Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 40, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 September 1907 — LABOR NOTES [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

LABOR NOTES

The Order of Railway Conductors has voted to hold its 1909 biennial convention at Boston. More than 100,000 railway servants in England are required to work from twelve to fifteen hours a day. The sixty-hour-a-week schedule will be put in force in the cotton mills of South Carolina Jan. 1, 1908. Average wages in Canada have increased 27 per cent in fi\-e years, according to the census report. The number of wage earners employed in Virginia cotton mills in 1905 was 6,619, receiving $1,647,739 a year. Eight 'hundred union barbers in CM cago, have been granted a schedule of wages and working conditions by their employers. An effort is being made to establish a federation of labor in Oklahoma. If it is organized it will have about 145,000 workers under its Jurisdiction. The Amalgamated Society of British Engineers will, after this year, cease attending the Trades Union Congress, and absent Itself for at least four years. A National Association of Carpet Workers of America has been organized. This will have jurisdiction of about 20,000 persons employed in carpet mills. The demand of the Havana cigarmakers that they be paid in American money has been granted by the Cuban manufacturers, and the factories will immediately be reopened. Garden truck bearing union labels Is the latest thing proposed in Newburgh, N. Y., farmers in that vicinity having organized and asked for affiliation with the Central Labor Union. ~ There are thousands of women and girls who are members of unionlTbf trades in which most of the workers are men, and these unions are, naturally, controlled by tfce male members. The printers, telegraphers, garment workers, tobacco workers and several other trades admit women to membership in their pniona and theli rolls show a goodly number of wdmen members. The Council of the canton of Tessin, Switzerland, has decided by 34 against 21 votes io repeal the act prohibiting night work in bakeries. The men are badly organized and will probably not be able to resist the attempt of the masters to reintroduce night work. The Union of Sawmill Workers In the north of Sweden has beaten one of the biggest employers after a most bitter and prolonged fight, during which several hundreds of families were evicted from their dwellings, Jhe employer In question having adopted for some time the device of housing the men te hie own cottages.