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CHILD-LABOR BILL

HEARINGS

BEFORE

THE COMMITTEE ON LABOR

(), S. Eng. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

SIXTY-THIRD CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

H. R. 12292

A BILL TO PREVENT INTERSTATE COMMERCE IN THE
PRODUCTS OF CHILD LABOR, AND FOR
OTHER PURPOSES

FEBRUARY 27, 1914

WASHINGTON

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

1914

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Apr. 2014

CHILD-LABOR BILL.

COMMITTEE ON LABOR,

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, –

Washington, February 27, 1914.

STATEMENT OF HON. A. MITCHELL PALMER, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA.

Mr. PALMER. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, I want to call the attention of the committee to a bill introduced by myself, H. R. 13892, a bill to prevent interstate commerce in the products of child labor, and for other purposes.

In the short time I shall have it will be impossible for me to discuss this matter at great length.

The CHAIRMAN. I was going to suggest that inasmuch as the subject of this bill involves in a most vital way the manufacturing and labor and commercial interests of the country, that we would hear from you this morning a comprehensive statement of the object of its principal factors in order that the country might know what they have to consider, and we would not consider that we have gotten all the help from you we need from a brief statement from you this morning.

Mr. PALMER. It was my idea that all I should do to-day was to make a statement as to what this bill is, what it proposes to do, and, in a most general way, state the reasons for it, in the hope that the committee would give us a little further time to present some further facts and arguments on the part of the friends of this measure and to give a free, full, and ample opportunity to those who may be opposed to it, if any, to be heard before the committee. So, before I conclude, I shall ask the committee to fix some date when we can have a full hearing from both sides on the bill.

The proposition contained in this bill is a Federal child-labor law. It differs radically from former attempts at Federal child-labor legislation, and, in my judgment and in the judgment of many men of very much wider experience and very much deeper learning in the law than myself, this bill as framed will meet all the objections which have heretofore been raised against this sort of legislation. In a word, the proposition is to provide that it shall be unlawful for any person to ship or deliver for shipment in interstate commerce the products of any mill, mine, quarry, or manufacturing establishment where the labor of children below a certain standard is employed. The standard fixed by the act is: In mines and quarries, 16 years; in mills, factories, workshops, or other manufacturing establishments, 14 years, with a further provision against the night work of

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