Mr. NICHOLLS. But that case was not work for the municipality or the State. It was for private employment, and might have been any other kind of employment. Mr. DAVENPORT. But as to what is within the police power the Supreme Court of the United States expressly held that they could not say that it was unlawful, criminal, for a man to permit his men to work more than ten hours a day in a bakery, but that similarly here the subcontractor would be, by this law, prevented from having them work more than ten hours a day. Mr. HOLDER. What authority have you gentlemen to quote that the police power of a State or a nation shall be rigid, permanent? Mr. DAVENPORT. The Supreme Court has drawn a line in that case, and in this case, and in a multitude of cases. Mr. HOLDER. What was this case that you just read from? Mr. HOLDER. I am not objecting; I simply asked for information. Mr. EMERY. I will say with respect to an objection of that kind, when a bill is offered and the exercise of the legislative power is contemplated the burden is always upon the legislator to be sure that he does not do that which is of doubtful constitutionality or doubtful validity. The passage of a law immediately takes something from the rights of a private citizen. The liberty of the citizen is not to be abridged by government except within its powers and for good cause. Every statute trespasses to some extent upon individual liberty, and the very purpose of constitutional limitations is to say how far the state can go in intruding upon the individual, for it is the individual himself, as a citizen, and constituting collectively the people of the United States, who granted the powers under which the Gov ernment acts. Mr. HOLDER. That may be true, but I say again that you have no definition or no authority to quote that the police powers of a nation or state are rigid; they are liable to be expanded; they are elastic. Mr. EMERY. They are elastic as to the subjects, sir, upon which they may be exercised; they are rigid with respect to the principle of their administration. Mr. HOLDER. What might be considered good police powers today might be to-morrow entirely revolutionized by new conditions. Mr. EMERY. With regard to the principle of their application, no; with regard to its subject-matter, yes. In some new industry or in the development of some new process of manufacture it might become necessary, in the exercise of the police power, to regulate the hours of labor in that industry, but that does not imply a new power. It is a new use of the existing power. You fail to distinguish between the police power and the application. Mr. HOLDER. You were laying some emphasis on the police power, and right here, if you will permit me, allow me to illustrate with regard to the shorter hours of service. The Fifty-ninth Congress provided that the police powers of the State might become elastic. What for? Because of the fact that so many of the public have been killed on account of telegraph operators and railroad people being employed over a reasonable number of hours. Immediately the police powers of the States were called into being, and here we have new legislation, protecting not only the operators, not only the railroad men, but the public whose lives you have in care. So I contend that the police power is not a rigid proposition. Mr. EMERY. There was no new police power displayed in any new acts of Congress which, by the way, have not yet come before any courts; but, so far as the power of Congress to make any legislation in regard to telegraph operators or anybody else engaged in interstate commerce, the Congress of the United States in the days of George Washington had that power, except where it has been added to by amendment of the Constitution, but they did not have the subject-matter of modern application. They had no railroads in that day, but they could have applied it to stage coaches if, in the exercise of wise policy, they had seen fit to regulate the number of hours the men who worked on stage coaches, carrying mails or anything in interstate commerce, should work. The powers of the United States, in so far as they are inherent, were in the first Congress as much as they are in the present Congress. The application of a power may cover a variety of subject-matter. But it is the same power variously exercised according to the changing demands of time and circumstance. Mr. DAVENPORT. Mr. Emery, have you with you a reference to the bakers' case? Mr. EMERY. No, I have not. Mr. HOLDER. The language that was used by the decision just read is practically what was said in the bakers' case, substantially word for word. Mr. EMERY. Mr. Chairman, I have endeavored to impress upon the committee the distinction that has been made with regard to the governmental regulation of the hours of labor on the public works of the United States and the attempt on the part of the Government of the United States, through the stipulations of a contract, to regulate the private industrial relations of citizens. I believe that that distinction applies