The Press., 1890-10-30


 dition of the laboring classes, we have about one hundred and fifty towns-I have forgotten how many because we are add ing town or two every year-and we have 249 members of the legislature in the lower house-a very large legislature for the size of the state--and 24 senators. There is member of the assembly for about every 2,500 people. They. will on an average very we'll represent the intelli- gence, sense and humanity of the people. They have been passing laws on the sub ject from the time we were an infant col oly, when the selectmen of the town were looking out for children whose parents were neglecting them and had the right to bind them out to trades and see that they were sent to school.
 We have been regulating the hours of labor and punishing people who employ children who had not been to school for a certain time and our 150 towns are gov erned in all matters relating to pauperism and education and highways and variety of such things by an executive body known as the board of selectmen, from three to seven, all highly respectable and many of them elderly gentlemen, who are usually @ sort of fathers of the town and who know pretty much all about everybody, and in the old-fashioned country towns know ev-. cry poor family and every vicious family. They are to look out for all these, and there are half dozen jurors, prosecuting officers, and 10 or 15 justices of the peace that we select ourselves, and we have laws covering all imaginable points concerning the domestic life of the people. We have l5O commissions such as this would be, perpetually in session, created by an au- thority which has right to create.
 Now, this most estimable lady says she has been for years studying the social life of New England. I think she has hardly had as much time for it as I have, because she has been here about as steadily, as I have seen, in the city of Washington. I do not think she knows of the condition of affairs there as we'll as the selectmen of the 150 towns in the state. But if the congress of the United States finds itself out of work, and is so broadly and univer- sally and minutely benevolent that it can not find enough to do in the great national and international affairs of this country, and wants to go down and see us, hope glad to know what it has to say when it gets through.
 do not think, strictly speaking, this is any of congress- business. I do not think it can do anything in the premises. I think the tariff commission which has been spoken of has direct relation to the reve- nue powers of congress and the raising of taxes to support the government, and if its inquiries go so far as to see how women and children are employed, all we'll and good. l can see some relation to our busi- 1 ness in the work of the tariff commission, but do not see any relation in the work of this proposed commission but at the same time do not object to it.
 Later in the discussion, and apropos of rhetorical question from Mir. Cockrell as to whether it was true that the protected manufacturers of New England had theil heels on the necks of the laboring people compelling fathers and mothers to ''fal sify the record in the holy family Bible in regard to the birth of their children" and whether this was "the fruit of protection in New England" General Hawley said
 do not notice the senator's last remark about the fruit of protection, and all tha sort of stuff, but as to the observations O this Mrs. Smith, she may have heard of , case possibly, whereupon with the hasty generalization of some people she speaks of it as habit. If it be, it is pretty good evidence that somebody is watching those families to see that they do not emplo. hohAdren under age, and watching them SC closely that an occasional blackguard hal
 to falsify the Bible record. The supervis ion is pretty close already, is it not ?.
 am astonished that one of the men il this world, an able lawyer and an inau ) ential and valuable senator, will talk tha
 kind of thing. Does he suppose that h. ) could find with lantern searching for 2 years in New England in all probability single case like that spoken of? I wan him to be on that commission. thinl we ought on the whole to have that com mission :; not for the good of our people ) but for the education of foreigners and tn
 people of the northwest and south.