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to his children after his death, shall be entitled to deduct the amount of the annual premium paid by him for such insurance or contract, or the annual sum paid by him or deducted from his salary or stipend as aforesaid, from any profits or gains in respect of which he shall be liable to be assessed. * Provided, always, That no such abatement and allowance or repayment as aforesaid shall be made in respect of any such annual premium beyond one-sixth part of the whole amount of the profits and gains of such person

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The obvious object of such legislation is to make it as easy as possible for persons to make suitable provision for those depending upon them for support, and to encourage self-reliance and self-support among the people. It seems a wiser provision than involuntary insurance under the command of law, which is now so general in some of the old and conservative countries of Europe, such as Germany and England, and which they justify on the ground that insurance is a public necessity.

The several States of this country in their legislation recognize the principle underlying the provisions above referred to in the British income-tax law, not by incorporating them in the income-tax law of the States-for few States have income-tax lawsbut almost without any exception they recognize them in their insurance laws by - authorizing the heads of families to insure their lives for the benefit of their wives and children, or any of them, exempting such insurance from any liability for the insured's debts or engagements, or otherwise, to the extent that the premium paid for it did not exceed a sum specified in the law.

For example, in Alabama such a law may be found in the Code of Alabama, 1907 (sec. 4502). This Alabama law has had an interesting history, which indicates a settled policy of the State to encourage such provision for the family by protecting the proceeds of such insurance from diminution or diversion upon any ground or

excuse.

Such a law was passed by the legislature of this State as long ago as 1840, and its provisions have been enlarged and strengthened in favor of the integrity of the proceeds of such insurance by numerous subsequent amendments. The wisdom of such legislation has never been questioned here or elsewhere so far as I can find.

May we not hope, therefore, that the Congress will be as wisely considerate on this important subject in whatever measure it adopts for the purpose of levying a tax on incomes as have been the legislative bodies of European countries and of our several States?

For your convenience I inclose herewith a full copy of that part of the British income-tax law of 1853 (16 and 17 Vict., c. 34) above quoted from.

Yours, very truly,

"Any person who shall have made insurance on his life or on the life of his wife, or who shall have contracted for any deferred annuity on his own life or on the life of his wife in or with any insurance company which shall become registered under any act to be passed in the present session of Parliament for that purpose and which shall comply with the requirements of such act; and any person who shall, under any act of Parliament, be liable to the payment of an annual sum or to have an annual sum deducted from his salary or stipend in order to secure a deferred annuity to his widow or a provision to his children after his death shall be entitled to deduct the amount of the annual premium paid by him for such insurance or contract or the annual sum paid by him or deducted from his salary or stipend, as aforesaid, from any profits or gains in respect of which he shall be liable to be assessed under either of the said schedules (d) or (e) of this act, or to have any assessments which may be made upon him under either of the said schedules reduced or abated by the reduction of the amount of the said annual premium from the amount of the profits and gains on which said assessment has been made; or if such person shall be assessed to duties under any of the schedules contained in this act, and shall have paid such assessment, or shall have paid or been charged with any of the said duties by deduction or otherwise, such person, on claim made to the commissioners for special purposes, and on production to them of the receipt for such annual payment, and on proof of the facts to the satisfaction of the said commissioners, shall be entitled to have repaid to him such proportion of the said duties paid by such person as the amount of the said annual premiums bears to the whole amount of his profits and gains on which he shall be chargeable under any of the schedules of this act: Provided, always, That no such abatement and allowance or repayment as aforesaid shall be made in respect of any such annual premium beyond one-sixth part of the whole amount of the profits and gains of such person so chargeable as aforesaid, nor

shall any such deduction or abatement entitle any such person to claim detailed exemption or any relief from duty on the ground of his profits and gains being thereby reduced below £100 or £150, as the case may be."

Section 54, the income tax act of 1853 (16 and 17 Vict., c. 34).

DETROIT, MICH., February 19, 1918.

Hon. FRANK E. DOREMUS,

House of Representatives, Washington, D. C.

MY DEAR MR. DOREMUS: I want to call your attention to the subject of the Federal income tax. As a taxpayer and a citizen, I have given a great deal of thought to this subject, and it seems to me that while the principle is fair, that unless the matter is worked out with a good deal of thought and care, it is not only liable to cause considerable injustice but class feeling in this country.

