NOTES AND ABSTRACTS.
Labor Legislation and Philanthropy in Illinois. When the first effort was made in England for the enactment of far-reaching factory legislation the only appeal on its behalf which would have any hope of fruition was the appeal to pity .... Gradually, not in England alone, but throughout the civilized world, another principle has established itself. Democracy has occupied the place of power, and to democracy the appeal must be made today.
Here, as in England, labor legislation has undergone a continuous evo.ution .... It is characteristic of the changing attitude of the public mind toward labor legislation that the present child-labor law of Illinois .... grew up in the short space of time from 1893 to 1897, and almost wholly without appeal to the sensational, emotional impulses of the community. Workingmen voters need no convincing. The legislators from the manufacturing districts need little persuasion.
I do not wish to ignore the fact that Illinois will still have horrors so long as the Illinois glassworks, at Alton, with its night employment of boys, and, in Chicago, the increasing numbers of boys in the stockyards and girls in the sweat-shops, continue to disgrace the state .... Illinois has its share of horrors yet ; and there is an ample outlet for the activity and energy of the philanthropically inclined of the state in dealing with them.
There are no men in Illinois whose names are more respected than the members of the Illinois Manufacturers' Association Yet, they it is who, by long con- tinued, concerted action, obtained the annullment, by the supreme court of Illinois, of the statute which restricted the hours of work of women and girls in factories and workshops. It is due to the tireless efforts of this association that Illinois, judged by the statutory protection which she affords to wage-earning women and girls, ranks below Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin, Rhode Island, Connecticut ; below England, France, Belgium and the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Austria, and Russia ; and, with the Carolinas, Alabama, Georgia, Spain, Portugal, and Japan, shamefully brings up the rear of the procession of the civilized states.
It is not accidental that in Illinois the efforts of workingmen frequently take more or less violent form. The men, themselves, are in no way different, nor are they striving after different things, from the workingmen of Massachusetts and New York. They strive to realize what has long been a matter of course in Massachusetts and
New York. But they find no support in the law of the state We need but a
glance at the history of their frustrated efforts. The truck act, annulled by the state supreme court in the name of the state constitution, is in force in New York. The weekly-payment law, annulled by this court in the name of the state constitution, is in New York not only good law, but it is expressly made the duty of the state factory inspectors to enforce it. The ten-hours law for women and youth, enforced in New York and in a dozen other states, is impossible in Illinois under the state constitution as interpreted by the supreme court.
With their memories freshly stored with this accumulation of baffled effort, it is not strange that the more direct method of the strike should seem to many working- men more hopeful than the method of constitutional agitation for legislation. MRS. FLORENCE KELLEY, in The Charities Review, September, 1900. B. F. S.
Strike of Harbor Laborers in Rotterdam. Since 1896 there has existed more or less discontent among the harbor hands of Rotterdam. They have united in various organizations of mutual aid, etc., of which the largest, "De Nederlandsche Vlag," was said to include 1,100 members. At the beginning of the present year a movement was initiated whose object was the attainment of more satisfactory condi- tions of labor. A circular sent to the employers contained, among its most important
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