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PAGE FOURTEEN CHILD LABOR LAWS AND THE SOUTH. By E. E. Miller. The great interest lately developed in the regulation of child labor in the mines aud factories by the many “Associations” and “Leagues” which have taken the matter up, found voice, so far aa Congress was concerned, in Senator Beveridge’s plea for the federal regulation—or rather prohibition—of interstate commerce in goods manufactured by child labor. Whatever one may think of Mr. Beveridge’s radical method of controlling the evil, no one can deny that the evil exists, and that along this line there is great need of and great room for a genuine reform. The situation in the Southern states, where the laws are, generally speaking, very lax, is the one that is at present attracting the most at tention. The newness of the evil here and its rapid growth both tend to draw all eyes toward Dixie. In fact the impression seems to prevail to a large extent that this is pecu liarly a Southern problem. That the people of the South have the problem yet to solve is all too true; but that other sections are partners with us in perplexity is also an un fortunate fact. The only states with out any legislation at all for the reg ulation of child labor are Florida, Mississippi and Oklahoma. Perhaps it is unfair to include the last named, as it is scarcely a state yet, and has been under a general terri torial law on the subject. It may, however, be said in passing that with these states must be included the District of Columbia! The laws of Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia are also very de fective. So it is no wonder that in the South, with the great growth of eotton and other manufactories, the matter has reached an acute stage. That the laws of the Southern states are, generally speaking, behind those of other sections does not prove that the people of these states care less for the welare of their children than do those of the North and East. The restriction of child labor did not come anywhere without a struggle. The same forces which oppose any reform in South Carolina and Geor gia today opposed it in Massachu setts and Connecticut a generation ago. The people of the South had not legislated on this subject be cause there were very few factories and therefore no great need of leg islation. Within the last two decades cotton mill* have increased in the South beyond any visionary’s most optimistic dream. Other factories have sprung up alongside of them; and what was a few years ago an academic question has become an urgent practical problem. As the mills went up and the mines were opened preachers, editors, publicists of all kinds began calling attention to the necessity of new laws to meet the new conditions. But the Southern people are naturally conservative. The legislators, the lawyers, the men of affairs, were in clined to go slowly along the road of such new legislation. The “poor whites” who found their children getting larger wages than they had ever hoped for could not be expected to favor any restriction that would imperil their chance of earning these wages. The capitalists both of the North and of the South who had their money invested in the facto ries, and who were thus helping to build up the “New South,” brought all their influence to bear in opposi tion to any change. In Georgia a “gentleman’s agreement” among the mill owners was allowed to take the place of positive action by the legis lature. In the Carolinas the manu facturers have fought every change in the laws; and each action taken to safeguard the children has been a compromise. Take South Carolina for example. eSnator Beveridge gives this abstract of th? child labor law: “Age limit for children working in mines and factories, 12 years. Or phans and children of dependent par ents allowed to woik at any age m textile factories. Night work forbil den for children under 12 years of age. Hours of labor, 66 per week. Parents required to furnish certifi cates of age. No factory inspec tion.” Analyze this law for a moment, if you please. “No factory inspec tion,” no effort made to see that the law is enforced. Sixty-six hours of labor a week for twelve-year-old children; and they need not be this old if they are orphans or have de pendent parents. Who cares for an orphan anyway? And if the child’s father is too tired or too lazy to work and thus becomes “dependent,” why let the child work bn. He might grow up to be like his father. Sure ly this would seem to be little enough restriction; yet this law was bitterly opposed by the mill owners, who ac tually succeeded 4n defeating it in at least one legislature. This is the problem as the South must face it. On one side the desire and demand for new manufacturing enterprises, on the other the pro tection of the children from heart less exploitation. On one side the inherent conservatism of the sec tion, the strenuous opposition of the mill owners and the apathy or si lent opposition of the poorer and more ignorant classes; on the other side the earnest efforts of the best brains and hearts of the land and the old Southern spirit of chivalry and high ideals. No one can doubt what tlie final result will be; but there are many hard battles for the reformers to fight before they secure the enactment of rational legisla tion. One more point; this, as has been said, is not exclusively a Southern problem. It is a national one. The labor laws of Illinois may be better than those of Tennessee, or those of New York than those of Kentucky; but according to the best testimony conditions are worse in the two Northern than in the two Southern states. Good laws are of little value if they are not enforced. It is doubt ful if any Southern state can dupli cate the horrors of the Pennsylva nia coal fields. The laws of the Da kotas are little better than those of the Carolinas; and no doubt they are poor for the same reason, there has been little need so far of