Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 81, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 April 1913 — WILL AID CHILDREN [ARTICLE]

WILL AID CHILDREN

Five Hour Day Is Asked Workers in Massachusetts. To Lead Country Again If Measure Pending In the Legislature la Passed —Other States Aid Reform. New York. —Massachusetts will again lead the country in one part of its child labor laws, according to the national child 'labor committee, if the bill to reduce the hours of work for all under sixteen years becomes law. Massachusetts now has a tenhour day for workers under sixteen, which it is proposed to reduce at one step to a five-hour day, with the requirement that all child workers under sixteen shall attend a part time day school. Other states, meanwhile, are wondering if they can establish the eighthour day, and definite campaigns for this end are on in Arkansas, California, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Texas, West Virginia and elsewhere. The committee points out that the bills which have already been introduced in Pennsylvania, Delaware and Texas all include the regulation of street trades provided in the uniform child labor law. This allowc no newsboy under twelve years and no other street trader under fourteen. It also forbids all girls to engage in these occupations before they are sixteen years old. New York, under the recommendation of the state factory investigating commission, is considering bills not only to prohibit child labor in can-

ncries and tenements, but to reorganize the factory inspection department as an industrial commission with a greatly increased staff of inspectors. Delaware, Indiana, Missouri, North Carolina and others are also talking of measures to make more efficient' their departments of Inspection. In many states, minimum wage boards, pensions for widowed mothers, prohibition of night 'work and methods of determining age of children seeking employment are under discussion. New Hampshire and some of the routhern states will probably raise the age limit for working children from twelve to fourteen years, and it is hoped that a child labor law for territories will be presented to con* gresa A compulsory school attendance law has beet introduced in the North Carolina legislature, and bills are tulked of in South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas.