late into the night, and being given insufficient food. It is always possible to find exceptions to every rule. It will be admitted that there are nomadic types of farmers just as there are hobos in industry. Occasionally agriculture is "industrialized" by some contractor hiring all of the men, women, and children available to harvest certain truck crops. Frequently these people come from the city in large numbers and labor during part of the summer and fall months in this way. Those who cry out in our national weekly publications that there are 66 more than a million children who must be set free" grab off a lot of undigested statistics and hurl them at the public with their sob-sister methods. At the time of the last census there were recorded 1,060,959 children under age "regularly employed under unfavorable conditions" according to these statements. Of this number, 647,309 were employed on farms. This, of course, makes a very different picture, for everybody knows that 90 per cent or more of these children were working at home at the lighter tasks involved in farming-learning as they worked. Further, they probably are employed only part of the time. The census figures, however, showed that 63,990 were "working out." The unintelligent returns made by census takers opens these figures to grave questioning. How many of these children actually were working out regularly month after month and how many really were working during vacation time or during periods when the crops of a community had to be saved? Thus there evaporates into thin air the bugaboo of children laboring on the farms, who must be set free. If there are cases in which children on the farm are required to work too hard it is due to the pressure of economic conditions which should be righted and which in turn will bring better conditions generally on the farms.

I feel sure that no one on this committee is going to vote for a bill or resolution which might eventuate in some bureaucrat determining whether a community whose livelihood depends upon the raising of strawberries, should not close school for a few weeks and thus permit the children to aid in the harvest upon which the financial returns of the whole year depend. Nor would the farmer relish regulations from Washington prohibiting children from aiding in the harvest of many other crops where light labor at reasonable hours is necessary, and rightly so, the capital which sensational magazines are making of the idea that he raises a family for the purpose of harvesting a cotton crop.

As a matter of fact, the movement for Federal regulation of child labor comes several years too late, for the States to a very large extent have already taken adequate action, and if the States do not control it sufficiently, frequently unemployment laws and regulations are enforced by the counties, not only from the standpoint of labor, but as to requirement for attending school.

To pass this resolution making it possible for the States to amend the Constitution would straightway result in the normal course of ⚫ events, in the passage of the bill authorizing the Children's Bureau in the Department of Labor to issue some regulations which would make it illegal for boys and girls reared on the farm to be anything but first-class loafers.

Mr. DYER. We are very much obliged to you, Mr. Silver. There are three other witnesses who wish to be heard, but we can not hear

them this morning, and we will hear you to-morrow morning at 10 o'clock.

Mr. WEBB. I have a short statement to make, and I have been here for two days.

Mr. DYER. How long will it take?

Mr. WEBB. Oh, just a few minutes.
Mr. DYER. Proceed.

STATEMENT OF MR. CHARLES J. WEBB, PHILADELPHIA, PA.

Mr. WEBB. I am the executive head of the Salvation Army; 1 am a manufacturer; I am a woolgrower; I am a wool jobber; I am a wool merchant, both in domestic wool and foreign wool.

I go into that length of my activities, because I have been, since I was 8 years old, working for a living, and I believe that you should approach this subject from a different standpoint than what the most of you are now attempting to do. It has been my privilege to have traveled all over the world, as well as all over this country, and I have noticed the development of people under different environments and under different climatic conditions, is so widely different that no one, unless they have come personally in contact with those environments and those conditions, can form an opinion. I believe it is just as difficult to sit here in Washington and undertake to say at what age a boy or girl should start to work in Florida or in Maine, as it is to solve the tariff question of what is required for those States. It has been my privilege to have helped to start the cotton industry in North Carolina. I was interested with a gentleman by the name of J. W. Cannon. The people from that section will know his name. I remember when the industry was started. We built factories; we brought the people down there from the Green Mountains. They had very little to eat. The pay was very small, a few dollars a week. I am ashamed to say at that time they put the boys and girls to work on the spindles when they had to get up on a little soap box to learn how to manipulate this machinery.

