The Chairman, Judge T. F. Garver and Secretary, H. T. Chase have been supported by a strong favorable public opinion among leading citizens.

Similarly, as a result of the sanitary survey of Springfield, Ill., made by Dr. George T. Palmer, local citizens wished such other investigations made as would in the end mean a general survey of the city. At their invitation a "pathfinder's" survey of Springfield was made by the department, and a local survey committee headed by Senator Logan Hay and with A. L. Bowen, secretary of the State Board of Charities, as secretary, was organized. The appointment of a finance committee has been authorized, and work toward raising the necessary funds is soon to begin.

Another quick diagnosis of city conditions was made by the department recently for Scranton, Pa. The project was urged by the Civic Improvement Committee of the Scranton Century Club, of which Gertrude Lovell is chairman. The Century Club became interested and through its president, Mrs. Ronald P. Gleason, the Department of Surveys and Exhibits was invited to make the preliminary examination. The report presented to an open meeting of the club covered public health and sanitation, taxation and public finance, community assets, civic improvement, education, charity and other betterment agencies, recreation, delinquency, work conditions and relations. The findings and recommendations of this quick diagnosis were given wide circulation in the city by the newspapers.

to reveal sufficient local facts to permit the planning of an intelligent program for community advance, say for a period of five years. Not only liabilities but community assets the forces to build on and to build with-as well as what to build will be.

Second, the preliminary survey aims to be the means of enlisting public support for measures which champion human welfare. The public official with a vision of what he might accomplish toward social well-being needs the support of public opinion. His and other work for city progress are as often hampered by public indifference as by the selfish interests of an active few. Public indifference in matters of its own vital concern disappears quickly when the public is intelligently informed. City self-knowledge is a chief effort of the survey.

Third, the preliminary survey is to collect sufficient data to point out the problems which need more thorough or continuous investiga

tion.

PROSTITUTION BANISHED IN ONE NEW YORK TOWN

Among the larger efforts of the department is a preliminary survey of Newburgh, N. Y., which was started March 15. The department's field director, Zenas L. Potter, is being assisted by Franz Schneider, Jr., also of the department's staff, in the investigation of public health; Margaret F. Byington of the Charity Organization Department of the Russell Sage Foundation has investigated public and private charity work; D. O. Decker is covering public finance and municipal efficiency; E. F. Brown of the National Child Labor Committee is assisting in the studies of labor conditions; and Franklin Zeiger is studying housing. The New York Consumers League expects also to send a field worker to co-operate for a fortnight. Amy Woods, secretary of the Newburgh Associated Charities, started the movement toward the Newburgh survey. The project has had the support of citizens representing the business-men's associations, labor unions, churches, charity and other social organizations, city administration and women's organizations. The findings of this survey are soon to be ready for publication.

The preliminary surveys are designed to attain three kinds of results. First, they aim

1913

Several months ago, Dr. Paul B. Brooks of Norwich, at a meeting of a district branch of The New York State Medical Society presented a paper on the Relation of the General Practitioner to the Prevalence of Veneral Diseases. In it he declared that the medical profession possessed information which, if frankly revealed, would bring about widespread reforms. Through their inactivity, he said, doctors are more responsible than any other class of citizens for the prevalence of veneral diseases. He asserted that a large percentage of infections of this class could be traced, directly or indirectly, to the public prostitute; that prostitution is, in no sense, a "necessary evil," and that if "the people demand it," then the moral sense of “the people" is open to criticism. He believed that the police of any community, large or small, if given power to drive out prostitutes, would be able to protect virtuous women.

Shortly after this some eight or ten physicians, assembled for a meeting of the Physician's Club of Norwich, fell to comparing notes on the prevalence of veneral diseases in the community. The result was startling. Six or seven houses of prostitution, running openly and apparently without restriction, were turning out dozens of men, and even boys of school age, prepared to spread the scourge among innocent women, and through them, to generations unborn. A large number of the inmates of establishments were known to be actually infected. The situation impressed these physicians as being so serious that they determined to call a special meeting of the club and to invite the town and village authorities to confer with them. In the meantime they considered the various possibilities, including intervention by the Board of Health, medical inspection, etc. In the end they decided that there was but one feasible plan to attempt the elimination of public prostitution or at least all but such as was clandestinely practised.

They regarded it as their duty to advise, and demand, if necessary, the removal of the obvious breeding grounds for disease.

When the local authorities met these physicians, some were skeptical as to the results which would follow from such an attempt, though nearly all agreed that the situation was serious enough to demand vigorous action. The village attorney, who had openly opposed public prostitution for many years, after hearing the evidence, declared: "If the fathers of this town were to hear the evidence put before us by these physicians they would mob these places, and discredit every one of us!" Some of the establishments had been in operation for twenty years, and were regarded as fixtures. It was said that they "made business"-certain it was that many physicians had found the inmates regular and

159

remunerative clients, and that all had shared in the income from treatment of the diseases which they bred. Some officials feared that public sentiment would not support radical action and that the morals of innocent boys and girls would be injured by having their attention called to conditions which perhaps had escaped their notice. On the other hand they found themselves in an unusual position-they were confronted by practically all the local physicians, standing shoulder to shoulder in a demand for drastic action.

