followed in drafting it was to embody in the text the best provisions contained in the existing child labor laws of the several states. The draft law prohibited the employment of children under fourteen years in factories, stores, etc. This provision, as to factories was found at that time in the laws of twenty-one states. It is now found in all but three states, which are not industrial states, and one of which has a fourteen-year age minimum for girls and a twelve-year age minimum for boys. Only two states went above a fourteen-year age minimum for common industrial employment; now the list includes eight states, two of which prohibit employment under sixteen in “all gainful occupations," with exceptions, while two prohibit under sixteen in specified occupations, including industrial employment.

The Uniform Law prohibited the employment of children under sixteen in occupa tions dangerous to life or limb, or injurious to health or morals, and under eighteen in certain extra-hazardous occupations. These provisions, which we cannot describe in detail, except to say that work in mines came under the sixteen-year age requirement. were based on various provisions found in the laws of twenty-one different states Nearly all the states now recognize, by special provisions, the extra-hazardous and i jurious occupations. The draft law of 1912 empowered the board of health to add the list of such occupations. It is one of the significant advances in ten years of chi labor legislation that administrative bodies, boards, bureaus, commissions, have bee clothed with power in a growing number of states to extend and supplement the stat tory provisions by special orders. In a dozen states today some administrative boc has more or less extensive powers of this sort.

The Uniform Law called for an eight-hour day and forty-eight hour week & prohibited night work for boys under sixteen and girls under eighteen. A child, befegoing to work, was required to satisfy the permit-issuing officer that he was in g health and had reached a normal development for his age. The educational requ ment was ability to read and legibly write simple sentences in the English langu with attendance at school for a full time during the preceding year. There were o provisions in the Uniform Law, but those we have mentioned will suffice to show, general way, what it was thought reasonable to ask for immediately in child labori lation ten years ago. It would be interesting to compare the set of standards which Uniform Law represented with the standards adopted by the Children's Bureau (ference in 1919, but that is not possible within the limits of this paper.

Accomplishment in respect of hour and night-work provisions in state law: been remarkable. The number of states limiting the industrial work of childre eight hours a day has more than doubled until now there are thirty-four. All bu states now have some prohibition of night work, an increase of six, but the greater? is in the extent of application of this provision in most of the states. Nineteen s ten more than in 1912, prohibit night work in all gainful occupations covered by the States having some educational requirement for going to work have increased in ber, and the requirement itself has been raised in many states. Every state no some educational minimum. Ten years ago five had none. Fewer than half the f ten years ago made any requirement as to physical fitness. All but nine do th present, though the determination of physical fitness is still left, in a large prop of the states, to the permit-issuing officer. A mandatory examination by a ph was included in the laws of only six states ten years ago. The number is now ni It ought to be forty-eight, with one more for the District of Columbia.

Striking advance may be shown by reference to the record of West Virginia and of Alabama. West Virginia has substituted for an age limit of twelve years for stores and fourteen for factories and mines, an age limit of fourteen for gainful occupations generally (agriculture and domestic service excepted) and sixteen for mines. West Virginia ten years ago, or for that matter three years ago, had no hour provision whatever; now it has an eight-hour day and forty-eight hour week for children under sixteen in all gainful occupations, with the exception of agriculture and domestic service. A certificate of physical fitness from a school physician or public health officer is now required, and a child must go to school until he is sixteen unless he has completed the sixth grade and otherwise qualified for working papers. A continuation school and a mothers' pension law have been passed.

Alabama, which ten years ago had a twelve-year age minimum for mills, factories, and mines, now says fourteen for all gainful occupations, with the usual exceptions, agriculture and domestic service. The age requirement for work in mines has been raised to sixteen. The sixty-hour week under fourteen in mills, factories, and mines, has given way to an eight-hour day and forty-eight-hour week for children under sixteen in all gainful occupations. A physician's certificate of physical fitness is now demanded. School attendance is now required not for a paltry eight weeks a year from twelve years of age to sixteen, but for the entire school year from eight to sixteen. A child cannot leave school before he is sixteen to go to work unless he has completed the elementary course. A street-trades provision, with age limits of twelve for boys and eighteen for girls, has been adopted. But the greatest achievement of Alabama is in the field of administration, with the creation and operation of its Department of Child Welfare and its correlated supervision in that department of the state's child welfare work. Administration is the key to effective child protection.