The families had at least 8 to 10 children; they got a few dollars a week, but it was a great uplift to that community. I personally said to Mr. Cannon: "You will have to enact a child labor law in this State because it is cruel; it is not right to let these little children come in here at this age." He said, "If we do not do it, our competitors will do it; therefore if we do not make the money, our competitors will make it, and we can not continue in the industry." Since that time I have seen rapid strides in child labor laws in the South. To-day I think they have reached almost perfection. I think that it is a mistake to limit the time that a boy or a girl has its energies, its visions, its intuitons to produce other than through the educatonal idea. There are a lot of children that can not take education; that will not take an education; and to compel certain people with vision, with imagination, to study that which they do not like is wrong. It is evidently better to let those children go to work with their hands, whereby they create a certain man building, a character building, which never can be created by study or idleness until they are 18 years old.

Mr. MONTAGUE. You mean study in the schools?

Mr. WEBB. Brains, my boy, are not made in schools or colleges; you are born with them. But we point with pride to the captains of industry in this country, and I defy any of you to point me to a man who did not start when he was very young. That is what makes the United States such a great Nation. Are we going to legislate against such an upbuilding of character, and such upbuilding processes as that? I want to tell you it is a proposition of stop, look, and listen." I am old enough to be your father, and I have been working since I was 8 years old. It has not stunted my growth.

Mr. MONTAGUE. What is your height?

Mr. WEBB. Six feet one and a half. I was six feet two, but I got married. [Laughter.]

Mr. MONTAGUE. What do you weigh?

Mr. WEBB. I weigh 255 pounds.

Mr. SUMNERS. You say you started work at 8 years of age. Was that what stunted your growth?

Mr. WEBE. My boy, listen: I started, because I will tell you whyI was one of five in a family. Unfortunately, my father died when I was 6 weeks old. I did not come here to give you my biography, because it is pretty well known in the United States. I was brought up with a desire to help my widowed mother, and if you had such a law as you are undertaking to pass here (which I could give you an illustration of), I would have starved to death, perhaps, or I would have been a public charge. But I was burned up with a desire to accomplish something, and I have had this desire ever since I have been alive. I am not in business to-day for the almighty dollar. I have heard the "dollar" mentioned. I want to tell you the captains of industry in this country are in this business for the joy of accomplishment; not for making money. I have seen the great South build up its industries, and from where do we get the money to run our Government if it is not from the factories and industry? Mr. FOSTER. May I ask a question?

Mr. WEBB. Yes, sir; I will be glad to answer.

Mr. FOSTER. You say you have traveled all over the world?

Mr. WEBB. Yes, sir.

Mr. FOSTER. Here is a list of 12 countries-Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Rumania, and Switzerland. Have you been in practically all of them?

Mr. WEBB. Practically all of them and in India, China, and Japan. Mr. FOSTER. I have read these 12. Our child labor laws are lower than the laws there. That is the reason we are more prosperousthat we have poorer child labor laws?

Mr. WEBB. No; my boy. Study your country. We are prosperous in this country because we have

Mr. FOSTER. I have studied coal mining in Ohio and Indiana.

Mr. WEBB. I will give the modus to you; I will illustrate to you. You have got in this country the aggregate brains and ability from every country, molded together. The drones do not come here; it is the people who are burned up with a desire to accomplish. That is what makes this country so great, and what makes this country so great is the fact that the people work for the joy of accomplishment.

Mr. FOSTER. You ought to have no immigration limitations then, had you?

Mr. WEBB. No; I do not think that is right. You must let them keep coming here. You have the wrong idea in Congress, and the wrong idea in business. I want to tell you we have too many laws; that is what I want to say. For goodness sake, let the States handle the business.

(The committee thereupon adjourned until to-morrow, Saturday, March 8, 1924, at 10 o'clock a. m.)

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY,
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
Saturday, March 8, 1924.

The committee met at 10.30 o'clock a. m., Hon. Leonidas C. Dyer presiding.

Mr. DYER. When we adjourned yesterday there were two witnesses from Philadelphia, Mr. Charles Webb and Miss Miles, who had not been heard. But I understand from the clerk of the committee that they returned to Philadelphia last night and are not here to-day.