fully to the subject-matter of this bill, as its intent and effect is manifestly to regulate private contractual relations between citizens of the United States. It has been urged by some gentlemen here that this bill is less objectionable than preceding eight-hour bills, for the reason that it applied to a smaller number of industries. But, Mr. Chariman, is it the intention of Congress to make the conditions of public contracts more difficult in some industries than in others? Why should this or that industry be singled out and made the recipient of such attentions from the legislative department of the Government? What sound reason of policy or good statesmanship would single out particular industries for harmful discrimination? In fact, it is generally considered good statesmanship to encourage all industries to become competitors for Government work, on the theory that competition secures the articles required for the necessities of the Government at a cheaper rate and betters their quality. Respecting the policy of the bill, as to whether or not the Government of the United States, on vague grounds, should endeavor to put its shoulder to the wheel to produce, under the guise of some exercise of the police power indirectly, an eight-hour day in private establishments by forcing Government contractors to adopt it, is it the policy of the Government of the United States to put itself on record and favor with its approval a measure which has as its end the endeavor to say that a man shall work eight hours in all parts of the United States of America, but no more, whether he will it or not? Under the terms of this very bill, if it become law and its stipulations were in a Government contract, there are innumerable instances in which you absolutely prohibit a man from working more than eight hours on his own property. Judge Payson suggested the instance of the man who provided a mast to be stepped, who owned the timber, who was the main laborer-subcontractor, if you like who prepared the mast by the labor of his own hands, and would therefore be a mechanic under the interpretation of the law. This act would not permit him, unless you think that mast is included among supplies and other indefinite exceptions of the bill, to work on his own property more than eight hours in one calendar day. The United States Steel Corporation has 200,000 employees in its various subsidiary corporations, over 20 per cent of whom, we are told in a recent newspaper statement, are stockholders of the company, and to the extent of their ownership of stock they are part owners in the business. You pass this bill and let any of those subsidiary corporations of the United States Steel Corporation undertake the execution of a Government contract, and you forbid the part owners, the 20 per cent of the stockholders of the United States Steel Corporation among its own workmen, from working at their own business. What reason of sound policy can be found for attempting to absolutely fix the hours that any individual shall work, and as long as that discussion is to proceed, on what theory is it to be limited to manual labor? Is it not as wise to protect the exercise and best operations of the human mind by limiting mental labor as well as manual labor? Is there any manual or mechanical labor that is worth anything except that which is guided and directed by mind. possessing technical knowledge, skill, superior and valuable thought, that realizes its judgment in a mechanical way in the matter beneath its effort? Why protect the mechanic and the laborer alone? Why not the lawyer, why not the doctor, why not the clergyman? Why exclude any class in the United States from the beneficent operations of your reform? Why not provide that chaplains in the Navy shall not work more than eight hours? Why not give your help to that policy as well as to inhibiting the laborer and the mechanic? Why not prohibit the preacher from his prayer beyond eight hours, the lawyer from the practice of his profession? Undoubtedly some of the committees of Congress would have been saved great labor if there had been an eight-hour law in force here; undoubtedly the legislators need the protection of an eight-hour day, and why should it be kept from them and given to only one laboring class in the community? Why not to the farmer, who needs it more than anyone else? for there is a popular belief that the farmer works his thirteen and fourteen hours a day on the average, although we are told he has more rest in the winter time. He needs it. I believe that some comparisons were made here during the course of this discussion as to hours of labor in foreign countries, and it was suggested that Germany or France or England or some other countries, with whom we are engaged in commercial competition, were tending toward the eight-hour day in private employment, and for that reason this Government should encourage a like movement, and furthermore, there was no danger to be felt in competition with foreign countries whose labor time had decreased or was decreasing beyond