ANALYSIS BY SUBJECTS AND BY STATES I. MISCELLANEOUS LEGISLATION II. INDIVIDUAL BARGAINING 1. Payment of Wages 2. Mechanics' Liens 3. Immigration 4. Prison Labor 5. Miscellaneous III. COLLECTIVE BARGAINING 1. Trade Disputes IV. MINIMUM WAGE 277 278 278 280 282 282 282 282 283 284 VI. UNEMPLOYMENT 1. Private Employment Offices 2. Public Employment Offices 4. Investigations ... VII. SAFETY AND HEALTH 1. Reporting-Accidents and Diseases 2. Prohibition .... 285 285 288 289 289 290 (3) Mines ..... 298 301 (4) Transportation VIII. SOCIAL INSURANCE 1. Industrial Accident Insurance (2) Workmen's Compensation 2. Investigations IX. ADMINISTRATION OF LABOR LAWS TOPICAL INDEX BY STATES The American Labor Legislation Review is published quarterly by the American Association for Labor Legislation, 131 East 23d St., New York, N. Y. For contents of preceding issues see Publications list at back of volume. The price is one dollar per single copy, or three dollars per year in advance. An annual subscription includes individual membership in the Association. 320 327 REGULAR LEGISLATIVE SESSIONS, 1917 Congress (64th Congress, 2nd session) and the following forty-four states and territories hold regular legislative sessions during 1917: The states in which there will be no regular legislative sessions in 1917 are Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, and Virginia. INTRODUCTORY NOTE Although few law making bodies were in session during 1916, the year was marked by far reaching developments in the field of labor legislation. As in previous presidential years, Congress was interested in labor problems to an unusual degree, and passed three statutes of prime importance. The Kern-McGillicuddy federal compensation bill, drafted by the Association for Labor Legislation and first introduced on February 8, 1913, by Congressman William B. Wilson, now Secretary of Labor, was finally passed with only three adverse votes and was signed by President Wilson on September 7. This law embodies the best provisions of European experience and of the improved legislation found in such American states as California, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, and Wisconsin; for the first time it grants to all civil employees of the United States adequate compensation for work injuries. In a second enactment federal power over interstate commerce is utilized for the reduction of child labor. Manufacturing establishments and canneries which, within thirty days prior to the removal of the product therefrom, have employed children under fourteen, or children under sixteen at night or for more than eight hours daily, together with mines and quarries which, within thirty days prior to the removal of the product therefrom, have employed children under sixteen, may not make interstate shipment of their products. A noteworthy addition is made to hour legislation and a precedent is set for the regulation of men's wages in private employments by the federal law fixing eight hours as the standard work day for railroad employees and providing that no less pay shall be given for the shorter unit than for the former tenhour day. Kentucky joined the ranks of states having workmen's compensation laws with an act having many points of resemblance to the Massachusetts law, and Porto Rico passed an elective measure, making thirty-five states and territories which have now discarded the unsatisfactory employers' liability system. In other states action was taken on women's and children's hours, prohibited occupations for children, accident prevention and factory hygiene, trade disputes, unemployment, and improved administration of labor laws. That further new lines of action are at hand is indicated by the creation in Massachusetts of a social insurance commission to study the problems of sickness, unemployment, and old age, which, like the California commission appointed last year, will report to the legislature in January, 1917. A feature of this, our eighth annual REVIEW OF LABOR LEGISLATION, is its reorganization to conform to the arrangement of topics in Commons' and Andrews' Principles of Labor Legislation, published early in the year. Through this rearrangement the reader will be able more easily to supplement the discussion of principles contained in the book by the concrete exemplification thereof given in the annual REVIEW of labor laws. The detailed, painstaking analysis of the new statutes was executed for the Association for Labor Legislation this year, as last, by the Legislative Drafting Research Fund of Columbia University. JOHN B. ANDREWS, Secretary, |