From what we have seen in the newspapers the proposal is to tax incomes amounting to $5,000 and over. I believe I am safe in stating that a very large majority of the people do not have incomes of this size. In other words, those who enjoy an income of $5,000 and over are in a minority. A person's interest in their Government is directly proportionate to the amount of direct taxation which they are compelled to pay to support this Government. The trouble with our indirect system of taxation; that is, our tariff system, is that people do not realize they are paying this amount out, and consequently they do not pay much attention to governmental expenditures or the results attained. I believe if the best results are to be obtained by our income-tax system; that is, the idea of obtaining a sufficient revenue to interest people in the Government and to prevent class feeling, that all incomes of every kind from $1,000 per annum and upward should be taxed under the Federal income-tax system. Not necessarily a heavy tax. My idea would be to make those of from $1,000 to $2,500 pay the smallest minimum possible, say one-eighth of 1 per cent; of $2,500 up to $5,000, say one-fourth of 1 per cent; of $5,000 to $10.000, another advance; of $10,000 to $25,000, another increase, and so on upward until those people who are enjoying incomes of the largest sizes would pay the heaviest tax. In this way, there could be no class feeling engendered, no feeling of discrimination, and all classes would realize that they were compelled to contribute their share toward the burden of supporting the General Government, without throwing the bulk of this expense on a few people. All of which is respectfully submitted for your consideration when the matter comes up in the House of Representatives.

Yours, very truly,

F. C. GILBERT.

STATEMENT SUBMITTED BY A. J. CONDEE, LOS ANGELES, CAL.

Hon. OSCAR UNDERWOOD,

LOS ANGELES, CAL., January 22, 1913.

Chairman Ways and Means Committee, Washington, D. C.

DEAR SIR: An organized clamor might create the impression that the people do not need or want real tariff reduction, even though they emphatically said so last November. The people-the consumers are not the ones benefited by protection and are about sick of the pretense.

The big beet-sugar plant at Oxnard, Cal., owns a vast acreage on which it raises its own beets, with the aid of Japanese. Last year, when sugar went up in the East because of an alleged shortage in the supply, these fellows out here boosted their prices to the same level and called it "good business." This is their own evidence before a committee of Congress. Further, the great sugar refineries in New York have always employed Polaks for laborers, paying them $1 a day for 12 hours' work and seven days a week. The American laborer gets a lot of benefit-as much as the general consumer. The protection in sugar has built up some gigantic fortunes, that have been of no benefit to our country, and their possessors have not hesitated to defraud the Government of its revenues.

The very men out here who are demanding protection for their oranges, olives, lemons, etc., have said they are looking forward to the opening of the Panama Canal to bring them cheap foreign labor. They furnish shacks, about like a dog house, for their fruit pickers to sleep and eat in, but say that white men refuse to work. The Catholic societies of this State have presented a bill to the California Legislature to compel these men begging for protection to give their laborers decent housing and bedding.

There is not one single industry of magnitude in the United States that is paying good wages unless forced to do so by some labor union, and yet the pretense is made that railroad men, plasterers, masons, printers, etc., are well paid because of the high tariff. Take their shoe mills, cotton mills, and woolen mills. Plenty of tariff protection, and both wages and quality of the output have been lowered until the laborers can not live and the goods are as worthless as the promises of the mill owners. Do you remember the cry for protection to infant industries and American labor? Well, they were given the high tariff, and have hunted down and utterly destroyed every little competitor in the country, and have supplanted the American laborer with men who can not even talk the English language. Men out here who have voted the Republican ticket for a generation joined the Democratic Party at the last election because it has declared so emphatically for tariff reduction and against any further tariff protection.

I am fairly well acquianted with conditions from New England to the Pacific coast, and I unhesitatingly urge you to hew to the line. It is the best thing you can do for both your country and your party.

Yours, truly,

A. J. CONDEE.

CHILD LABOR.

THE COTTON MILL: THE HEROD AMONG INDUSTRIES.

[By A. J. McKelway, secretary Southern States National Child Labor Committee.] Good old Nathaniel Morton, in his New England memorial, assigned as one of the reasons why the Pilgrim Fathers left the Old World for the New this:

"That many of their children, through the extreme necessity that was upon them, although of the best dispositions and graciously inclined and willing to bear part of their parents' burdens, were oftentimes so oppressed with their heavy labors that, although their spirits were free and willing, yet their bodies bowed under the weight of the same and became decrepit in their early youth, and the vigor of nature was consumed in the very bud."

When we begin to study the child-labor system in England, which the Pilgrim Fathers found so oppressive to their children that its existence was one reason for coming to the New World, we find that the cotton mill occupied a bad eminence. All through the eighteenth century we find references to the employment of children of tenderest years in cotton mills. These references are mostly of a congratulatory nature that a place for the child has been found in the world of industry and that the child is no longer an encumbrance but an asset. The attitude of the English people during this century may be summed up in the following quotation: "A quarter of the mass of mankind are children, males and females, under 7 years old, from whom little labor is to be expected."