No set of standards, however useful as a guide or a goal, or as a measuring stick, s in itself entitled to the distinction either of infallibility or of finality. Standards are ubject to revision with the increase of actual experience and of applicable knowledge. For instance, chronological age as the basis of minimum-age provisions in the statutes 3 quite illogical, except, of course as a present necessity, which makes it logical again. Chronological age measures none of the things that enter into the question of whether a iven child should be allowed to go to work. It does not measure his physical fitness, r education, or mental attitude, or the rightness of his prospective job. When we can easure these things as they ought to be measured, we shall have little or no use for ironological age in standards or in statutes, though we shall have need more than ever r trained administrators.

Today, in discussing child labor standards, greater emphasis is being placed on what ay be called service standards, to distinguish them from prohibitory age, hour, and ght-work standards. We have in mind such services as health service, vocational idance, and poor relief. These come within the scope of child labor legislation, which volves other than child labor laws as such. The function of child labor legislation is t only to limit and prohibit, but also to give children the best possible preparation - a working life, whenever it may begin, and to give them all possible protection after ey have entered employment. Moreover, child labor legislation, in the broad sense, als not only with child labor, but with the substitutes for child labor, particularly 100ling, play, and suitable children's work. As childhood merges little by little into nhood and womanhood, so child labor legislation should be joined without break to

labor legislation for adults. It is all a matter of continuous social service, legislative social service, from before the beginning until after the end of the actual working life of individuals.

RELATION OF RECENT SUPREME COURT DECISIONS TO LABOR
UNIONS AND INDUSTRIAL LEGISLATION

Rev. John A. Ryan, D.D., Director, Department of Social Action,
National Catholic Welfare Council, Washington

The decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, declaring unconstitutional the federal child labor law, has no direct bearing on trade unions. Child workers are not organized, nor are they likely to become organized. Adult labor unions have substantially the same interest in the decision as other groups in the community that earnestly desire the abolition of child labor. The interest of all these associations is manifested in efforts for child labor legislation.

The immediate effect of this decision on industrial legislation should be an increase of activity for the purpose of securing better child labor laws both from the states and from the national government. These two objects are not mutually opposed. Since national legislation can come only as a result of an amendment to the federal constitution, there will be a considerable interval for agitation directed toward the enactment of better state laws. And this agitation can be so conducted as to strengthen rather than weaken the efforts for federal legislation. It is quite improbable that the method of state legislation alone will suffice to raise the child labor standards in those sections of the country which are now deplorably backward. Indeed, if the friends of better child labor legislation were compelled to choose between state action and federal action they ought to decide in favor of the latter. This course would have two advantages: first, it would in all probability achieve the desired end earlier than state action; second, it would bring about uniformity throughout all the states at least as regards minimum standards.

The proposal for a federal amendment should be so formulated as not to interfere with the enactment of higher standards by any of the states, nor to prevent any other form of supplementary and co-operative state action. Therefore the amendment should be stated in terms of a minimum. For example: "Congress shall have power to establish minimum standards and conditions of employment for all persons under the age of eighteen years."

A wider question which the child labor decision places before the friends of industrial legislation is whether they ought not to strive for a federal amendment which would give Congress the power to set up minimum standards for all wage earners, adults as well as children, men as well as women. Every intelligent student of labor conditions and of our industrial life generally realizes that these matters should be regulated by the national government rather than by the states. There were two reasons why the men who drew up the federal constitution did not confer such power upon Congress. The first was their general desire of strengthening the local governments rather than the central government. The second and probably the stronger consideration in their minds was that in their day industries were local. Neither labor conditions nor any other condition of an industry in one state affected in any important way similar indus

tries in other states. The first spinning mill was not set up in the United States until 1790. There were no railroads, and there was practically no competition among manufacturers in different states. Whatever industrial regulation was necessary could be exercised by the state governments. The one possibility that did exist of industrial discrimination by one state against another was forestalled by the article in the constitution which empowers Congress to regulate interstate commerce.

In our time all the important manufacturers of any one state are placed in competition with the manufacturers of other states. Therefore they are affected directly and considerably by the regulation imposed by other states upon their competitors. In other words, labor legislation and industrial regulation generally are matters which affect the people of more than one state. Hence they should be uniform, and such uniformity can be obtained only through national statutes. If I could have my way I should like to see an amendment to the federal constitution adopted in some such terms as the following: "Congress shall have power to establish minimum standards and conditions of employment for all employees in all industries as regards hours, wages, and other working conditions."

