in the decision of cases of congressional legislation. When you read Mr. DENISON. You have to get the motive from the act itself. The CHAIRMAN. You have been very kind to the gentlemen present. Miss MORROW. I would like to ask if you meant it when you asked Miss MORROW. Miss Morrow. Mr. KITCHIN. You certainly can. This was my idea, to have this committee or a subcommittee come and you ladies come with them. Miss MORROW. We would be very glad to come and make a report to the committee when we get back. Mr. KITCHIN. You can not give any better report than we can. Miss MORROW. But you invited us with the committee. Miss MORROW. And we would be very glad to come down and talk Mr. KITCHIN. I take it that the committee will appoint a subcommittee, if the full committee are not going, and the proposition has been made to take you down to Norfolk and in a private car, from there take you everywhere you want to go. Mr. PATTERSON. I am very glad that the ladies are so willing to STATEMENT OF MR. JAMES A. EMERY, COUNSEL FOR NATIONAL Mr. EMERY. I am counsel for the National Association of Manufacturers, consisting of some 4,000 manufacturers operating in most of the States of the Union and employing in normal times substantially 2,500,000 men. I realize that when a manufacturer or his representative appears before committee of this character he is embarrassed by possibly the suspicion or suggestion that, because he is opposed to a particular mode of regulation he is opposed to the subject matter of the regulation, or any regulation of the subject itself whatever. The National Association of Manufacturers has been at no time opposed to the regulation of child labor. It has never appeared in any State, so far as I know, in opposition to or criticism of the radical regulation of child labor. That individual manufacturers might differ on that subject would not be surprising-just as there are differences of opinion among the advocates of such measures, both as to the means and circumstances of such regulation. But I represent the opposition of manufacturers in this country to the principle of control here invoked, because it seems from an examination of the measure that it proposes to substitute an exercise of police power by Congress for that of the legislatures of the respective States themselves. Nay, more, by the circumstances of interstate commerce in this country it substitutes the views of Congress for those of boards of aldermen and supervisors and county or municipal authorities in the States themselves with respect to the subject matter here involved, and, more than that. creates a precedent permitting "many an error by the same example to creep into the State." If it be true that Congress under the commerce clause may fix the conditions under which production is to be had in order that a commodity may enjoy the facilities of interstate commerce, then the other circumstances which attach to that plenary and exclusive power of Congress attach to it. If Congress can say that no article shall be transported from State to State into which the labor of a child has entered for more than eight hours in whole or in part, or the labor of a child between certain ages, or the labor of a child who works more than a certain number of hours during a certain number of days in the week, then Congress can attach, possessing plenary and exclusive powers of control on that subject, any other condition that is reasonably related to the control and regulation of such commerce, if that be reasonable regulation and control. It is because of that condition, sir, that this principle of control becomes important to manufacturers. They have been led to believe that the regulation of production as distinguished from commerce was an attribute of the police power of the State. If it is to be transferred to the Congress of the United States, and regulation of the local conditions of manufacture is to proceed from that body, it will be an exceedingly difficult matter for its members in all the States of the Union to so inform themselves with respect to peculiar conditions characterizing each particular State of the Union that they can regulate production in that State with understanding. The variations of climate. of subjects of production, of custom, and of all economic conditions that differentiate one State of the Union from another will make it necessary for the Members of Congress to be as familiar with all the local conditions of every other State as of their own. I believe, in the first place, that such a proposition is in antagonism with the very fundamental idea of local self-government. You get different courts in which to try your rights. You are taken from local courts to Federal courts. The enforcement of this law of local production is to rest upon Federal authority, and the terms of the measure itself, it seems to me, are extraordinary, not only in the character of the regulation proposed but in the rule of evidence which is offered as prima facie proof of violation of the bill itself. Let me say first, if I may, parenthetically, that if I discuss this bill from the standpoint of the right of a State to regulate its internal affairs and the right of a citizen of that State to be regulated or controlled by his local government in those matters which are purely domestic I am not asserting an imaginary or obstructive state right, as to the this r ms from ute an e sof the rs of C and com respate esap creep m e mar that re, the Causty r of s part ng beca ure: atte but a very real one that is essential to the maintenance of the integrity of our form of government itself—not in my opinion, but in the opinion of every commentator not only upon the Constitution but upon our peculiar form of government. In a nation as wide as our own, as greatly populated, with as many different circumstances of climate, there are many variations that God has made and that make the facilities for the production of commodities vary in different States, giving marked superiority to some States for the production of some things. For instance, one State is better qualified for manufactures rather than in agriculture; another is markedly superior for and in agriculture and live-stock raising. Again, you would find quite a difference of opinion if you undertook to lay a tax-assuming the Congress of the United States were regulating such matters-to lay a tax upon bachelorhood, in a mining community of the West made up almost entirely of men and in a New England community made up largely of spinsters whose opportunities for matrimony had been somewhat restricted. One of The mere existence of an evil, assuming the existence of one national in its character, does not justify action by Congress to meet that evil, if it does not possess the power to deal with it. the misfortunes of our present condition is the lack of uniform marriage and divorce laws. They go to the very fountain of life. Yet the State of South Carolina recognizes no cause for divorce and the State of Nevada recognizes probably 30 causes for divorce. Would Congress impress upon South Carolina the liberal views of the State of Nevada, or upon Nevada the exceedingly strict limitations which prevail in the State of South Carolina? There is not a possibility of your succeeding in undertaking, in a country as great as ours, to revise