TREND

Why Children Work.By Helen M. Todd.McClure’s.The answers of eight hundred of the little workers who were questioned by Miss Todd as factory inspector in Chicago. A little less than half the Chicago children gave their father’s illness or death by industrial accident or disease as the reason. An almost equal number said they liked work better than school, and their reasons, as given by Miss Todd, constitute a pretty serious criticism of our educational system.

Safety by Sanction.By John Anson Ford.Technical World Magazine.Tells of the “safety first” campaign set on foot by R. C. Richards, claim agent of the Chicago and North Western Railroad, which, in less than two years, has resulted in saving the life of one trainman out of every two who under former conditions would have been killed under the cars; saving similarly one out of every three of the trackmen formerly doomed to death in the performance of duty; reducing the accident toll among passengers by 152 more passengers saved from death and almost 5,000 more spared from injury than the year before.

This novel and enlightened effort to reduce claims by preventing accidents has now spread to forty-six railroads operating 60 per cent of the railroad mileage in the United States.

The Fire Insurance Trap.By William B. Ellison.Pearson’s.As the expert chosen by Governor Sulzer to frame a new form of the insurance policy for New York, Mr. Ellison tells of the sixteen “teeth” by which policy-holders can be caught at the present time. These teeth are clauses in the policy by which the companies can escape from their liability.

A University That Runs a State, by Frank Parker Stockbridge, and

What I am Trying To Do, by Adolph O. Eberhardt. Both in theWorld’s Work. In Wisconsin, the university “writes many of its laws, directs much of its public service, increases its crops, makes better farmers and housekeepers, conducts correspondence schools, and carries a college education to the door of every citizen who wants it.” In Minnesota a governor who writes of his own plans, is trying to keep farmers on their farms, by using a generous state educational fund, with further grants by the Legislature, to make the country school houses centers for social intercourse for recreation and for practical instruction in agriculture and household economics.

Consumers’ Co-operation, by Albert Sonnichsen, andCo-operation in Wisconsin, by Robert A. Campbell. Both in theReview of Reviews. A résumé by the secretary of the co-operative league of the progress of the co-operative movement in Europe and America, supplemented by the intensive study of one state by an official of the State Board of Public Affairs, created last year with instruction, to make a special study of the state experience in this field.

Industrial Peace and War.By Everett P. Wheeler.Atlantic Monthly.A plea for a compulsory arbitral tribunal, which would substitute continual peace for recurrent warfare in the relations of labor and capital. Mr. Wheeler does not believe such a method of settling labor disputes would be impracticable or unsuited to American conditions or that the compulsory powers of such a tribunal should be any more repugnant to our ideas of liberty than is the power of our courts to decide disputes between individuals.

Mary Eleanor Roberts in theIndependent

There’s a fool runs the mission, that place on the pike,For darkies, and dagoes, and bums, and the like,And if I had his job, why I’d go on a strike.With coal at eight dollars, and working alone,All smiling, and eager, and thin as a bone,“For the Lord,” so he says, “will take care of His own!”And the ghost of a coat, and a stitch in his side,And his eyes bright and starved, and his boots gaping wide—I got tired of waiting for Thee to provide.So I sent him a check; just to shame, it might beSuch a God by an out and out sinner like me;But he fell on his knees and gave thanks unto Thee!

There’s a fool runs the mission, that place on the pike,For darkies, and dagoes, and bums, and the like,And if I had his job, why I’d go on a strike.

There’s a fool runs the mission, that place on the pike,

For darkies, and dagoes, and bums, and the like,

And if I had his job, why I’d go on a strike.

With coal at eight dollars, and working alone,All smiling, and eager, and thin as a bone,“For the Lord,” so he says, “will take care of His own!”

With coal at eight dollars, and working alone,

All smiling, and eager, and thin as a bone,

“For the Lord,” so he says, “will take care of His own!”

And the ghost of a coat, and a stitch in his side,And his eyes bright and starved, and his boots gaping wide—I got tired of waiting for Thee to provide.

And the ghost of a coat, and a stitch in his side,

And his eyes bright and starved, and his boots gaping wide—

I got tired of waiting for Thee to provide.

So I sent him a check; just to shame, it might beSuch a God by an out and out sinner like me;But he fell on his knees and gave thanks unto Thee!

So I sent him a check; just to shame, it might be

Such a God by an out and out sinner like me;

But he fell on his knees and gave thanks unto Thee!

HOW THE FACTORY GIRL IS BETTER OFF THAN THE STORE GIRLA graphic presentation in the Report on Working Girls and Women of Rochester of the relative positions under the law of two groups of girl workers.FACTORYMERCANTILELaw requires one seat to each girl.Law requires only one seat to every three girls.60 minutes for meals.45 minutes for meals.Indifferent appearance.Must dress well.Many sit to work.On legs most all the time.MINORSMINORS8 hours a day, 6 days a week. Not before 8 a. m. or after 5 p. m.9 hours a day, 54 hours a week. Not before 8 a. m. or after 7 p. m.WOMENWOMEN9 hours a day, except when making up for a holiday.Over 21, no limit to hours she may work. Up to 21, 10 hours a day, 60 hours a week.54 hours a week.(Law does not apply between Dec. 18th and 24th)Not before 6 a. m. or after 9 p. m.Not before 7 a. m. or after 10 p. m., if under 21.—From the Common Good.

HOW THE FACTORY GIRL IS BETTER OFF THAN THE STORE GIRL

A graphic presentation in the Report on Working Girls and Women of Rochester of the relative positions under the law of two groups of girl workers.

—From the Common Good.

