could have written from his notes. The book was to be adapted for purposes of propa

ganda, not for library reference. Upon its publication I wrote favorable notices of it, and recommended it to labor audiences. Mainly to this book may be ascribed the immediate adoption of the Referendum, and its systematic spread in many of the trade unions. The labor press, in America and England, cited its facts to promote direct legislation in the unions. In the campaigns in favor of the Referendum, I joined Mr. Sullivan from time to time in addressing labor, social reform; church, boards of trade, and other promiscuous audiences.

In 1892 some enthusiastic supporters of the movement formed a strong society in New Jersey which became the Direct Legislation League. Mr. Sullivan soon after began the publication of the Direct Legislation Record, which, as a department of Equity, is now published quarterly by Dr. C. F. Taylor, in Philadelphia. In 1892-5, as General Lecturer on the Initiative and Referendum for the American Federation of Labor, Mr. Sullivan made tours in New England, New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, an extensive trip in the West, reaching to the Pacific Coast. The movement obtained considerable discussion in the press, especially when good votes were obtained for the Referendum in the New Jersey Legislature in 1893 and the New York Constitutional Convention in 1894. These partial successes were achieved by Mr. Sullivan at Trenton and Albany, after considerable efforts before the Legislature's committees, by public meetings, and by addresses before the two legislative bodies by a number of the well-known union officials of the day, including myself, and by leaders of the social reformers. Among