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Senator ROBINSON. And you have had such employees ever since your mill has been in operation, have you not?

Mr. SMYTH. Yes, sir.

Senator ROBINSON. Now, it is important to know, in this investigation, how the employment affects the health of the children; that is one question, I take it. Have you kept any figures to show what diseases have afflicted these children and how many of them have died while so employed by the mill?

Mr. SMYTH. Our figures would show the ages of everyone who died at Pelzer and the cause of death.

Senator ROBINSON. But it would not show how many of those that died were children, would it?

Mr. SMYTH. Yes, sir; it would show their ages.

Senator ROBINSON. Then, can you tell, now, how many of them who have died were children?

Mr. SMYTH. No, sir; it would be entirely a guess on my part, now. I did not bring those figures with me. I just brought the total

averages.

Senator ROBINSON. What is the total average death rate for Pelzer? Mr. SMYTH. It averages about 1 to 11 per cent. It has never exceeded in an epidemic year over 2 per cent.

Senator LA FOLLETTE. May I ask a question?
Senator ROBINSON. Certainly.

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Senator LA FOLLETTE. If you have the names and the ages of all who died within the year reported to you by your local physicians, and you have the record of the employments in your establishment of the children, you could ascertain exactly what the death rate is among your employees, could you not?

Mr. SMYTH. Yes, sir; very easily.

Senator LA FOLLETTE. Will you get your record of that and make it a part of this record here?

Mr. SMYTH. I will do that very cheerfully.

Senator ROBINSON. Your inquiry is as to children employees particularly, is it not?

Senator LA FOLLETTE. Entirely so; that was what was I was asking him about.

Mr. SMYTH. I understand that you want statistics sent up as to the average ages that have died at Pelzer during a period of time?

Senator ROBINSON. No. Here is what we want: The total number of deaths occurring in Pelzer for a given year; so many of them were children under 16 and so many of them were children under 14 That is what I want.

Mr. SMYTH. I will take pleasure in getting that.

Senator ROBINSON. Children between 14 and 16, embracing all classes of children employed in the mills.

Senator LA FOLLETTE. So many of them were employed in the mills.

Senator ROBINSON. I think those are the figures, so far as health, accidents, and deaths are concerned, that affect this resolution. (The statistics referred to are as follows:)

Deaths at Pelzer, S. C., during past four years of children between the ages of 12 and 16 years: One male, 12 years of age, died of fever; one female, 16 years of age, died of meningitis.

Senator ROBINSON. I want to ask you one further question, and then I will not, I think, take any further time. Is there a common wage scale in force in South Carolina?

Mr. SMYTH. No, sir.

Senator ROBINSON. What wages are paid to children under 14 years in the Pelzer mill? Are they paid a uniform wage?

Mr. SMYTH. Our average wage last month was $1.31, and that was for men, women, and children.

Senator ROBINSON. I am not speaking about the average wage, but the wage of children under 14.

Mr. SMYTH. It depends very much upon the desire of the child to accumulate. We have plenty of children there now earning $1.25 a day who are between 12 and 16.

Senator ROBINSON. What is the average wage of children under 14♣ Mr. SMYTH. I should say $1 a day.

Senator ROBINSON. And the average wage for children over 14 and under 16-between 14 and 16?

Mr. SMYTH. It is about the same. I think their capacity is about the same.

Senator ROBINSON. The younger children get the same as the others?

Mr. SMYTH. Oh, yes, sir.

Senator LIPPITT. Are they pieceworkers or dayworkers?

Mr. SMYTH. They are pieceworkers. They work on the sides in the spinning room.

Senator LIPPITT. They attend more or less, according to the capacity?

Mr. SMYTH. Yes, sir; if they attend eight sides they get a dollar a day for that.

Senator ROBINSON. What are the adult workers paid?

Mr. SMYTH. We have a good many departments. In the weaving department it is entirely based upon the piecework, and in the roving frames and counting rooms it is piecework. But take our card grinders and cloth-room people, for instance; they are generally day laborers.