ours. Mr. Chairman, if the committee will glance for a moment at the very elaborate report of the Bureau of Labor on its exhibit at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, it will find a most remarkable series of tables, covering 13 trades and general labor in Great Britain, France, Belgium, and Germany; an inquiry extends to comparative hours of labor and wages, and these remarkable tables will be found in the bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 54. They cover a period from 1890 to 1903, and in every single instance you will note that the hours of labor are considerably longer in the 13 trades in Europe, but that the wages paid, particularly in Germany, which I believe was the subject of inquiry the other day, are 200 to 250 per cent less than the corresponding wages here, and that while it may be said that in some of the industries of Germany, which has forged ahead marvelously in manufacturing industries, there is an exceptional tendency in a few factories toward the establishment of the eight-hour standard in private employment, it is not being forced by legislation; it is being left to the evolution of the industry and the growth of agreements and the wiser and better feeling between employer and employee. Mr. DAVENPORT. When you speak of the eight-hour day, do you mean the eight-hour day without the privilege of overtime? Mr. EMERY. I have discussed that. No; I am speaking of the eight-hour day as a standard working day. Mr. DAVENPORT. Do you know any place where they do not permit overtime work, even in New Zealand?" Mr. EMERY. I know of no instance, and when I read Mr. Gompers's statement that he represented the wishes of the American Federation of Labor in demanding the eight-hour day, and expressed their willingness to stand by a prohibition preventing them from working longer on the subject-matter of Government contracts, I thought that Mr. Gompers's statements were contradicted by the men themselves. I do know that, in the lithographers' case, they refused to work overtime, and there was a great strike in consequence, but I know of no trade agreement that does not provide for overtime, and it is the common experience of manufacturers and builders that overtime, holidays, and Sundays is in most instances eagerly sought. Let me say, in passing, with regard to that, that even if this were a good law, is this the time to enact it? Is this an hour when you are seeking to prevent labor from exercising its energies and endeavoring to obtain all it can for the expenditure of its effort, subject only to its own judgment and the wise police judgment of the State? This is an hour when the depression existing in present industry has resulted in curtailing some 20 per cent of the production of the nation; when men are not seeking to dodge work, but to find it; when they are hunting jobs, not trying to avoid them; when the cry is to find a place for the unemployed, not to find less work for the employed. We have been taught as a nation, we believe as individuals, that work does no man harm within reasonable limits, and that work is not only of the hand, but of the mind, and that the hand is never well occupied except when the mind wisely directs it. "It is only by labor," said John Ruskin, "that thought is kept healthy; it is only by thought that labor is made happy.' Let me say that, in addition to the figures presented in the report of the exhibit of the Bureau of Labor at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, I desire also to include a statement extracted from the Special Consular Reports, volume 33, presented in 1905, which shows the hours of silk mills at Crefeld, Germany; of the engineering works at Dusseldorf; of the machinery works at Dusseldorf; of the hosiery works at Chemnitz; of the cotton mills at Munchen-Gladbach; of the woolen mills at Elberfeld; of the cutlery works at Solingen, and the steel works at Essen. The following time schedules, taken from various representative factories in different places, will show exactly the length and distribution of the day's work: Total in summer, 12 hours, minus 2 hours for meals equals 10 hours. Total in winter, 113 hours, minus 1 hours for meals equals 10 hours. On Saturdays the closing time is 5.30 p. m. The week is, therefore, 582 hours in summer and 58 hours in winter. Total, 12 hours, minus 2 hours for meals equals 10 hours. Week, 60 hours. Begin.. Hours in machinery works at Düsseldorf. 7 a. m. 12 to 1.30 p. m. Total, 11 hours, minus 14 hours for meals equals 10 hours. Begin.. Breakfast Dinner Tea... Close Total, 12 hours, minus 1 hour and 40 minutes for minutes. On Saturdays the mill closes at 5.30 p. m. 60 hours in winter. Begin.. Dinner Tea. Close Week, 60 hours. 6 a. m. (winter 7. a. m.). 8.30 to 8.50 a. m. 12 to 1 p. m. 4 to 4.20 p. m. 6 p. m. (winter 7 p. m.). meals equals 10 hours and 20 Week, 61 hours in summer, Hours in cotton mill at München-Gladbach. 7 a. m. 12 to 1.30 p. m. Total, 11 hours, minus 13 hours for meals equals 9 hours. On Saturdays close at 5.30 p. m. Week, 574 hours. |