better ones. Some day conditions will change; and then the skirmish line may be transferred from the cotton fields to WATSON’S WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN the prairies. So the fight must go on all over the land, the forces of civic righteousness battling against inert conservatism, legislative indifference and favoritism, and individual self ishness and greed. THE PRESIDENT A TRUST PRO MOTER, NOT A TRUST FIGHTER. The Bank Trust rules the Presi dent. The Bank Trust rules every one of his “captains of industry”—• Morgan, Rockefeller, Harriman, too, and all the other “big fish” and gold Democrats, too. The present Roosevelt-Harriman imbroglio is simply a “tempest in a teapot,” a case where “when rogues fall out, honest men may get their dues.” But in this case, honest men will not, for the rogues will all get together when the President has again fooled the people and made them believe he wants justice to prevail. But his ef forts are chiefly to make an appear ance of “curbing the trusts” in or der to keep the Republican party in power and thus perpetuate the chief infamy, the great disturbing factor in government affairs, the National Bank Trust. As proof positive to any student who can understand what he reads, we will quote what the President said in his message to Congress, De cember 6, 1904: “The attention of Congress should be especially given to the currency question, and that the standing com mittees on the matter in the two houses charged with the duty take up the matter of our currency and see whether it is not possible to se cure an agreement in the business world for bettering our system. The committees should consider the ques tion of the retirement of the green backs and the problem of securing in—our currency such elasticity as is consistent with safety. Every silver dollar should be made by law redeem able in gold at the option of the holder.” That “decree” carried out would melt every silver dollar and burn ev ery greenback in existence, about one billion free and lawful money, costing the people not one cent of interest for the making. Now, why does the President go out of his way to attack the people’s favorite mon ey, made by George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, if it is not simply and solely to benefit the National Bank Trust, so that robber combine can then issue its currency (not mon ey) which cannot get into circula tion until the people borrow it out of their banks; said banks in the manipulation making from 25 to 50 per cent per annum interest thereon? Does not this show that the Presi dent is bending his energies to ben efit the special privileged class? That is by no means all he has done and is doing. Read his message December 4, 1906, for asset, credit or “rubber” currency. There is nothing worse in the annals of pi racy, under the guise of law. And a subservient Congress enacted the vicious Aldrich Currency Bill, with but one or two speeches against it, and those from Southern patriots, one of whom was Hon. Ollie M. James, of Kentucky. See what the President and his Secretary did only last week to placate the banks and thieves of Wall Street —dumped some fifty millions of the people’s money into the banks for them to use without paying one cent of in terest to the government, and the same banks had already been favored in the same way with some 185 mil lions free from the United States Treasury. Is the President dishon est, or is he ignorant? Say which you will, and it is plain he is not fit to be President. If he is pandering to and serving the capitalistic “in terests,” the favored few, he does not and cannot mete out justice and equity to the people. Membership and correspondents solicited who will write for publica tion. JOS. N. STEPHENS, Nat’l. Sec’y. U. S. Monetary League. THE LESSON OF FRENCH LIBERTY. On July 14, 1789, there was struck in Paris the blow which gave rise to republican government in France. For several centuries the French people had suffered much oppression at the hands of the ruling classes. The monarchs, when they were not engaged in making costly wars, were indulging in the most wanton and lux urious extravagance in pursuit of pleasure. In order to get money the taxes were farmed out to contractors who oppressed the people to the last degree. The miserable peasants were robbed by the tax collectors of their last pig or bushel of grain. He cared nothing for the rights of man or the principles of civil liberty, of which he understood not the least thing in the world. Codes and constitutions were nothing to him. All he want ed was to know that he could enjoy peace and some comfort in his cabin, with his family, secure from the in satiate tax collector. It was this state of things that drove the people of Paris on a hot July day one hundred and eighteen years ago to attack the Bastile pris on and fortress that had stood in the midst of their city for more than four centuries, as a monument of tyranny, and they did not cease from their ferocious assault until its gar rison had been slaughtered and its towers and torture chambers leveled to the ground. When the revolution was thus started the people most active in it had no plans, no definite idea of what they were going to do and how it was going to end. But the move ment resolved itself into a carnival of bloodshed. Scarcely anybody without regard to class, condition, age or sex, was safe from the fury and madness which reigned among the people; blit soon individuals who wanted to mold affairs to further their own schemes began to assume lead ership, always taking care that in or der to please the people there should be an abundant outpour of blood. King Louis XVI. and his queen, Ma rie Antoinette, an Austrian princess, were beheaded, and their son, who would have been Louis XVII., if there had been any dynastic succes sion, was killed in prison. It is said that a million lives were sacrificed in the revolution, great numbers of