It is interesting to note that though the Pilgrim Fathers say they came to America partly to escape the oppression of their children child labor preceded them, for in 1619, the year before the Fathers planted their considerable feet on Plymouth Rock, there is an acknowledgment of the General Court of Virginia of the 100 children sent over, "save such as dyed in the waie." A letter from England in 1627 mentions incidentally the fact that "there are many ships going to Virginia, and with them 1,400 or 1,500 children." These children were mostly paupers, but were often kidnaped and bound out to service. In 1646 two houses were erected in Jamestown for the manufacture of linen, and the different counties were "requested to send two poor boys or girls, at least 7 or 8 years old, to be instructed in the art of carding, knitting, and spinning." The textile industry did not flourish in Virginia, however, on account of its greater agricultural opportunities, and, returning again to the Pilgrim Fathers, one finds in Johnson's sermon on "Wonder Working Providence," published in 1638, that he commended the industrious people of Rowley, Mass., who had "built a fulling mill and caused their little ones to be very diligent in spinning cotton and wool."

It would seem that we must bring another indictment against the Pilgrim Fathers in addition to the familiar one, that having come to this country to escape religious persecutions they so soon became persecutors themselves, for after they came to America to escape the evils of child slavery they speedily inaugurated the system on American soil. In 1656, considering the development of manufactures in Massachusetts, the order was issued that "all hands not necessarily employed on other occasions, as women, boys, and girls, are hereby enjoined to spin according to their skill and ability."

Tench Cox argues that women and children will meet the demand for factory labor with the newly invented power machinery. In Niles's Register the statement is made that the work of manufacturing does not demand able-bodied men, but "is now better

done by little girls from 6 to 12 years old." Gov. Davis, of Massachusetts, in his message of 1835, echoes the sentiment of Lord Shaftesbury in England, that child labor had "spread from the cotton mills into other industries," by saying that "not only the machines in the textile manufacture, but thousands of others are equally worked by females and children."

Earlier than this, in 1829, Frances Wright, an English woman, in an address to an American audience, says: "In very many districts you have children worked for 12 hours a day, and you will soon have them, as in England, worked to death." Thus we see that child labor had grown in New England through the eighteenth century as it had grown in Old England, and in the nineteenth century, a half century after the first factory act in Old England, there began to be protests against the evil in New England.

In 1831 in a report on cotton, made at a convention of the Friends of Industry, the total number of children employed in cotton factories is given as 4,691; of this number 3,472 were from Rhode Island, 484 from New York, 439 from Connecticut, 217 from New Jersey, 60 from New Hampshire, 19 from Vermont, and none from Massachusetts. It may be remarked, however, that the "friends of industry" have always taken a roseate view of the child-labor system. As was stated to them not long ago by a Georgia legislator, they believe "in the protection of infant industries and the exploitation of infant industry."

INEFFECTIVE LAWS.

In 1842 an act was passed in Massachusetts making a 10-hour day for children under 12, but only those employers were convicted who "knowingly" violated it, a safeguard which was repeated in the Alabama law of 1907, the repeal of which proviso we find Gov. O'Neal urging in his message to the Alabama Legislature in 1911.

In Massachusetts Senate Document No. 69, we find that the Rhode Island law, requiring a low minimum of schooling before employment, was also a dead letter "There has never been a complaint, although it has been violated constantly, the employment of minors now depending on the necessity and cupidity of the parents and the interests of the manufacturers. The manufacturing interests are now a controlling power in the State, and it would be extremely difficult to enforce a law against their wishes." So, in the report of a committee of the Massachusetts Legislature in 1866, witnesses from New Bedford and Fall River testified that children of 7 were employed. From Lawrence it was reported that a great many children from 12 to 15 were working at night, "the majority of those who do night work are under 18 years of age."

In a report of the Bureau of Labor as late as 1870, an "overlooker" of 7 years' experience says: "Six years ago I ran night work from 6.45 p. m. to 6 a. m., with 45 minutes for meals, eating in the room. Children were drowsy and sleepy, having known them to fall asleep standing up at their work. I have had to sprinkle water to awaken them after having spoken to them until hoarse. This was done gently, with no intention of hurting them." In the same report is the following quotation: "A witness described to us an instrument for whipping children at a factory in Rhode Island, consisting of a leather strap 18 inches long, with tacks driven through the striking end." The cruelty to children of overseers in southern cotton mills has been mentioned by some writers, especially the throwing of water into the faces of children who went to sleep at night. Probably this particular practice has ceased, though, perhaps, occasional instances will not be so vehemently denied now that we have the precedent established in New England history. Strong coffee at the midnight hour is considered a more humane alternative for the purpose of keeping children awake.

RAPID INCREASE.