regulation that is due to the peculiarity of climate, natural advantages, local tradition and custom, greater population, etc. The laws of those States of the South that are notable for their undiluted American-born population express a condition and viewpoint quite different from those prevailing in States that have been greatly enriched by alien blood. It is equally true that the economic conditions in the Northern States, with large surplus of capital, with railroads, with exceptional opportunities for easily securing cheap raw material, and possessing a large labor supply, are very different from communities just emerging from agricultural into industrial life, with insufficient and inexperienced or untrained labor. Indeed, as I listened to these gentlemen from the South, I realized they were practically under the necessity of educating their labor before they can lay a foundation for its training in the peculiar business of the cotton mills. I only refer to that as illustrative of the varying conditions that prevail. I favor uniform legislation upon all subjects that admit of uniformity, but I realize that in this country there are many subjects in which uniform regulation would create injustice and inequality. I can think of no greater injustice than to establish a national wage of, say, $3 a day for all kinds of mechanical labor, because I can think of no injustice equal to equal reward for unequal service, I can think of no uniformity that would be more unjust than that which undertook to level down all of these conditions of inequality which differentiate one community from another and give to some those advantages which God has denited to others. Now, it has been pointed out again and again by thoughtful men, by Congress in the course of many discussions, that this lack of uniformity is a fact upon which is largely predicated the right and the value of local self government. Men desire regulation by representatives chosen from communities familiar with the conditions to which that regulation is to apply. Because I think it will be accepted as axiomatic that all regulation is good in direct proportion to the information of the legislator with respect to the subject upon which he legislates and the intelligence with which he proceeds to his task. So we have had in this country of ours a creation peculiar to itself, a dual government, with national authority operating directly upon the citizens of each State and not upon the States themselves. These Commonwealths goverened in their internal affairs by representatives chosen by the people of each particular community; have delegated to the National Government a sweeping jurisdiction over subject matters of national concern, over our political relations with foreign powers, and over our trade with each other from State to State and with foreign nations. As Gov. Kitchin has so well said, it was the obstructions laid upon that intercolonial commerce by each colony during that period be tween the conclusion of the Revolution and the adoption of the National Constitution, which John Fiske so aptly characterized as the "critical period of American history," that strongly contributed to make necessary a national union in which the power to regulate commerce would rest in the national authority and not in the individual States themselves. The preservation and limitation of that national authority to subjects of a national character, and of State authority to internal and domestic affairs and to intrastate as distinguished from interstate commerce, has been regarded by all our commentators, our courts, and our statesmen as one of signal and necessary importance. I read but the other day Mr. Lincoln's statement in his first inaugural, at a time when, if ever, he must have had brought home to him the necessity for great national, authority, and he said: It is my duty and my oath to maintain inviolate the right of the States to order and control under the Constitution their own affairs by their own judg ment exclusively. Such maintenance is essential for a preservation of that balance of power on which our institutions rest. Senator Edmunds, the real author of the Sherman Act and one of the greatest lawyers we have had in the Senate of the United States, said in debate there: I believe that the safety of the Republic as a Nation, one people, one hope, one destiny, depends more largely upon the preservation of what are called the rights of the States than upon any one thing. Senator Elihu Root, in his Princeton lectures upon the Constitution, delivered last year, declared that If the power of the States were to override the power of the Nation, we should ultimately cease to have a Nation and become only a body of really separate, although confederated, State sovereignties continually forced apart by diverse interests, and ultimately quarreling with one another and separating altogether. On the other hand, if the power of the Nation would override that of the States and usurp their functions, we should have this vast country, with its Mr. SMITH. Will you permit me to ask you one question about the Mr. EMERY. I will cover that as I come to it, if you will permit me. Mr. EMERY. These are his Princeton lectures on the Essentials of I understand that some members of this committee are not lawyers, and as Gov. Kitchin has covered in his brief a great many of the legal points at issue, I want to indulge in a somewhat free discussion and subject myself to queries by any member of the committee as I proceed. With these authoritative views upon maintaining unimpaired the true relations between the States and the Nation as a background, I want to call your attention to the fact that the proposal of regulation involved in this bill will have the effect which I suggested in the beginning, of making Congress a legislature for each State, and indeed a board of aldermen for each municipality, for it is estimated by those who engage in it that 90 per cent of our commodities are disposed of in States other than those in which they are produced. Interstate commerce is the condition of our business being. He who controls the conditions under which interstate commerce is to be carried on is the regulator of national business. There is nothing left to regulate except the conditions under which the commodities for that commerce are produced. Now, what does this bill undertake to do? It undertakes to declare that no producer, manufacturer, or dealer shall ship or deliver for shipment in interstate commerce any commodity which is produced, in whole or in part, by the labor of children working in mills and quarries, under 16 years of age, or in manufacturing establishments cr canneries-I think they would be included in that term, but I mention them separately-or who, being under 16 years of age, work more than eight hours in one day or more than six days of eight hours in one calendar week or between the hours of 7 in the morning and 7 at night in any establishment mentioned in the bill. The administration of this measure is given to a committee consisting of the Attorney General and the Secretaries of Commerce and Labor, who are to make rules and regulations for its enforcement; and for the further purpose of securing its enforcement, the Secretary of Labor is authorized to inspect every establishment sub 22508-16--11 1 |