Part 12 (1/2)
In 1897 California provides a minimum wage of two dollars on public contracts, and Kansas adopts the first statute against what are termed indirect contempts; that is, requiring trial by jury for contempts not committed in the presence of the court. There is a little legislation against blacklisting, and Southern States forbid the farming out of convict labor.
In 1898 Virginia copies the Kansas statute against indirect contempts, and one or two States require convict-made goods manufactured outside the State to be so labelled, which statutes have since been held unconst.i.tutional as an interference with interstate commerce.
In 1899 the question of discrimination against union labor becomes still more prominent and it is in some States made a misdemeanor to make the belonging or not belonging to a union a condition of employment. All these statutes have since been held unconst.i.tutional.
In 1900, a year of great prosperity, there is almost no labor legislation.
In 1901 we only find laws establis.h.i.+ng free employment bureaus, except that California provides a maximum time for women and children of nine hours a day in both manufacturing and mercantile occupations, and a minimum wage upon all public work of twenty cents an hour.
In 1902 Colorado overrules her Supreme Court by getting by const.i.tutional amendment an eight-hour day in mines. Ma.s.sachusetts pa.s.ses a joint resolution of the Legislature asking for a Federal const.i.tutional amendment which shall permit Congress to fix uniform hours of labor throughout the United States, and Kentucky and other Southern States begin to legislate to control the hours of labor of women and children.
In 1903 this movement continues and in the Northwestern States, Oregon and Colorado, the length of hours of labor of women of all ages is generally limited. Weekly payments and anti-truck laws are adopted.
Montana forbids company boarding-houses and Colorado makes the striking attempt to do away with the so-called dead line; that is to say, a statute forbidding any person to be discharged by reason of age, between the years of eighteen and sixty. California follows Maryland in abolis.h.i.+ng the conspiracy law, both as applied to employers and employees.[1] It does not seem that in either State this statute has yet been tested as cla.s.s legislation. Legislation against the open shop continues in far Western States, while Minnesota makes it a misdemeanor for an employer to exact as a condition of employment that the employee shall not take part in a strike.
[Footnote 1: See the next chapter.]
In 1904 there is little legislation. Far Western States go on with the protection of child labor, particularly in mines, and Alabama adopts a general statute against picketing, boycotting, and blacklisting.
In 1905 we first find legislation against peonage or compulsory labor in the Southern States, North Carolina and Alabama. The celebrated const.i.tutional amendment of New York is enacted, which gives the Legislature full power to regulate wages, hours, and conditions in public labor. (See above, p. 161.) Further regulation of factories and mines goes on, with State employment agencies and reform of the employers' liability laws. Colorado and Utah prohibit boycotts and blacklisting, and in one or two States corporations are required to give every person discharged a letter stating the reason of his discharge, which statute was since held unconst.i.tutional in Georgia.
In 1906 the usual sanitary legislation goes on. Ma.s.sachusetts adopts an eight-hour law for public work. Arkansas and Louisiana attempt legislation preventing the violation of contract by persons farming on shares, or the hiring of farm laborers by others, and Ma.s.sachusetts establishes free employment bureaus.
In 1907 four more Southern States attempt laws to control agricultural labor; the factory acts and child-labor laws continue to spread through the South; New York largely develops its line of sweat-shop legislation, and more child-labor laws and laws prohibiting the work of women in mines are introduced in the South.
In 1908 Oklahoma adopts the Kansas contempt statute, and Virginia provides for appeals to the Supreme Court in contempt cases. South Carolina makes it a misdemeanor to fail to work after being employed on a contract for personal services, or for the employer on his side to fail to carry it out. Oklahoma adopts a curious strike statute which, besides the usual provision for the closed shop, makes it a felony to bring workmen, _i.e._, strike-breakers, from other places in the State or from other States under false pretences, including, in the latter, concealment of the existence of the strike; and makes it a felony to hire armed men to guard such persons.
With this climax of labor legislation our review may properly end, but the reader will not fail to note the advantage that may be derived from experience of these extraordinary statutes as they are tried out in the different States and Territories. It could be wished that some machinery could be provided for obtaining information as to their practical working. The legislation of 1909 was princ.i.p.ally concerned with the matter of employers' liability for accidents, a conference upon this subject having been held by three State commissions, New York, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. Ma.s.sachusetts extended the act of 1908 permitting employers and employees to contract for the compensation of accidents; and Montana established a State accident insurance for coal-miners. California and Montana exempted labor in a large degree from the operation of the State anti-trust laws; but Was.h.i.+ngton adopted a new statute defining a conspiracy to exist when two or more persons interfere or threaten to interfere with the trade, tools, or property of another, and proof of an overt act is not necessary. North and South Carolina, Texas, and Connecticut pa.s.sed the usual statute protecting employees from being discharged because of members.h.i.+p in a trades-union, which, as we have said, has been held unconst.i.tutional wherever contested. Arizona, California, Idaho, Was.h.i.+ngton, Wyoming and Nevada enacted or amended eight-hour measures for employees in mines, but little was accomplished for children in the Southern States.[1]
[Footnote 1: See ”Progressive Tendencies in the Labor Legislation of 1909,” by Irene Osgood, in the _American Political Science Review_ for May, 1910.]
The labor-injunction question has been recently covered by an admirable study prepared by the Ma.s.sachusetts Bureau of Statistics and published in December, 1909. The investigation covers eleven years, from 1898 to 1908, in which there occurred two thousand and two strikes. In sixty-six of these strikes the employers sought injunctions and in forty-six cases injunctions were actually issued.
In only nine cases were there proceedings for contempt of these injunctions, while only in two cases out of the two thousand were there any convictions for contempt of court. In eighteen cases injunctions were sought to prevent employees from striking, but only in four of these were they granted, and one of these was later dissolved. Seven bills were brought by employees against unions for interference with their employment, etc., and in three cases unions sought injunctions against other unions. In one case a union brought a bill against an employer and in one case an employer sought an injunction against an employers' a.s.sociation. Under a decision of the Ma.s.sachusetts Supreme Court it was declared unlawful for a trade-union to impose fines upon those of its members who refused to obey its orders to strike or engage in a boycott. In 1909 a bill was introduced in the Legislature with the special object of permitting this, but it failed of pa.s.sage. The _Bulletin_ contains a brief history of equity jurisdiction in labor cases and reprints all the decisions of the Supreme Court of Ma.s.sachusetts down to the year 1909, and the actual injunctions issued by Superior Courts in five late cases, with a chronological summary of proceedings in cases concerning industrial disputes in all Ma.s.sachusetts courts for the eleven years covered by the report.
The matter of labor legislation is of such world-wide importance that a word or two may not be out of place concerning recent legislation in other countries. Other than factory and sweat-shop acts and hours of labor laws, there are three great lines of modern legislation in Europe, North America, and Australasia: employers' liability, old-age pensions, minimum wage. On the first point, the tendency of modern legislation, as has been intimated, is to make the employer liable in all cases for personal injuries suffered in his employ without regard to contributory negligence or the cause of the accident. That is, it is in the nature of an insurance which the employer is made to carry as part of his business expenses. It has the great advantage of doing away with litigation and confining his liability to reasonable amounts, and in the writer's opinion is in the long run for the benefit of the employer himself. There is one exception. The employer is not liable when the injury was caused by the wilful misconduct of the workman injured.
Old-age pensions, or State insurance against old age as well as disability, now exist in several countries, notably Germany, New Zealand, and England. The German law[1] is much the most intelligent and the least communistic in that it provides that half the fund is raised by deductions made from the wages of the workmen themselves.
It applies to all persons, male and female, employed under salary or wages as workmen, journeymen, apprentices, or servants; also to all industrial workmen, skilled laborers, clerks, porters, and a.s.sistants; also to all other persons whose occupation consists princ.i.p.ally in the service of others, such as teachers who do not receive an annual salary of more than five hundred dollars; also to sailors and railway employees; also to domestic servants. No one is obliged to insure himself who is over the age of seventy, and no one is bound to insure who does not work in a required insurance cla.s.s for more than twelve weeks or fifty days in each year. When women get married, they insist on reimburs.e.m.e.nt of one half of all the insurance a.s.sessments they have paid up to that time, provided such a.s.sessments amount to two hundred weeks, or four years--a provision which must very much help out marriages, and from which the amusing deduction may be drawn that the average value of a husband in Germany is considered to be about one-half the expense of supporting his wife for a period of two hundred weeks, or four years. On the other hand, the law has the effect of postponing marriage for the first four years of a woman's employment, as it practically imposes a penalty upon a woman marrying before four years from the time when she begins to pay to the State insurance money.
[Footnote 1: U.S. Industrial Commission Reports, vol. V, pp. 228-241.]
The English old-age pension law is a mere gratuity in the nature of outdoor relief, giving to everybody who has reached a certain age, without reference to any previous service, tramps or drones as well as workmen. It is a law indefensible in principle and merely the accident of a radical government. It provides that every person over seventy whose yearly means do not exceed thirty-one pounds ten s.h.i.+llings (_i.e._ income from property or privilege) and is not in ”regular receipt of poor relief” and has not ”habitually failed to work according to his ability, opportunity and need” nor been sentenced to any imprisonment for a criminal offence--all to be determined by a local pension committee with appeal to the central pension authority--shall receive a pension of five s.h.i.+llings a week when his annual means do not exceed twenty-one pounds, that is, thirteen pounds a year, down to one s.h.i.+lling a week when they exceed twenty-eight pounds seventeen s.h.i.+llings six pence.
The New Zealand law is more intelligent. It extends old-age pensions to every person over the age of sixty-five who has resided thirty-five years in the colony and not been imprisoned for a criminal offence, nor has abandoned his wife, nor neglected to provide for his or her children. It does not, however, appear that any previous employment is necessary. The pension amounts to eighteen pounds, say ninety dollars, a year and is not given to any one who has an income of fifty-two pounds a year. The machinery of the law is largely conducted through the post-office and the entire expense is met by the state. That is to say, there is no contribution from the laborers themselves.
Austria, Italy, Norway, and Denmark in 1901 had also state insurance systems.
The minimum-wage idea has so far been attempted only In New Zealand and in Great Britain.[1] (See above, p. 160.) The New Zealand law of 1899 provided a minimum wage of four s.h.i.+llings per week for boys and girls, and five s.h.i.+llings for boys under eighteen, but the principle has been much extended by a more recent statute. The English law is not yet in active operation, and may or may not receive great extension. It provides in substance for the fixing of a minimum wage in the clothing trade or _any other_ trade specified by the Home Secretary. The obvious probability is that it will, as in New Zealand, soon be extended to all trades. This wage is to be fixed by a board of arbitrators with the usual representation given to each side, and it will doubtless work, as it does in New Zealand, for the elevation of wages, as such commissions rarely reduce them.
[Footnote 1: This, the Trade Boards Act, the 22d chapter of the ninth of Edward VII., enacted October 20, 1909, took effect January 1, 1910.