If there is no one else present who desires to be heard this morning for the amendment or in opposition to it, we will hear further statements from Miss Abbott.

Mr. FOSTER, Mr. Chairman, I want to introduce for the proponents of the legislation extracts from the two national platforms. The first is from the Republican platform of 1920, which says:

The Republican Party stands for a Federal child labor law and for its rigid enforcement. If the present law be found unconstitutional or ineffective, we shall seek other means to enable Congress to prevent the evils of child labor. I also desire to quote from the national Democratic platform for 1920, as follows:

We urge cooperation with the States for the protection of child life through infancy and maternity care; in the prohibition of child labor and by adequate appropriations for the Children's Bureau and the Woman's Bureau in the Department of Labor.

I want also, Mr. Chairman, to call attention to the case of Bailey v. Drexel Furniture Co., decided by the Supreme Court May 15, 1922, directing particular attention to this language of the opinion of Chief Justice Taft:

We can not avoid the duty, even though it requires us to refuse to give effect to legislation designed to promote the highest good.

I also desire to put in the record the following telegram dated Chicago, Ill., February 28, 1924, addressed to me, as follows:

The Mississippi Valley conference on legislation assembled at Chicago, Ill., on February 28, 1924, including members from 17 States-Washington, Montana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Kentucky, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Ohio, New York, Missouri, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Maryland, South Carolina, and Texas-deplores delay in the passage of a joint resolution or a Federal child-labor amendment and urges immediate action by the House Committee on the Judiciary.

JEANETTE RANKIN, Secretary.

I also desire to put in the record the following telegram dated March 3, 1924, from Madison, Wis., addressed to me, reading as follows:

The

The Consumers' League of Wisconsin, at its annual meeting held at Madison on March 1, Professor Commons presiding, voted unanimously to request favorable report by the Committee on the Judiciary to the House of Representatives upon the child-labor amendment, which has been favorably reported. following organizations joined in the resolution: The League of Women Voters, The Catholic Women's Club, American Association of University Women, Women's League for Peace and Freedom, Business and Professional Women's Club, Parent-Teachers' Association.

Mr. MICHENER. Is that from same town?

Mr. FOSTER. That is from Madison, Wis.

I also desire to submit, Mr. Chairman, a few signed statements for insertion in the record.

Mr. DYER. If there is no objection, they will be put in the record. ATHENS, OHIO, January 13, 1924.

Hon. I. M. FOSTER,

Washington, D. C.

DEAR SIR: I have the honor of informing you that the Pallas Club of Athens has placed itself on record approving your action in introducing in the House the amendment regarding child labor.

(Mrs. W. F.) HELEN R. COPELAND, Corresponding Secretary.

COLUMBUS, OHIO, January 25, 1924.

Mr. I. M. FOSTER,

Washington, D. C.

DEAR SIR: At a public luncheon, held at the Girls' Athletic Club, January 11, the Franklin County League of Women Voters passed the resolution unanimously indorsing the Foster bill, the proposed amendment to the Federal Constitution permitting the enactment of laws regulating the employment of children.

Mrs. Bing gave a splendid talk at this luncheon. The league wishes to express appreciation of your work in this cause.

Yours truly,

MARY KAHLE, Secretary.

Hon. ISRAEL FOSTER,

OHIO LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS.
Columbus, Ohio, January 31, 1924.

House of Representatives, Washington, D. C.

MY DEAR MR. FOSTER: It is a source of great satisfaction and pride to the Ohio League of Women Voters that the resolution for a child labor amendment to the Constitution of the United States has been introduced in the House by one of our Ohio Representatives. Our league is greatly interested in the amendment, and many are doing active educational work in its behalf. If at any time during the session you see something which we, as a league, might do "back home," we would esteem it a favor if you would let us know.

Under separate cover I am sending you a copy of one issue of the Ohio Woman Voter which contains a short article entitled "Onions and children," which gives the findings of a study of child labor conditions in Ohio onion fields.

Respectfully yours,

JULLIETTE SESSIONS, President.