So much for the history of child labor in New England before 1870. The census of that year was the first to take notice of the extent of child labor in the United States, and its figures aroused new interest on the subject. Since that time the social sin of the system has been more clearly recognized by the social conscience, yet child labor increased in the decade between 1890 and 1900.

The census of 1900 reported 1,750,178 child breadwinners, 10 to 15 years of age, of whom 1,054,446 were engaged in agricultural occupations, which are usually considered advantageous to the child unless there is interference with his education. However, even in this occupation there were 237,252 children employed who were not reported as "belonging to farmers' families," and recent investigations have proved that hordes of these children are employed in picking berries and vegetables in the cranberry bogs, and in the canning of fruit and vegetables. So there were 934.985 children between the ages of 10 and 16 employed in various industries, besides those who were members

of farmers' families. The census enumerators were not required to report child breadwinners under 10, nevertheless there was a large number reported by some enumerators who, to this extent, disregarded their instructions, 997 being reported from three cotton mill districts in the South. It may also be readily granted that the census enumeration, while the best we have, falls short of the truth from the fact that where deception had been practiced by parents concerning the ages of children whom they had sent into employment, there would be an inclination to make the same representations to the census enumerators. One may find from Census Bulletin 69, entitled "Child Labor in the United States," that the cotton mill is still the chief sinner against the child. To quote from the bulletin, "To a greater extent than any other manufacturing or mechanical industry the cotton mill furnishes employment to children. *The proportion which children 10 to 15 years of age formed of the total number of cotton-mill operatives in 1900 is almost three times as great in the Southern States as it is in the Northern and Western. In the North about 1 cotton-mill operative out of every 10 was 10 to 15 years of age, while in the South the corresponding figures were about 3 out of every 10. Massachusetts, which reported the largest number of cotton-mill operatives, had the smallest per cent for operatives 10 to 15 years of age. In North Carolina children of 10 to 15 years were the most numerous, and formed the largest per cent of the total. As a rule, the proportion of children was greater for females than for males in both sections of the country, though the difference was more marked in the South than in the North."

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GROWTH OF INDUSTRY.

The growth of the cotton-mill industry in the South has been one of amazing development. In 1880 the number of cotton spindles in the South was 667,754; in 1910, 10,650,000, an increase of 1,495 per cent in 30 years, as against an increase of 161 per cent in the country at large. There has been made recently under the direction of the Federal Bureau of Labor an investigation concerning the conditions of child and woman workers in several industries, the report completed containing 19 volumes, the first only of which has been printed, entitled, "The Cotton Textile Industry." This volume, of 1,044 pages, contains the severest indictment ever brought against any industry in this country concerning the employment of children. The report shows that 20 per cent of the employees in southern cotton mills are under the age of 16, in spite of the laws passed in all the Southern States since 1900. But the report itself shows it has been ultraconservative in its estimate of the number of children employed. It says, "Agents' estimates of ages have been disregarded in every case, and only age data supported by positive evidence have been used." It gives the following illustrations to show that its reports "come far short of the truth." In one mill in South Carolina, the agent reported: "There is absolutely no question that 17 of these children are under 12 years of age." Yet only 8 were positively so reported, as the ages of only this number could be positively established.

"Concerning another mill in South Carolina the agent reported: "The mill employs many children, and the smallest I have seen working in any mill. I asked five exceptionally small ones how old each was, and each answered, "I don't know." These children, the superintendent says, work from 6 p. m. to 6 a. m. I know beyond a reasonable doubt that there are 10 or 12 children under 12 working in the mill, 7 or 8 of them at night.

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"One of these children is an emaciated little elf, 50 inches high and weighing perhaps 48 pounds, who works from 6 at night till 6 in the morning, and who is so tiny that she has to climb up on the spinning frame to reach the top row of spindles.'

"All children at this mill were reported by mill officials to be over 12 years of age, and the statement was disproved in only 2 cases.

"In another mill in North Carolina the agent counted 9 or 10 children obviously under 12 years of age, but none were positively so reported.

"These few examples illustrate the difficulties of the investigation and show that the reports on some mills at least come far short of the truth as to the extent of the illegal employment of children."

In some mills, perhaps owing to the greater diligence or sagacity of particular investigators, the percentage of children employed was much higher than the average. In one yarn mill in South Carolina employing 168 persons, 70 were children under 16. In a cloth mill in that State 39.6 per cent of the employees were children. In Missis sippi, which then had no child-labor law, 42.8 per cent of the employees in a small yarn mill were children. In 143 establishments visited 9,126 children were found employed, 753 of whom were under the legal age of 12 years, of whom 161 were employed as helpers, their names being omitted from the pay roll. It will be evident to the most superficial observer that the injuries to a child under 12 years resulting from