Finally, these physicians brought the officials to their way of thinking. They voted unanimously to clean out the "red light" district, and proceeded at once and vigorously. In a month they had closed up every known establishment, and had rid the town of a number of street walkers. Greatly to their surprise, they found that public sentiment strongly approved of their action. Since then there has been a reduction of at least 75 per cent in number of the new cases of venereal infection.

After the establishments within the corporation limits had been closed, there was one house without the village jurisdiction, which remained in operation for a short time. During that period, every new case, so far as is known that came to a local physician, could be traced to that establishment. The district attorney collected evidence, including the testimony of a young man who had been infected, presented it to the Grand Jury, and an indictment followed. A few weeks later, the proprietor committed suicide. There has been scarcely a new case since.

"This town of ours," says a local physician "is just an average town, no better and no worse than other towns similar in size and environment. The physicians, likewise, are average physicians. What we have accomplished can be accomplished elsewhere, assuming that our results are worth while."

THE DEAD MAN AT MAMARONECK

It took the killing of one man in the prime of life, a strike sympathizer-a small merchant and property holder, he was, of Mamaroneck— and the wounding of half a dozen strikers by local police and New York detective-agency men, to bring to public notice in New York not only the low pay of the Italian "pick and shovel men" employed in the suburban towns along the sound, but also the general violation of New York state laws on jobs done under contract for the state and various municipalities.

By a coincidence, one of the strikers who left the town hall of Mamaroneck on April 16, after the Arbitration Bureau of the New York State Labor Department had brought about a settlement, made much the same comment as was

made by the labor representatives before the Massachusetts Board of Arbitration when the Lawrence strike was on.

"Why didn't they investigate before we had to strike?" he asked. "Why did we have to lose our brother to get what we have a right to anyway?"

The grievances which had led, two days before this settlement, to a fight on a country road leading from Harrison to Mamaroneck were not

new.

Three months ago, wage and other demands were presented by the day laborers on road and street work in this section of the state, who had organized a year ago in the General Laborers' International Union of America. No response was made by the contractors. Thereupon several thousand men throughout the regionwhich is the community zone of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railway, struck to enforce these demands. On April 14 a couple of hundred strikers marched south from Harrison, doubling their numbers as they went by calling out, some say by force, the laborers on the estates they passed.

At the outskirts of Mamaroneck they were stopped by a score of town officials on the ground that they had no permit to parade. In the fight that followed, it was rock and fistwith a final appeal to knives-against club and. gun. One detective had a leg broken and was otherwise seriously injured. The injuries of the strikers were bullet wounds. One was killed. Following the conflict, the sheriff was appealed to to swear in the detectives as his deputies, as vengance for the killing was feared; but he refused on the ground that that type of men had proved, here and elsewhere, altogether too handy with the gun. They had been brought out from a New York detective office by the mayor and police of Mamaroneck, when the rumors of labor trouble in the contract work grew thick. It apparently had not occurred to the town officials to spend an equal amount of energy in finding out what the trouble was about. Road fights are not frequent occurrences in this region of gardens and express trains and the alarm spread panic. Isolated households imagined most anything at the hands of the "dagoes" who "must be kept down." There was a call for volunteer deputies, and citizens responded eagerly with their hunting arms.

The strikers crowded in hundreds to the house of their dead comrade, but after their first outbreak they were found to be so peaceably inclined that all deputies, except the police department's aids from New York, were withdrawn, and the strikers were even given permission to follow the hearse to the cemetery, the day after the strike settlement. This cortege passed through many of the strike centers

at Mamaroneck, Larchmont, New Rochelle, Mt. Vernon, and other towns in which the laborers' union claims a membership of 10,000. It was the occasion for no disorderly effort at vengeance.

The laborers' demands of three months ago covered recognition of the union, wage payments by the week, an eight-hour day, a wage minimum for pick and shovel men of $2 a day with revised hour rates for others of the lower grades of work. The eight-hour demand is essentially a demand for compliance with the state law which all the contractors on these public jobs have been breaking by working a ninehour day. The inquiry brought out the fact that the superintendent of the biggest job of all, the state road, was a brother of an official of the State Engineers' Department, which is charged with the supervision of such work.

WHAT THE ARBITRATION
BOARD HEARING REVEALED

By the agreement reached by strikers and contractors at the hearing before the Bureau of Arbitration, the men waived the point of union recognition. Since present estimates on the contractor's work were made before union demands were presented, the rate of pay for an eight hour day is to be based on $2 for a nine hour day until present contracts expire, all new contracts to be based on $2 for eight hours. Other terms of the agreement call for the abolition of the padrone system; the preferential employment of laborers living in the neighborhood of any piece of work-in itself a blow at the padrone system, with its big employment fees and rake-off from feeding and transporting the labor gangs; the abolition of the shack lodging house and its keeper and the enforcement of weekly wage payments. The last two are merely corrections of illegal conditions. This agreement was unsigned. It is perhaps given. some security by being filed with the bureau, but there was no one designated to follow up and enforce any point except those correcting illegal conditions.

