LABOR LEGISLATION 



LABOR ORGANIZATIONS 



national concern. In the United States, in 

 Canada and in Australia, on the contrary, such 

 legislation is mainly state or provincial in char- 

 acter. Under such a condition, when eveiy 

 state and province passes its own labor laws, 

 there is a great variety in their provisions. In 

 this article, therefore, it is possible only to 

 indicate general tendencies. 



Hours of Labor and Minimum Age. More 

 than half of the states and provinces have lim- 

 ited the hours of labor for children and women. 

 The earliest legislation on this subject was 

 in England, and limited the working-day to 

 twelve hours. Later the average was ten hours, 

 and the tendency now is to permit women and 

 children to work only eight hours. A few 

 states limit the length of the working-day for 

 men in certain specified occupations, such as 

 work in mines and smelters, brickyards, baker- 

 ies, street railways and railroads. In Septem- 

 ber, 1916, the United States Congress passed a 

 law establishing an eight-hour day on all rail- 

 roads engaged in interstate commence, and this 

 legislation was upheld in the Supreme Court 

 in March, 1917. The minimum age for child 

 workers gradually rose from eight to twelve, 

 and now most states have set fourteen years 

 as the limit. Sixteen and eighteen years are 

 the minimum in a few instances for girls and 

 for boys in certain dangerous trades and occu- 

 pations, and in several instances nobody under 

 twenty-one years of age may be employed. It 

 is noteworthy that shorter working-days for 

 men have been won not by legislation but 

 chiefly through the power of organized labor 

 (see LABOR ORGANIZATIONS). 



Protection from Sickness and Injury. Laws 

 to protect workmen from disease or accident 

 apply particularly to factories, but also to 

 mining and other industries. In most states 

 laws have been passed to protect the worker 

 from unsanitary surroundings; many laws re- 

 quire so many cubic feet of air space for each 

 person employed and the installation of fans 

 and devices to provide fresh air and to clear 

 stagnant air of dust and odors. Adequate fire- 

 escapes, outward-opening doors, guards and 

 screens for dangerous machinery are other re- 

 quirements. Until recent years many of these 

 laws were passed without proper provision for 

 their enforcement, but now there is some form 

 of factory inspection nearly everywhere. 



A notable change has taken place in the 

 attitude of the law towards the employer's 

 responsibility for the health and safety of his 

 workmen. Time was, under the common law, 



when the employee could not win money dam- 

 ages from the employer unless he could prove 

 that the latter was personally negligent. The 

 modern theory assumes, on the contrary, that 

 the employer is responsible, and usually re- 

 quires him, even if he was not personally negli- 

 gent, to contribute to the support of the 

 injured workman. Further details are given in 

 the article EMPLOYERS' LIABILITY (which see). 



Restrictions on Laborers. So long as work- 

 men made individual contracts with employers, 

 it was the former who needed protection. With 

 the growth of powerful labor organizations, 

 however, there came the necessity of protect- 

 ing not merely the employer but also the pub- 

 lic, if the master and workmen have a dispute. 

 Organized labor has been responsible for many 

 of the laws protecting the workmen, but its 

 power has also led to laws restricting its 

 activities. W.F.Z. 



Consult King's Canadian Method of Preventing 

 Strikes and Lockouts: Hatch's Government In- 

 dustrial Arbitration (Bulletin 60 of the United 

 States Department of Labor). 



LABOR ORGANIZATIONS, societies - whose 

 purpose is to improve the situation of labor- 

 ing men and women, especially by securing 

 increased wages, shorter hours of work and bet- 

 ter working conditions. They are broadly of 

 two kinds the trade unions, whose members 

 all have the same occupation, and the associa- 

 tions, which admit workers of every sort. 



When the first unions were formed in Eng- 

 land in the eighteenth century, factory labor- 

 ers men, women and even small children 

 were working more than twelve hours a day 

 in dark and unsanitary shops for wages scarcely 

 sufficient to keep them alive. Every workman 

 was almost absolutely dependent upon his em- 

 ployer, but the latter could easity do without 

 any individual employee. At first unions were 

 prohibited by law, and the members were 

 obliged to act in secret; but they soon made 

 themselves feared, if not respected, by their 

 employers, who were unable to treat an organ- 

 ized body of men as they had treated individ- 

 uals. Powerful unions arose in nearly all the 

 civilized countries, and largely as a result of 

 their efforts the conditions of labor have been 

 revolutionized. The article EIGHT-HOUR DAY 

 explains one of the reforms obtained. 



A frequent criticism of trade unions is that 

 they have become as arbitrary on their part 

 as they claim many of the employers to be. 

 Thus they not only oppose the hiring of non- 

 union labor, but one trade strictlv confine? 



