Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 245, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 October 1912 — DEMOCRATIC LEGISLATURE REFUSED TO PASS KEEGAN’S CHILD LABOR LAW. [ARTICLE]

DEMOCRATIC LEGISLATURE REFUSED TO PASS KEEGAN’S CHILD LABOR LAW.

. v- • ' . f ; —— Democratic Representative, Who Is a Candidate for Re-Election, Tells of - Hard Knocks His Pet Bill Received at Last Session. While the Democrats of Indiana are boasting of their strong friendship for the laboring man in Indiana and pointing to laws passed by the Democratic legislature to prove it, John Keegan, secretary of the International Machinists’ Union, with headquarters in Indianapolis, who was a Democratic member of the last Indiana legislature and who is a candidate for re-election from Marion county, is on record that union workingmen are not enthusiastic over what the Democratic party has done in passing laws for them. Mr. Keegan was a speaker at the last State Conference of Charities and Correction, held in Indianapolis in October, last year, when he spoke on his child labor law, which the Democrats declined to pass, and he is quoted in the Indiana Bulletin of the Board of State Charities as follows: “I sat in the legislature and noted the great interest taken In the protection and preservation of our birds and our fishes. I saw the farmers introducing bills for the care and protection of the hedge fences that divide their properties. I heard all kinds of legislation submitted and just as soon as a measure of this kind was introduced a great number of the members appeared interested in its successful passage. Finally it came my turn to introduce a bill and I had in mind the thought of the protection of what I considered the dearest thing we had to preserve on this earth, our little children. I introduced this measure at the instigation of some of our good people in Indiana. Instead of that great interest in the success of the measure, there appeared to be the greatest possible excitement for fear it might pass. “I say it is wrong; that no child should have to be employed. And I say to you that back and beneath all of it is this damnable commercialism of our times that has not only ruined the morals, but the minds and intellects of this that would be and may be the greatest race of people in the world today. It is rapidly, very rapidly, unless some check is put upon it, ruining this great country of ours. I have no fear of the child labor subject retrograding to the least extent. “I hope the day is coming when we will have a child labor law in Indiana that will conflict more seriously with our industrial conditions than the present law that I had the pleasure of introducing in the legislature. We did not hope when, we started out in a struggle of this kind to get all that we desire. The men of the trades union movement in this country that fathers and fights for the industrial freedom of the children are not quitters. They have learned by long, bitter struggles that all they obtain in this life, of its beauty or its happiness, they have to struggle for. They had reason to expect from certain sources better treatment after the bill was passed. “The department that has to do with enforcing the law is the factory inspection department. We had reason to suppose from previous remarks of our Governor that he would have been enough interested in the subject to place at the head of that department a practical man with some knowledge and some interest in the subject. For some reason or bther he did not see fit to do that and our law will undoubtedly suffer somewhat by his lack c interest. I do not know when in America a Governor or any one else searched for a factory inspector from amongst lawyers. So I say in that respect we have been rebuffed, but working men will not forget that; in the selection of a Governor, you may rest assured they will be more sure of their man along those lines again.”