That part of the Supreme Court's decision in the Coronado case which declares labor unions to be suable, even though not incorporated, is obviously of profound interest to the unions. The opposition of labor organizations to incorporation has probably been due more to fear of attack upon their funds than to all other causes combined. Now we have the decision of the court that this dreaded result can be produced without incorporation. It would seem, therefore, that no good reason remains for continued opposition to incorporation on the part of labor leaders.

Indeed, this policy was never defensible on fundamental grounds. A labor union is a moral body. This means that it is capable of doing things which its members could not accomplish as individuals. Its power to affect the welfare of the community comes precisely from the fact that it is a moral body, an organization. Hence it should be willing to accept responsibility for the acts which it performs as a unified entity. The reasonable attitude on the part of the members is not to seek to evade such responsibility, but to see to it that their organization is held responsible only to a reasonable degree. There is much merit in the contention of labor leaders that under the present corporation laws and the present uncertainty of labor laws, the funds of the unions could be seized or sequestered in arbitrary and unjust ways. The remedy for this condition is not to avoid incorporation, but to strive for an adequate and reasonable corporation law, and for a clearer and fairer statutory definition of the acts that are permissible to the unions.

In all probability the ordinary laws of incorporation are not suitable to labor organizations. A special form of corporation law seems to be necessary. Nor is there anything unique in this assumption. Men who wish to organize co-operative prises have found the general corporation laws unsuited to their purpos obtained a special kind of charter. The objects and procedure of labor uni as different from those of the ordinary commercial or industrial association objects and methods of the co-operative society. To impose upon labor standard form of incorporation unmodified to meet their peculiar nature and would be to insist upon an arbitrary and unjust kind of equality. In the well-k epigram of the Austrian Jurist, Menger, "Nothing is more unequal than to treat unequals equally."

What sort of definitive law is necessary to give labor fair and adequate protection in the articles of incorporation and as a general bill of rights? The fundamental rights already secured in the Clayton Act should of course be continued. Although these guaranties are not as comprehensive as was formerly believed by labor leaders, they are of considerable value. Section 6 authorizes labor unions to exist, and to pursue their lawful objects. The word "lawful" needs further and more precise definition. Section 20 of the same act prohibits the issuance of injunctions against going on strike, paying strike benefits, peaceful picketing, peaceful assemblage, or the conduct of primary boycotts. Not all of these rights are clearly secured by all the state laws, but they do seem to be safely established with reference to all activities which involve interstate commerce, or the laws of the United States.

What further federal legislation is necessary to safeguard reasonably the freedom of labor unions? This question is rendered especially urgent by two passages of Chief Justice Taft's opinion in the Coronado case. Speaking of the strike directed by the local union in the Coronado coal fields, the Chief Justice wrote: "Thus the authority is put by all the members of the District No. 21 in their officers to order a strike, and if in the conduct of that strike unlawful injuries are inflicted, the district organization is responsible and the fund accumulated for strike purposes may be subject to the payment of any judgment which is recovered." This seems to be an unnecessary and unreasonable degree of legal responsibility. It would render the union as a whole, as an organization, responsible and liable for the damages inflicted upon persons or property by individual members of the union who might act in violation of the specific rules and directions laid down by the organization. A proper incorporation law would relieve the unions of such liability, and would make them responsible only for the direct and necessary results of those actions which had been formally authorized. Punishment and penalties for unauthorized individual actions should be confined to the actual perpetrators.

The second statement in Chief Justice Taft's opinion which is especially pertinent here is to the effect that if "unlawful means" had been used to unionize mines whose product was important, actually or potentially, in affecting prices in interstate commerce, this effort would be an actionable conspiracy under the Anti-Trust Act. What are "unlawful means?" From the Chief Justice's argument, it seems clear that he applies this phrase specifically to the acts of violence committed in the Coronado strike. The justifiable inference seems to be that merely bringing into the union the workers in unorganized mines would not be an "unlawful means," even though the result would be a lessening of competition in interstate commerce. However, this is not the conception of improper interference with interstate commerce which was held by Judge Frank Anderson when he enjoined the Mine Workers' Union from organizing the non-union fields in West Virginia. This question should be solved by National legislation. The law should make it quite clear that such lessening of competition as results from the organization of non-union industries, is not a violation of the Anti-Trust Act. A similar provision should be made a part of the law under which unions would be incorporated.

In general, the law of labor unions should be made much more specific than it is now both by the states and by the federal government. This is particularly true with reference to strikes. While it is now a settled principle of our laws that a strike is not in itself unlawful, there is considerable diversity of opinion and practice in the courts concerning the legality of strikes for certain unusual objects. For example, most of the