Senator ROBINSON. Have you any statistics concerning the subject of accidents among the employees in your mills, or are you required by law to keep them?

Mr. SMYTH. We are not required by law to keep them, but we do keep them.

Senator ROBINSON. Have you those statistics available?

Mr. SMYTH. I have not got them with me.

Senator ROBINSON. Do you have many accidents in the cotton mills of South Carolina?

Mr. SMYTH. We have a few trivial accidents; nothing very

serious.

Senator ROBINSON. Do you know how many persons--whether any have been killed in accidents, for instance, in the Pelzer mills. Mr. SMYTH. No, sir; there has never been a person killed. Senator ROBINSON. Not a single person?

Mr. SMYTH. No, sir.

Senator ROBINSON. Do you know how many serious accidents have occurred in the 30 years that you have been in charge of that mill?

Mr. SMYTH. I think the most serious accident happened to two men riding on the elevator. They got their arms crushed at the next story. They were leaning out, not knowing where they were going. They had their arms crushed. That was a most serious accident. They were operated upon.

Senator ROBINSON. Have you an employers' liability act in South Carolina?

Mr. SMYTH. A compensation law is just being passed now. My rule is to pay everybody that gets hurt at Pelzer for lost time and doctors' bills, and if they are seriously hurt

Senator ROBINSON. Without regard to the question of contributory negligence?

Mr. SMYTH. Yes, sir. It is simply a matter of good feeling and good will.

I have some other statistics here which perhaps would be of interest to you. In 1889 at Pelzer we had then only 36,000 spindles. We had two mills, and our average pay was $0.53 a day. That was in 1889. We have now 136,000 spindles, and the average pay was $1.31 last month. Now, having, as we have, 136,000 spindles as against 35,000, there are actually less females employed in Pelzer mill today than in 1889. The percentage of female employees in the Pelzer mills to-day is only 26 per cent, and when we started business, back in 1871, 75 per cent of our weavers were women. To-day only 26 per cent are females, including the girls in the spinning room. The girls all marry off when they get to be 15 or 16 years and go out of the mills, and the weavers are practically men.

Senator POMERENE. I want to go back to the subject matter about which I was inquiring a moment ago. Twelve children working 10 hours per day would do the work of 15 children working 8 hours per day; that is, if you were to be put on an 8-hour scale, it would only require one-fourth more children than it does now on a 10-hour scale. So that your 139 children between the ages of 14 and 16 would have to be increased by 35, or one-fourth, making a total of 174 children. Now, that is the only change, so far as the number of children is concerned; and, assuming that those who work 8 hours a day would get the same wage per hour as those who would work 10 hours per day, why could not a schedule of time be arranged for those children so as to relieve them and not require them to work more than 8 hours per day without embarrassing the operation of the mill very seriously?

Mr. SMYTH. If you were a practical manufacturer I could explain it very easily to you. It is simply impossible. It could not be done. You can not work a hand eight hours a day and another hand two hours a day and give the one who has worked two hours a day legitimate support. He could not support himself or those who are dependent upon him.

Senator POINDEXTER. Could you not work two shifts of eight hours each?

Mr. SMYTH. You would shut down the balance of your mills and have your steam engines going and running only part of the spinning room; and that would not be a very healthy experiment, from a financial standpoint.

Senator POINDEXTER. I do not know a thing about it. I simply asked you the question.

Mr. SMYTH. You gentlemen may as well make up your minds to this, that, if you have that 16-year-old limit, no children under 16 years of age can find work; there is no other way in which you can face it, and you may as well recognize it. Those children are often the main support of widowed mothers. Now, what is going to become of those people unless the city or General Government makes some provision for their support and maintenance or forces them to go to school, because I claim that unless the child is forced to go to school it is better for that child to be at work. You do not want to raise a child in laziness.

Senator POMERENE. How many of those 139 children have widowed mothers?

Mr. SMYTH. I can not answer that positively or definitely, but a considerable number.

Senator POMERENE. What proportion?

