THE ROLL CALL
The Roll Call ON MEN AND MEASURES Waiting For Action THERE is pending before the House of Representatives a most important bill. It is H. R. 29, "A Bill to Regulate the Hours of Employment and...
...Shall we ever institute the lock-step directorate T —New York Tribune...
...It will equalize the operating expenses of foreign and domestic vessels engaged in our over-sea trade and tend to build up our merchant marine...
...It will promote safety at sea...
...There are in the District of Columbia approximately 52,488 women sixteen years of age and over who are gainfully employed, with a number in addition who are between the ages of six and fifteen years...
...WE have now the interlocking directorate...
...I SENATE 136 ("the La Follette Seamen's Bill") is substantially a copy of H. R. 23,-673 which passed the House in the last Congress, except that it has a new clause requiring sufficient lifeboats for passenger vessels...
...Letters on the Seamen's Bill Safety— The Merchant Marine—Freedom By ANDREW FURUSETH President, International Seamen's Union of America THE great shipping combinations, alarmed by the unexpected passage of the seamen's bill through the Senate, rushed their trained agents to Washington last October to block it in the Bouse of Representatives...
...All difference in operating cost is1 now in wages paid...
...The wage cost of operation depends upon the port in which the crew is hired, not upon the flag of the vessel...
...The shipowners have claimed that competition with foreign vessels was impossible because of the difference in cost of building and operating...
...If foreign ships were deprived of certain special privileges, under which they now have the aid of our government in forcibly retaining, or recapturing, the men secured in ports' with a lower wage rate, such foreign ships would find it necessary to adopt the American standard of wages when trading to our ports...
...It has been reported to the House by the Committee on Labor with a recommendation that it be passed...
...Washington Post...
...The Roll Call ON MEN AND MEASURES Waiting For Action THERE is pending before the House of Representatives a most important bill...
...In eyery European country laws have been passed within the past few years shortening the hours in which women are permitted to work, and whenever these laws are amended the hours are reduced...
...It is proper that the gov ernment, in the only city of size under the federal jurisdiction, should set a good example of legislation to the several states and enact this greatly needed law as a means toward the conservation of the health of our women and the strength both of body and mind of the coming generations, whose lives and capacity for citizenship depend upon our care of their potential mothers.'' Why delay longer the passage of this humane legislation ? * * * OIL in Mexico is not reducing the amount of friction.—Philadelphia Record...
...Congressman Lewis's report concludes: "The tendency of modern legislation is toward shortening the hours of labor of women, particularly in the industrial trades...
...This bill provides that no woman shall be employed in any manufacturing or mercantile establishment, laundry, hotel, restaurant, telegraph or telephone establishment, or by any express or transportation company in the District of Columbia for more than eight hours in any one day or for more than forty-eight hours in any one week...
...The last Congress equalized the building cost by admitting foreign built vessels to American register for purposes of foreign trade...
...Wrote Senator La Follette on November 1, 1913: "The onset on the House Kill be a thing, the like of which has not been witnessed in years...
...In the report of the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, May 2, 1912, (after exhaustive hearings in which all objections now urged by shipowners were given consideration) it is described as follows: "First...
...For over fifty years the government has established an eight-hour day for its clerks,, and in many departments their work is actually less than eight hours...
...The controlled press will be directed to make concerted attack upon it...
...Third...
...Their influence cannot be over-stated...
...This paper deals with the subject from a technical standpoint which shows, what science has proved, that excessive hours and excessive strain in the various trades have a markedly injurious effect upon the physical condition of women which is reflected disastrously upon the second generation...
...It is H. R. 29, "A Bill to Regulate the Hours of Employment and Safeguard the Health of Woman "Wage Earners in the District of Columbia...
...Back of them are the biggest aggregations of capital on earth...
...It is also identical with the Senate bill, S. 1294, introduced by Senator La Follette on April 21, 3913, which has passed the Senate on two different occasions—in the Sixty-second and the present Congress...
...As a result, the committee favorably reported the bill on February 26, 1913, but the final adjournment of Congress on March 4, 1913, cut off opportunity to bring the bill to a vote...
...All this has been done since that was written,—AND IS NOW BEING DONE...
...Second...
...In her great book on Fatigue and Efficiency, which grew out of the brief filed in the Supreme Court of the United States by Louis D. Bban-deis and Miss Josephine Goldmark in the Oregon case, the writer says: "The industrial overstrain of women has commonly reacted in three visible ways: in a heightened infant mortality, a lowered birth rate and an impaired second generation...
...American" shipowners having money invested in foreign ships, with their partners the European shipowners, understand this to he the inevitable result of Senate 136...
...It will give real American ships proper opportunities in the for-eign trade...
...They will argue that it will disturb treaty relations with foreign nations...
...This bill was introduced in the Senate by Senator La Follette...
...This is thirty-six per cent, of all the females in the District ten years of age and over...
...The subject matter of the bill, therefore, has been considered twice by the Senate and has been given the fullest study in two Congresses by this committee...
...that no woman shall be employed more than six hours continuously, in the establishments or occupations enumerated, in which three or more women are employed, without an interval of at least three-fourths of an hour, except that she may be employed six and one-half hours continuously if the employment ends not later than 1:30 P. M. and she is thereupon dismissed for the day...
...Congressman Lewis of Maryland, who submitted this favorable report for the committee, remarks : "This is not an unconsidered legislative proposition...
...R. 29, is identical in form with the bill then favorably reported by this committee...
...LETTER NO...
...They emphasize the difference in cost of operation...
...Incidentally it gives striking application of the principle of the eight-hour work day in industry—a principle that is bound to prevail everywhere for both men and women...
...Delay on every pretext will be their, first method of attack...
...The present bill, II...
...The certain effect will be to equalize the wage cost of operation...
...This committee has very fully and carefully studied the bill, and in the previous Congress extensive hearings were held, running through the first two weeks of February, 1913, at which a number of persons appeared and gave testimony for and against the proposal...
...Delay...
...It has already passed the Senate on two different occasions...
...It will give freedom to the sailors...
...In the United States the states of Arizona and California have eight-hour days for women in some of the trades, and many states have a nine-hour day...
...If you would aid in making seamen free, if you would avert the awful loss of human life at sea (have you noticed how often the neiospapers have been printing news of appalling wrecks and disasters at sea) call on-your Member of the House to come to the support of this great,-humane measure, the passage of which has been delayed and denied for twenty years...
...IF EGGS become legal tender generally, the cold storage operators run the risk of being arrested for "shoving the queer...
...The influence of the capital back of this opposition is so powerful that it willl cause resolutions of protest against the bill to be adopted and forwarded to the House by chambers of commerce, boards of trade and shippers' associations...
...that it will impose too great hardship on the smaller water transportation lines,—anything, everything, to gain time to bring pressure to bear upon Members of the House...
...The report presents to the consideration of the House a paper read at the International Congress of Hygiene by Rosalie Slaughter Morton M. D., of New York City...
...This in order to keep their crews, or to obtain new crews...
...That is why they oppose it...
...Let the United States cease to be a slave-catcher for foreign ships...
...It is the same to vessels of all nations hiring their crews in the same port, and engaged in the same or similar trade...
...that no girl under eighteen years of age shall be employed in any of the establishments or occupations enumerated before seven o 'clock in the morning or after six o 'clock in the evening...
Vol. 6 • February 1914 • No. 6
