Newark leader. ([Newark, Ohio]) 1917-1946, 1918-07-12
CHILD LABOR LAW
IS HELD INVALID
United States Supreme Court Re-
strains Government From
Enforcing 1t.
FOUR OF JUSTICES DISSENT
Declaring the 1916 Measure UnconstI.
tutfonai, the Court Also Removes
Restriction on Employees of
Carolina Cotton Mill.

The federal child labor law of 1915
fOrbidding interstate shipment of prod
ucts of child labor was declared un-
constitutional and invalid by the Su-
preme court.
InjunctiOns restraining the govern
ment from putting the statute into ef-
feet and from restraining Charlotte
IN. 60 cotton mill from discharging
children employed by it, were sustain
ed by the court.
Justices Holmes, McKenna, Brandeis
and Clarke dissented.
The attack on the constitutionality
Of the federal child labor law orig
mated in North Carolina, where Judge
Boyd Of the federal court at Green's
bOrO held the statute invalid. The
government appealed to the Supreme
court.
The law prohibited the interstate
shipment Of articles produced in fac
tories employing children under four
teen years old. The measure aimed
to strike at the evil through interstate
commerce. Judge Boyd in ruling the
law invalid said:
Congress can regulate trade among
the states, but not the internal cOndi-
tions Of labor"
The chief objection to the measure
centered in the South, among the cot
ton mill owners who exploited that
class of labor. A group Of Southern
| fc ,rrI4 III
through congress.
The bill provided that the products
Of children under a specified age shall
not be transported in interstate COM
| merce. The age is sixteen in mines
and quarries and fourteen in mills,
canneries, workshops, factories, and
manufacturing establishments. Chill
dren under sixteen may not work in
any event more than eight hours a day
| and six days a week, nor between the
hours Of seven o'clock at night and
seven in the morning.
Many japanese girls are making
their living by work formerly done ex-
clusively by men.
War and war work has deprived
New York state firms of $4,000 labor
ers in the last year.
The government has established a
women's division of the United States
employment service.
Plumbers at Limerick, Ireland,
struck when refused an increase of 81
week in their wages.
A wave Of organization has struck
shop employees Of the Atchison, To
peka and Santa Fe railroad.
An all-Ireland conference is to be
held to consider the question Of food |
supplies for that country.
Washington reports a surplus Of |
labor all over the states with the ex-
ception of the Gulf coast.
The Kentucky illiteracy commission |
Is teaching thousands Of men Of draft
age how to read and write.
The Sailors Union of the Pacific re-
ports that over One-half of the bene-
fits paid out by this organization in
1916 was for reading and educational
purposes.
An Englishman has invented a perl
scope to be mounted in locomotive
cab to enable an engineer to see the
track ahead of him or the whole of
his train.
Nine-tenths of the 100000 accidents
that occurred in Pennsylvania last
year were preventable,. according to
Harry A. Mackey, chairman of the
workmen's compensation board.
The secretary of the Kentucky State
Federation of Labor has been dis
missed from the Louisville fire depart
ment by the board Of public safety
because he organized a union Of fire.
men.
The executive board Of the Wash
ington state federation Of labor has
recorded its protest against any and
all proposed amendments to existing
immigration laws that will admit Of {
any greater freedom for entry Of Chi
nese labor"