Jasper County Democrat, Volume 3, Number 34, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 December 1900 — Labor Worla [ARTICLE]

Labor Worla

The number of meu employed on llritlsh railways Is nearly 400,000. The Western Federation of Miners How' has 80 unions and over 10,000 members. There are nearly 8,000 members of trades unions in Peoria, 111., w'itb 108 unions of tha. various trades. The Journeymen Brewers’ Union will levy an assessment of $1 per member to create an A. F. of L. defense fund. A recent compilation of statistics ;Show that out of 98 chief national Industries In a given year only 29 gave men employment for 300 days In the year. The Pennsylvania Steel Company has received an order for 0,000 tons of steel rails from the East India Railway Company. The order was secured in competition with English manufacturers. Tlie United Garment Workers are stirring up organized labor and insisting that union men before purchasing clothing should see that It bears the union label. Dealers that do not handle union goods will be looked after lay the organizers. The Pennsylvania law limiting the hours of factory labor for females to GO hours a week ami not more than 12 on any given day, and fixing the minimum age of child labor at 13 years, has been upheld and declared constitutional by the Superior Court. The act prohibiting corporations from discharging employes for belonging to a union was decided by the same court as unconstitutional as “class legislation." The United States consul nt Chamitz, Germany, writes the department here that workmen there are provided with brick houses of five rooms, aud parlor supplied with porcelain stoves and heating pipes, and the kitchen with wash boiler and stove; with yard for flowers in front and a garden plot behind, with shed for poultry or some domestic animal. These houses are to be rented to the workmen for $3.05 per mouth. The railroad firemen are now complaining because the mammoth engines that are now being used are so hard to fire and they nearly kill the men who ere assigned to them. These engines, with the same crews, do a little more than twice the work that engines did ten years ago. Some firemen have been relieved from this severe strain. Ah apparatus for mechanical firing is being experimented with on the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad. The New Zealand Parliament at its Idlest session passed a law*, prescribing a minimum wage for children. A boy under 18 may not be employed in a factory or work room at less than $1.25 per week, and no girl at less than sl. The object of the law is to correct a long-standing abuse of the apprentice system, unscrupulous employers in dress-making and millinery establishments having been accustomed to take young girls into their employ, keep them twelve mouths without paying them a cent iu the way of wages, and then turn them adrift in order to take on fresh hands under the same conditions of non-payment of wages.