provided, complaint for such violation is made within thirty days from the date thereof.

SEC. 3. When a corporation against which a complaint is made. under this act fails to appear after being duly served with process, its default shall be recorded, the allegations in the complaint taken to be true, and judgment shall be rendered accordingly.

SEC. 4. When judgment is rendered upon any such complaint against a corporation, the court may issue a warrant of distress to compel the payment of the penalty prescribed by law, together with costs and interest.

SEC. 5. This act shall take effect upon the first day of July in the year eighteen hundred and eighty-six.

Approved March 22, 1886.

In several other States bills prescribing the time of payment have barely failed of passage, and are likely to be vigorously pressed in the immediate future. In Connecticut itself, there was no lack of support for such a measure, and it failed only through a disagreement as to details.

In deciding between the two methods of promoting cash payment by legislation, we are bound to consider which will secure the desired result with less hardship and more certainty; for we must make up our minds that the adjustment of any change in the law will involve a good deal of hardship, and a good deal of uncertainty. From which end shall we begin in order to secure the best practical results?

This is a hard question, and one where there is a good deal to be said on both sides. On the whole, we believe that the result would be better reached by doing away with laws for the collection of debt than by prescribing particular times and manner of payment.

In the first place, the statistics show that weekly payment does not of necessity mean cash payment at stores. It enables the workman to get the benefit of the cash system, but he does not always make use of the privilege. Weekly payment districts show the largest proportion of cash stores; but they also show side by side with them credit stores with bad debts and high prices (see Table XX). If you compel the manufacturer to pay weekly where the workman does not avail hin

self of the advantage, you produce the evil effects of the change, without the good ones. If, on the other hand, you force the employer indirectly into the change, by teaching the workmen to demand it, you make sure that the change shall be really effective. In the second place, a weekly payment law must, for reasons already given, be subject to numerous exceptions. Cases have already been pointed out where it was impossible to do more than advance a certain amount of wages. Now, if the employer paid the workman cash because he needed it to pay his debts, this matter would largely adjust itself; but if we attempted to legislate exactly how or when the payment should be made the serious exceptions which would arise would so strain the law as to be a serious bar to its enforcement.

In the third place a law with regard to manner of payment could only reach corporations; at least such is the opinion of constitutional lawyers, and it has never, we believe, been seriously questioned. Now, in spite of the predominant importance of corporations in manufacturing industry, it is the small concerns that pay monthly rather than the large ones - that is to say, individuals rather than corporations. Such a law would, therefore, act with an inequality which would endanger its general effectiveness. An attempt to produce the same result indirectly, by doing away with factorizing and assignment of wages, would strike everybody alike; and it would have the additional advantage that it would undoubtedly be within the competence of the State and not be subject to the resistance which any law has to meet whose constitutionality is seriously doubted.

OBJECTIONS TO THE REPEAL OF THE FACTORIZING LAW

EXAMINED.

1. Some persons object that this is a piece of special legislation for the benefit of workingmen as distinct from others. They regard it as class legislation, and condemn it as such. This objection is not a sound one. It is simply extending for the benefit of workingmen, a principle which we have already embodied in the bankruptcy laws; a thing which we have

allowed in the case of insolvent capitalists, where it is less needed and does more harm. When we give the bankrupt the benefit of such exemptions as are now allowed, it is no special legislation, but rather an act of simple justice, to grant corresponding exemption to the workingman.

2. A great many people feel a moral objection to the abolition of laws for the collection of debt. There is a general and wholesome sentiment that a man is bound to pay his honest debts, and that if he attempts to evade them he ought to be made to pay them. This is made a reason for upholding the factorizing law, and it is to some extent sound. But it may be urged against it, first, that the cases of hardship where the factorizing law is made to assist in the collection of dishonestly increased debts really form a very considerable. proportion of the whole. Secondly, that where a factorizing law collects one debt it breeds whole crop of new ones. On the face of it, it compels people to pay their debts, but its practical effect is to encourage them to incur more debts than they pay.

3. It is urged that, whatever might be the final results, the attempt to secure a cash system by abolishing factorizing would, for the time being, put the hardship upon those who could bear it least, while a weekly payment law would bring the first stress of the change upon the manufacturers, who could endure it better.

This point is worthy of most serious consideration. There can be no doubt that any change will involve some hardship. Even the law prohibiting manufacturers from discounting pay -simple and just as it was- has had an effect of this kind; making it harder in some places for workmen to get cash than it was before the law was passed. If a law against factorizing were put into effect at once and without notice, the immediate evil effects would be dangerous in the highest degree; but if reasonable time were given for adjustment for instance, if the exemption of wages from attachment should not take effect until the year 1888-the process would be a gradual one, and it is probable that the change would be attended with no

more hardship than would follow a compulsory weekly payment law.

For the weekly payment law would also involve hardship in its way. It would bear heaviest, not on the large manufacturers, but on the small ones; not on the strong, but on the weak; on those who, under the old system, can barely keep their heads above water. It would compel them either to reduce wages or, more probably, to reduce production, and would have an effect in throwing hands out of work for the time being; which would be much worse than any temporary difficulty in obtaining work.

PRESENT CONDITIONS.

The system of factorizing does not prevail in Connecticut to the extent which it did some years ago. Our returns from manufacturers on this point are not so complete as on some others, but it is fair to assume that the 1,726 cases reported to us in the year 1885 represent the experience of about half the mill hands in the State. Making the necessary additions for the wages of those engaged in personal service, it is probable that the number of cases of factorizing annually amounts. to about 5,000, while the cases of assignment of wages, as indicated by our storekeepers' returns, are very much more numerous, not improbably from ten to fifteen thousand in all.

The diminished use of factorizing is due to the exemptions under the present statute (ten dollars for single men and twenty-five for married men), and still more to the statute by which the assessment of costs is limited and the inducement to attorneys to hunt up the chance of factorizing suits greatly diminished. It is probable, as we have already said, that the direct effect of a change in the law would produce as much hardship as it would avoid, even to the workmen immediately concerned.

But it is not the direct effects which we are now considering. The benefit for the community to derive from the abolition of factorizing is to be found in the indirect effects. The arguments in favor of the exemption of wages from attach

ment are not based upon the particular cases of hardship, but upon the general results of the system as a whole. They apply with almost equal force whether the system be abused or not. It is the uses, rather than the abuses of the system which make it dangerous. For one case where it is abused in the collection of a debt there are a hundred cases where it is used as an indirect means of encouraging the workmen to run into debt, by making it possible for them to get credit where they have no business to receive it.

A few, among the merchants themselves, are clear-headed enough to see this. One man, at least, says explicitly that he favors the abolition of all law for the collection of debt; but most of them desire that the law should be made more stringent rather than otherwise. Nor is this to be wondered at. They see the direct hardship which would be involved by the loss of power to collect debts; they do not see the indirect advantage which would result from the loss of power to create them. They do not see that a change which should make it unsafe for them to give credit would at the same time, by its indirect effects, make it possible for them to demand cash and receive it.

The manufacturers naturally look at the matter from the other side; and, while there is much difference of opinion on details, there is a general desire for more sweeping exemptions than at present. Of 245 concerns making a definite reply to this question, only 48 believe that the exemption should be less than it is at present; 62 are satisfied with the law as it stands, and 10 avoid the effect of the existing law by their manner of payment; the remainder, or more than

*The effort to check the abuses alone, and at the same time render the law less severe in its workings, defeats the object in view. In Pennsylvania, there is a law exempting entirely from attachment all wages and salaries; yet this does almost no good, because, by a special statute, attachment is allowed when debts were incurred for obtaining the necessaries of life. The result is that the credit system prevails in Pennsylvania to an extent as great, and in some respects perhaps greater, than anywhere else in the country.

If we wish to secure the indirect good from a law, we must be prepared to face the direct hardship.