Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-12-26

$500 to $3.50 a day, all the machinists of
the first class. some 400 in number, will be
raised from So IS to 1882 a day, the car
penters. shipwrights, joiners, mllmen, core
makers, coppersmiths, painters, ordnance
hands and patternmakers all get an aver
age increase of about % cents a day, and
every man of the 1900 at the yard benefits
by an increase of at least cents day.
George L. Cain of Lynn. international
president OF the league of employees of navy
yards, arSenals and gun factories Is In
Washington in the effort to secure for the
employees at other navy yards the Saturday
half holiday now enjoyed by the men at
the Washington yard He is also urging
an employers liability bill for the govern
ment, men injured in the government
employ because of defective machinery or
recoverable causes can get damages. MIR.
Cain has an appointment for another inter-
view with President Roosevelt next week
Miss Anna E. Nicholes, chairman of the
industrial committee of the Illinois Fed
Grafton of Womens Clubs, says that no law
in the state of Illinois requires safety
guards on dangerous machines nor that the
betting, shafting and gearing of machinery
when placed as to be dangerous TO
workers be guarded.
Sixteen states have safety appliance laws.
These laws specific as to the classes or
machines to be safeguarded, and also re-
quire belt shifters, loose pulleys, SHAFT and
well holes to be inclosed and all possible
provisions made to protect life and limb OF
the employe
Protected machines are now found in
many of the better classes of establish
ments incur state. 1t is the crowded, dark
factory where workers employed long
hours to exhaustion where accidents occur
and where for the most part unprotected
machinery is found. In such a factory,
where electric light is used all day to work
by and where the machines are large and
heavy to work and wholly unprotected,
number of woman workers have lost right
fingers and in not few cases right hands.
There is protection for the child between
the ages Of fourteen and sixteen years.
Children under sixteen years are forbidden
to operate dangerous machines, a long list
being given, as circular band saws wood
shapers, wood jofnters. planners, sandpaper
or wood polishing machinery, emery or pol
ishing wheels for metal polishing, wood
turning or boring machinery, stamping
machinery in sheet metal and tinware, rum
ming freight and passenger elevators, laun-
dering machines, etc.
But all the protection is withdrawn the
old He may be placed dangerous ma
chimes, entirely unprotected by safety ap-
pliances, in dark, crowded places, and
worked long hours. The state no longer
year-old girl recently get her apron strings
caught in a machine in a laundry, and In
disengaging herself her thumb was taken
off by the cogs. 1t would have taken fifteen
minutes to stop the machine.
Conditions throughout the country in the
trades unions are generally good, according
to reports received at the headquarters OF
the American Federation of Labor in this
city. Among the national organizations
sending in favorable reports are the asbes-
tos workers, billposters. brushmakers, car
riage workers. cigarmakers, horseshoers
and hotel employees. In the last named nine
new unions have recently been organized
and $500 paid out In death benefits. Lace
curtain operatives in Philadelphia have Sc
cured forty three-hour week for shift
workers and fifty hours for day workers
after four weeks strike.
The undue prevalence Of tuberculosis
among workingmen, which has led pretty
nearly every national union in the Amer
lean Federation Of Labor to consider plans
for the establishment of homes for their
consumptive members similar to that
maintained by the printers is Illustrated
in the quarterly report of the Amalgamated
Association of Street and Electric Railway
Employees just issued. The mortality rec
ord for the past three months showed that
One-third of the entire sixty deaths was
due to the great white plague.
A peaceful boycott has been declared
legal by Judge Kirby of Louisville, KY,
in the chancery division of the circuit
court. The decision while not countenanc-
ing violence, declares that the Constitution
of the United States gives every laborer the
right to quit work whenever he wishes.
whether with without reason, and that
what one man could do alone was not I'M
1t was further declared that the laborer
had the right to exert the power Of persua-
sion, if the power was peacefully exerted,
and that he had the right to withdraw his
own patronage from firm which was I'M
friendly. The case came up on complaint
of an employing butcher who sought to
have the Inembers of the butchers union
restrained from circulating notices that his
plant was hostile to the interests of organ
lied labor.
Nv -1y, }rfa Lob
member of the British cabinet in opening
his campaign at Battersea, London, de-
clared his object to be fewer warehouses,
smaller charities, larger wages more pleas
ure and less drink.
The bootblacks Of Montreal are organic
ing with a view of improving their condi-
ton and enforcing a general charge Of 10
cents shine.
Sheet metal workers in Des Moines, Iowa,
have secured raise in their minimum
wage scale from 80 to SO cents an hour I'M
til November !, and thereafter 37k cents
per hour
Schicks, w. Va, has organized a miners
union. Heretofore this has been a nom
union stronghold.
The strike of the Wabash railroad boiler
makers, machinstS and blacksmiths has
been terminated by the granting Of an in
crease in wages.
Anacostia and Vicinity.
Work on the construction of the new
bridge to span the Eastern branch between
18th street southeast and Anacostia, which
is being pushed at every opportunity, was
suspended yesterday. The workmen were
glad of the chance to take holiday, as
the intense cold and the freeze-up on the
river would have hampered them greatly in
the present stage of operations Seven
DierS have been practically finished and