The Montgomery advertiser., 1907-01-13
FEDERAL CHILD LABOR LAW;
 CRITICISM OF PROPOSED BILL
MT. Murphy, Former Chairman of the Alabama Child Labor Committee, Expresses
 Strong Opposition.

moving in the right direction, and are 1 all moving faster than any other sec ton of the industrial world has moved whether in England or New England at the same period of industrial de- velopment. We have had factories only little over twenty yearsJ The percentage of child operatives Is far too large. and their ages far too low but in 1900 there were more textile op. | eratives under 16 in the one State oi Pennsylvania than in all the Southern States put together.
 But the point wish to make is I that the whole country. North and South, Is moving right. The same pro- l sress which we find here and which has been registered by the beginnings of leg islation in Tennessee. Texas, Louisiana South Carolina, North Carolina, Ken lucky, Alabama, Georgia and Virginia, has just been registered by new legis- lation in Rhode Island. Illinois. Penn sylvania, New Jersey. Iowa, Delaware Wisconsin. Massachusetts and New York. Much needs to be done the enforcement of existing statutes, but one can hardly pick up a newspaper or magazine without seeing that the people are thoroughly aroused.
 If ever there were a case in which the States were not wilfulIy indifferent and deliberately ineff1cient 1t is this. There are lots of weak spots. I have seen no Federal legislation on this question or any other that isn't also full of weak spots. But the soundness of the public interest in the States, and the cumulative betterment of State ac- ton. are writ large over the ordinances of our legislatures for the past five years. And. as matter of fact, personally know that the preparation of the Beveridge bill was directly due not to the neglect of the States but to the fact that those who have been struggling for State action had created such popular interest in the subject that a Federal bill was regarded as a strong political move" The Federal power is being invoked not really be- cause State action is tagging, but be- cause 1t Is responding to the local will. It Is thought that in the face of so much popular interest it will be "popu- lar" to enact Federal law.
 State Action Best.
 But to my mind the very existence of this interest, created under State forces and being now brought to bear on State assemblies, makes the pro- posal of Federal intervention irrelevant and unsound. The ultimate power and efficiency of our social decisions in a huge democracy like our own. lies in
 
 health and vitality of the local will. If is true that railroads and telegraphs are making the country smaller. But this means, as yet, only that the coun- try is small to a small number--for, while there is much travelling and much telegraphing by the few, the great masses of our people make little use of wires or railroads. State lines and County lines are sti1l realities: and the great isolated rural populations of the land find their first effective express sion. in relation to industrial evils, in the Legislatures of the States.
 Now what does 1t mean to get law through the Legislature? What does it Involve? It involves the campaigning of the State in It's smallest subdivis- ions. This Is a long and exacting pro- cess, and therefore State action often seems slower than Federal action. but 1t is a process by which the individuals of the State, it's homes, its townlife, its church membership, its men and pubic questions. The whole subject becomes a home matter Local inter est Is developed by local agitation and Is followed by deepened sense of To- cal responsibility. It Is a wholesome process. It is democracy at work: for as the local public mind becomes in formed and aroused through the educa- tive IOrce or locaI dBltdt1On IL registers its will in local laws. After the laws are passed. it is this local public opin- ion upon which we must depend. if these laws are to go on doing things.
 A Mistaken Method.
 Any attempt, therefore, to make the Federal power divide responsibility with the local will any attempt to shift the center of moral obligation from the local conscience to Washington, has a fanAannU f0 NUAalKan the process by which our social decisions are obtained. For the very reason that in our national impatience We can sometimes do things a little quicker by running to Washington, we should dis cern the possible dangers which turk in such a tendency; for 1t is only in the harder, slower, more exacting work of reaching the local conscience that we ever reach the real well springs of public opinion-I do not mean the pub lie opinion which sometimes expresses itself in transient impulses or momen- tary clamor, but that public opinion which is so clearly and firmly ordered that it enters Into the very structure of our social character. The real edu- cation of a vast society is the education of localities, and the education of local ities is secured through the necessity. the absolute necessity, for reaching, in- forming and persuading the individual.
 'fWithout this. Federal enactments themselves are impotent
 There are issues which obviously belong to the Federal power. But why this tendency to increase them? They must, after all, depend for their local application upon the sensitiveness of the local conscience, for the Federal court in order to get convictions must take it's cases before a local jury The efficiency of Federal processes rests back after all. therefore, upon the right mindedness of the public opinion of the States: and any policy which arrests or embarrasses the local processes If pub lie education or which lowers the sense of State responsibility. especially in sect ions of the country in which the moral credit of Federal administration Is not high, must weaken the forces upon which the Federal power must itself de- pend. Tn other words, the cause of the children is at last In the hands of our local public opinion. 1'he public opin- in of the cuntry at large may wish for selfish or unselfish reasons-to pro- tect the children in our mills. but the legal instruments which they would employ can touch our children only the medium of a cooperating local conscience. If our public opin- ion is ignorant or indifferent, Is resent ful or suspicious the cause of the chill dren will have made no wholesome or pernT 'vance.
 To Burdenf
 "H cience must in deed [ labor legisla tion Tn to Congress to e 1t true that our Stat so wilfully ob-