The Common Good, a civic and social periodical of Rochester, devotes its February issue to a compilation by its editor, Edwin A. Rumball, in collaboration with Catherine Rumball, of the facts in regard to the working girls and women of that city who numbered at the 1900 census about 19,000, or over 31 per cent of all the women of Rochester. The facts are for the most part taken from the last census or from the Federal Report on Women and Child Wage-Earners and other authoritative sources, and are handled so as to show Rochester people just how high up or low down in the scale of cities, Rochester stands in its treatment of its women workers. The report is also issued as an “equal pay” document by the woman suffrage organization.

Among the answers to the question why they quit school which Helen M. Todd put to Chicago factory children are the following from Why Children Work inMcClure’s:

“Because you get paid for what you do in a factory.”

“Because it’s easier to work in a factory than ’tis to learn in school.”

“You never understands what they tells you in school, and you can learn right off to do things in a factory.”

“They ain’t always pickin’ on you because you don’t know things in a factory.”

“You can’t never do t’ings right in school.”

“The boss he never hits yer, er slaps yer face, er pulls yer ears, er makes yer stay in at recess.”

“The children don’t holler at ye and call ye a Christ-killer in a factory.”

“They don’t call ye a Dago.”

“They’re good to you at home when you earn money.”

“You can go to the nickel show.”

“Yer folks don’t hit ye so much.”

“You can buy shoes for the baby.”

“You can give your mother yer pay envelope.”

“Our boss he never went to school.”

“School ain’t no good. The Holy Father he can send ye to hell, and the boss he can take away yer job er raise yer pay. The teacher she can’t do nothing.”

Running the Home, by Martha Bensley Bruère inGood Housekeeping, is an argument for the use of public utilities in place of certain old-fashioned forms of “elbow grease,” on the ground not merely of the saving of labor but of expense. Mrs. Bruère’s conclusion is that the city, with its superior facilities for using centralized facilities for heating, lighting, etc., co-operatively, comes out far ahead of the country. In the budgets she studied the percentage of income spent for the “operation of the household—heat, light, repairs, services, etc.”—in the city was only half what it is in the country.

In Parenthood and the Social Conscience, Seth K. Humphrey (Forum) recommends the lifting of the burden of the hereditary defective from society by “parenthood laws” which would not force sterilization on defectives but would give them the choice of sterilization or segregation. The much controverted Indiana institutional experience is the basis of Mr. Humphrey’s conclusion that many defectives will accept the former method of “ending their miseries with themselves.”

Following up Burton J. Hendrick’s narrative last month of the Jewish invasion of America, Abraham Cahan, “editor, author, and general counselor of the Jewish East Side of New York,” this month begins inMcClure’sthe material and spiritual history of David Levinsky, a Russian Jew who became an American millionaire.

Frank Barclay Copley in an article in theAmerican Magazine, which receives the commendation of Frederick W. Taylor in an introductory note, thus defines the position of the new science of management toward trade unionism:

“The only way the workers, herded into gangs and treated as machines for grinding out dividends, can defend themselves is through organization. Ordinary unionism, therefore, finds its justification as a war-measure. Scientific management, however, by establishing that community of interest between capital and labor which has so long been obscured by ignorance, creates industrial peace, and the only persons who have reason to oppose it are those who have a personal interest in the continuance of warfare. Under scientific management the workers are not subordinates, but coordinates, and each individual is free to earn, learn, and rise as the Almighty has given him the power. No form of collective bargaining would seem to be called for, because tasks are set and wages fixed, not by arbitrary action, but by knowledge. The only real boss, in fact, is knowledge; and if anyone can speak with knowledge, he will be listened to, and he will have his reward. On the other hand, the tongue of ignorance must be still; and so it follows that to the extent that unionism means the placing of ignorant men in the saddle, or to the extent that it involves high labor costs, to that extent must scientific management always be against it.”

As an indication of those interferences with shop administration which, with the growth of scientific management, the unions will be called upon to abandon, the passage is significant. But progressive labor men will fail to find in it any glimmer of understanding on the part of the scientific managers of the larger democratic safeguards of unionism. Who, for example, is to set the base rates from which the wages of any given line of craftsmen are to be scientifically built up and calculated?

Character(Boston) publishes the following resolutions adopted by W. E. Wroe and Company, a Chicago paper house. They are written in the first person, thus making them apply to the man who runs and reads as well as the man who formulated them:

I will be square, fair, and just towards all my fellow-men, and by fellow-men I mean, not only those I meet in a social way, but my associates and employes in business.

I will keep myself clean and decent, and my desires worthy of a true man.

I will listen to the dictates of my conscience.

I will do my best in everything I undertake, and will undertake nothing unless I can give it the best there is in me.

I will speak only optimistic, uplifting words—nothing which can possibly bring pain to my fellow-men merely to give gratification to my own fancies.

I will remember that life embodiesgivingas well astakingand that what I receive depends entirely upon what I give.

I will be thankful for life because it gives me a chance to work and accomplish.

I will despise nothing but meanness. I will fear nothing but cowardice.

Courtesy Rochester Common Good.WORKING AFTER HOURSA Rochester woman collecting fire wood. This is a regular part of the daily housekeeping of poor families.

The beginning of a homesteading policy for Egypt is thus described in a Consular Report:

“Lord Kitchener laid the foundation stone of an agricultural school in the Egyptian Delta on November 6 and initiated a scheme for the distribution of land which has become available for cultivation through drainage. As an experiment, 610 feddans (or acres) were distributed in five-feddan lots to the landless fellaheen (peasants), the idea being to help the poor fellaheen and at the same time to increase the number of small landholders and to create family homesteads. During the first three years, when they must do work of reclamation, the fellaheen will receive the land practically free, and in the following ten years they will pay a moderate rental, after which the holding becomes theirs for life. Afterward the land descends in the families if the government approves. Alienation is forbidden, except with the consent of the State.”

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