Published Quarterly by the State Department of Labor. Vol. X, No. I. ALBANY, March, 1908 Whole No. 36 EDITORIAL SUMMARY. Monthly returns as to unemployment from selected trade unions throughout the State representing approximately 100, 000 organized wage earners The State Employment. reflect very clearly the dis astrous effects upon the labor market of the financial panic. of last October. During the first six months of 1907 idleness among trade unionists was greater than the year before, but continued improvement had by mid-summer reduced the percentage of unemployment very nearly to the record in 1906 (8.5 as compared with 7.6), this improvement of the first half year having been mainly due to increasing activity in the New York City building trades. But the improvement in those trades was interrupted in July, followed by a marked relapse in August and this, coupled with the extensive strike of commercial telegraphers, sent the proportion of idle unionists suddenly upward in the latter month. Conditions in the building trades did not improve in September, while idleness due to lack of work increased in the clothing and metal trades so that by October 1, the proportion of unionists unemployed was nearly twice as great as in 1906 and much above the average for 1902 to 1906. Upon the labor market, thus already unfavorable, came the violent depression following close after the October panic causing great increase of idleness in nearly all of the principal organized trades, and leaving approximately every third member of the representative unions reporting, or 32.7 per cent of the membership, idle at the end of December as compared with percentages varying from 11.1 to 23.1, with an average of 18.3, for the year 1902-6. This proportion for the State as a whole does not quite equal that for New York City (34.2 per cent), reported in the last BULLETIN, indicating slightly worse conditions in the metropolis than in the remainder of the State. The worst conditions at the close of the year appear in the building, clothing, metal and tobacco trades, with percentages of idleness of 42.1, 43.6, 30.9 and 55.0 respectively. Among the principal industries one exception to the prevailing unfavorable conditions appears in the printing trades with a percentage of idleness (11.1) which compares not unfavorably with previous years. Industrial Strikes and lockouts and the number of employees participating in them were less numerous in the fourth quarter of 1907 than in 1906, but were still much above the figures for 1905, 1904 or 1903. Thirty-five strikes or lockouts involving directly 7,522 workpeople were begun in the fourth quarter, 1907, as compared with 43 new disputes with 9,095 employees directly concerned in the same period of 1906. During the five months from October 1, 1907, to March 1, 1908, the State Bureau of Mediation and Arbitration intervened in 21 industrial disputes, all strikes or lockouts save one. In the latter instance, a shoe manufacturing firm of New York City and the union of its employees submitted a question of piece prices to arbitration by a representative of the Bureau. This is the first case of arbitration by the Bureau since 1905, and the second since 1902. The total effects of intervention can not well be expressed numerically of course since advice or suggestion may have an indirect effect when no immediate results are evident. But in five of the 21 interventions, including the arbitration case, settlements resulted immediately and directly from the Bureau's efforts. The unfavorable relations in the important book and job printing industry of New York City, growing out of the determination of the United Typothetæ to maintain " open shop" conditions following the compositors' strikes for eight-hours in 1906, have recently been considerably improved through the formation of a new employers' association, The Printers' League, now representing over 50 firms and 5,500 employees, which has signed arbitration agreements and scales with the compositors and pressmen and preliminary agreements with the press feeders and assistants, a general scale for the latter being under arbitration. A new Bookbinders' League, similar to The Printers' League, has signed agreements with the several local unions of bookbinders in the metropolis. On the other hand an untoward incident in the field of collective bargaining appears in the recent controversy between the national Typothetæ and the Printing Pressmens' Union over the validity of their national agreement negotiated last year to succeed a five year agreement made in 1902, in the course of which appeals were made to New York State, as well as federal courts for injunctions to prevent strikes as being infringements of the agreement. Factory Inspection. The BULLETIN publishes an article by Chief Factory Inspector Walling containing suggestions to deputy factory inspectors on ventilation. "I believe," says the Chief Inspector, "we are justified in demanding a system that will furnish in ordinary trades a minimum of 2,000 cubic feet of fresh air per hour for each person, and the removal of the same amount, which supply under no circumstances should fall below 1,500 cubic feet per hour." The summary of work of deputy inspectors for the fourth quarter of 1907 shows 130 prosecutions. begun as compared with 99 in the fourth quarter of 1906. The great majority of these (123) were child labor cases including 44 for violation of the new eight-hour law of 1907 for children under sixteen and one for violation of the provision of that statute which forbids the work of such children after five o'clock P. M. Advance summaries of statistics of employees in factories for the year ended September 30, 1907, show a total of 1,139,788 employees in the 40,118 establishments inspected during the year. Of these 1,086,555 were shop employees as distinguished from office force, including 309,505 women over sixteen years of age. Children between 14 and 16 years old numbered 14,328 of whom 13,911 were in the shops. The proportion of children 14 to 16 years of age to total employees, both office and shop, was 12.5 in 1907 or practically the same as in 1906 when the proportion was 12.4. Industrial During the year ended September 30, 1907, a total of 19,431 employees in factories and quarries in New York State were reported injured by accidents. This is nearly 6,000 greater than the number reported in 1906 and not far from four times the number which was reported in 1903. This increase represents only a nearer approach to complete returns and has no significance as to whether factory accidents are on the increase or not. Notwithstanding the great progress toward completeness which has been made, it can not yet be said that that goal has been attained, as pointed out in the annual report of the Commissioner of Labor for the year in question. Fatal accidents reported in 1907 numbered 344 as compared with 259 for the year before. During October, November and December of 1907 there were 4,364 accidents reported as compared with 4.616 in the same months of 1906, the decrease being doubtless due to decreased forces in factories on account of the business depression. Fatal accidents for the quarter numbered 78 against 86 the year before. Supreme Court Decisions. The BULLETIN contains the prevailing opinions delivUnited States ered in the four recent decisions of the United States Supreme Court touching the interests of labor. First among these is the unanimous decision upholding the constitutionality of the Oregon ten-hour law for women in laundries, which is based on such broad grounds as to virtually lay a solid basis of constitutionality for the limitation of working hours for women by State laws generally, bringing thus certainty where before considerable uncertainty had existed, |