The Washington times. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1902-1939, 1916-06-16
THE INEVITABLE DEMOCRATIC
OBSTACLE

THE INEVITABLE DEMOCRATIC
OBSTACLE
Somebody arrived early at the st.
Louis convention with a jealous pur-
pose to get a national child-labor
plank inserted in the Democratic
platform. An hour or two later he
discovered something about the
Democratic party that made him sit
up.
Any national child-labor declara-
ton, he was numerously assured,
would be Federal interference with
the sacred rights of the sovereign
States. It was not q proper theme
for Federal action.
The States should be allowed to
decide what they would do about
child labor. II it were desired in one
foolishly idealistic State to prevent
children working more than fifteen
hours day, or in another to forbid
them working at all, why, that was
the business Of the State. But If a
thrifty Commonwealth should, on
the other hand, see some dividends
in sight, to be garnered through the
process Of putting the children at
work early and keeping them at it
late, 1t wasn't anybody's affair but
the States.
Perhaps that is sound. But States
that are trying to do something for
humanity, for posterity, for the
future Of civilization and the race,
by protecting the little ones against
exploitation, will see it differently.
Dividends are not SO important, after
all, as human bodies and souls.
The State that imposes rigorous
conditions to regulate the ages at
which children may be enlisted in
industrial Enterprise. and that re-
stricts the working hours that may
be exacted from them, must under
present conditions come in compe-
tition with the State that leaves the
whole subject wide open. A State
line doesn't separate worth while
souls from worthless souls; It doesn't
divide children worth saving from
those that have no claim on saliva
ton; it will never provide moral
justification for exploiting youth on
one side and protecting 1t on the
other.
The strongest Of all reasons for
Federal Legislation on all these sub
jects is the moral one: Federal laws
are more effcacious. But second
only to this Is the economic, the
simple business reason. There must
be uniformity in order that there
may be equality Of opportunity. To
let a manufacturer in one State burn
up the bodies Of babies that he may
transmute them into profits, is to
place at an impossible disadvantage
the business man across the line who
must hire adult labor and pay it &C.
cordingly.
Democracy has made a cardinal
virtue Of its adherence to State
sovereignty. II has refused to re-
alize that this is the twentieth cen
fury, and that we live under Con
stitution that was made in the
eighteenth. The intervening -four
generations have seen the world
progress as it never progressed il
any other ten centuries. State SOW
ereignty was once the cloak for ar
industrial system that required 9
great war for its eradication. Nov
II is being made the protective man
tie for another system only less alb
horrent.
The South is the seat Of the wors
offenses against humanity, through
the employment of children in indus
1 try. There must be better con
ditions. We live in a country that
may one day ask us to search oul
souls and decide whether we are will
ing to sacrifice, perhaps to die, for 1t
We will inquire whether II is wortl
dying for; whether 1t has earnet
from US the loyalty that must in
spire such sacrifices as that.
| It will never be able to comman,
such loyalty, unless 1t can keep stel
with humanitarian development
with enlightened progress. 1t can
os 30 II snsrs sna be 5s.d inter
against the manifest demands O
simple humanity.
| The State rights doctrine will hav
to go; seemingly the Democrati
party is determined, If 1t goes, to g
'along.