However much the unearthing of these illegal conditions may reflect on the state labor authorities as a whole, they are not the fault of the bureau of arbitration, whose representatives settled the strike largely on terms which call for a living up to the law in the future.

The mediators laid themselves open to criticism, however, in yielding their places as impartial questioners of both parties to the con-troversy, to a local official who showed open prejudice for the contractors and a tendency to browbeat the strikers throughout the hearing. This official made the original and astonishing statement that the strikers' demand for recognition was illegal as it constituted a conspiracy

1913

in restraint of trade, and that it would therefore render the paper on which their demands were written worthless before the law.

One of his taunting questions was: "How can you demand $2 a day for a man who isn't worth seventy-five cents?" The president of the union. made reply. He was an Italian and he spoke with some heat; perhaps he did not know he was setting off a human estimate against what an economist would call the commodity theory of labor?

"Man wort' seventy-five cent a day?" he asked. "No man wort' seventy-five cent, no man wort' less than two dolla day. Man got a wife, man got a child. Everybody wort' two dolla day. That the least price will take.

"I like the men live more nice. You no like to live ten in a room. You no like take your children out of the school to work. You no like to be out of work five mont' in the year. Me figure this pay on basis twelve mont' to live on seven mont' pay. That's dolla day. Can you

support five, six child on that?

"Contractor can pay. On some men he make four dolla profit; big profit on all de men. The men they want this two dolla. They no take less."

Small as this strike was, in several respects it was remarkable. It is an instance of the crystalization of unskilled labor into unions and its spontaneous outbreak-in this instance without any revolutionary I. W. W. leadership. The strike was not in an industrial center, but in a community of homes, and there were people who looked out of their windows and saw how the type of hired detective, who usually operates in out of the way strike regions, shot into a crowd of strikers without guns, who were in more senses than one, to be sure, taking the law into their own hands, but doing so only long after the authority which the men with the guns represented had failed to enforce it.

But beyond all that, the strike revealed the dread, the utter misunderstanding, the gap between the people who live by the sides of the roads and the men who build them. They did not know it was a desire for settled employment, for homes instead of padrone's barracks that was arousing these workers.

SOME NEW STATE LAWS
AFFECTING WOMEN'S WORK

Rhode Island was the first state to legislate in 1913 regarding women's hours of work. The law had previously failed to provide any protection for women employed in stores. It had prohibited more than fifty-six hours' work in one week in manufacturing and mechanical establishments, but it allowed more than ten hours' work in one day for various causes. The new law fixes a flat ten-hour day and fifty-four-hour

161

week for all women employed in any "factory, manufacturing, mechanical, business or mercantile establishment."

Several measures were presented to the Legislature dealing with this subject. The bill as passed was introduced as a substitute, at the request of Chief Factory Inspector J. Ellery Hudson. It was strongly supported at the hearings before the Legislature by the Consumers' League of Rhode Island, by the representatives of the labor unions, women's clubs, and the Rhode Island Medical Society. The removal of the former exceptions in the law is as great a gain as the reduction of hours and the inclusion of mercantile houses. The bill marks a notable advance in Rhode Island.

Another important bill recently passed through effective concerted action was in Delaware, where no law was ever before enacted to limit women's hours of labor. Two years ago the Consumers' League of Delaware carried on a campaign for a ten-hour bill. This measure passed the Legislature, but was amended almost beyond recognition in the process, and in the end it was not signed by the governor. This year a ten-hour law committee of the Consumers' League was formed of which Margaret H. Shearman has been chairman. In spite of bitter opposition, a bill was carried through, providing for a ten-hour day and a fifty-five-hour week. Success followed a campaign of unusual vigor, conducted for months throughout the state. The new law includes women employed in many occupations-"in any mercantile, mechanical or manufacturing establishment; laundry, baking or printing establishment; telephone and telegraph office or exchange." Women employed in canning establishments are exempted. Many other exceptions and amendments were pressed, but only one concession was made to secure the passage of the bill. This allows one working day of twelve hours each week.

In Texas the Legislature proved more compliant to the powerful lobby which opposed the passage of the first woman's labor law in that state. Cotton-mill owners, raising the familiar cry that their industry would be ruined, succeeded in having themselves wholly excluded from the new act. They may therefore continue to employ their women workers as long as they choose, while the only manufacturers prohibited from employing women more than ten hours in one day and fifty-four hours in one week are those engaged in the garment trades!

According to the census of 1910, about 4.000 women are employed in the factories in Texas. Textiles are not separately listed, but it is fair to surmise that a small minority of the 4,000 women are garment workers covered by the new law, and that the great majority are employed