Mr. SMYTH. I suppose one-third, or fully one-fourth.

Senator LA FOLLETTE. The death rate must be chiefly among the men in your town.

Mr. SMYTH. No; the death rate is not so much, but the men are very largely in the farming industries, and it is the widows who come to the mills to a very large extent. The men are engaged in farming operations to a large extent, except those who have been born and raised up in the mill community. We have dozens of families there that have been born and raised at Pelzer and have never worked anywhere else. They have children that work at the mills the same as they did.

Senator CLAPP. Captain, I have understood-I do not know how accurate it is-that in Massachusetts in the cotton mills the rule is eight hours a day.

Senator LIPPETT. No; 9 hours-54 hours a week.

Senator CLAPP. Well, nine hours. Then it would be possible to change from a 10-hour to a 9-hour basis, would it not?

Mr. SMYTH. Oh, it would be possible to go to an eight-hour day, of course, but if you want to equalize conditions between the South and New England, and if you are doing it by reducing the number of hours in the South or by increasing the age limit at which children may work in the South, you ought then to consider other conditions. A mill in New England at Fall River or Providence can buy cotton cheaper than we can buy it in South Carolina. That is a fact.

Senator ROBINSON. Why?

Mr. SMYTH. Because they can buy from the large centers like Galveston, New Orleans, Mobile, Charleston, and Savannah. They have water rates and land their cotton right up there. The mills in South Carolina use between 800,000 and 900.000 bales. We can not use the cotton from lower Carolinas; it is a different staple or color, and we are forced to go to North Alabama and North Georgia to get cotton. We have to pay the local rates of freight, and that is higher than the rate from Memphis to Boston, for instance, and when we manufacture our cotton goods we pay a 45-cent rate to New York as against 15 cents from New England to New York. Then, too, the New England mills have a very large command of money. They have their savings banks in Massachusetts and large amounts

of money that they loan to cotton mills at a very low rate. We have not that capital in the South and not that credit in New York, and we pay a higher rate for our money. If you are going to equalize conditions, you must equalize them all around. You must give us good freight rates and cheap money.

Senator CLAPP. That is very interesting, but you undertook to show that it would be practically impossible to go on an eight-hour basis. I am informed that the rule in Massachusetts is eight hours. I am also informed that the rule in Ohio

Mr. SMYTH. You have been misinformed.

on an eight-hour basis.

Senator POMERENE. It is nine hours.

Massachusetts is not

Mr. SMYTH. Nine hours. I did not say it was impracticable to go on an eight-hour basis in the South or to go on a six-hour basis. Of course you can run mills on a six-hour basis only, but I say you can not work eight hours in one department and two hours in another.

Senator CLAPP. Now, Mr. Smyth, if there is no difference in Massachusetts based upon the age as to the number of hours the employee works, then it is possible to accomplish that, is it not?

Mr. SMYTH. It is possible, of course, but it is not fair.

Senator CLAPP. I am not speaking of that. I would like to continue on one line at a time. Now, if in Ohio there is one rule for adults and another rule within certain age limits in the factories as to the hours of work, then it is possible there also to adjust two different rates or scales as to the hours of labor, is it not?

Mr. SMYTH. I do not know what it is in Ohio. I am not familiar with the situation there, and I do not undertake to say.

Senator CLAPP. Well, if that fact exists?

Mr. SMYTH. That is a hypothesis.

Senator CLAPP. But you started in here with the suggestion that you could not adjust two rates in the hour scale.

Mr. SMYTH. I maintain that in the cotton mills you could not do it.

Senator CLAPP. Now, if it is done in Massachusetts

Mr. SMYTH. But it is not done in Massachusetts.

Senator CLAPP. Well, we will discuss that later. If it is done in Ohio, it could be done in North Carolina, could it not?

Mr. SMYTH. I suppose that what has been done in one part of the country could be done in another, as far as the practicability of it is concerned.

Senator LIPPITT. Does Ohio run any cotton mills?

Mr. SMYTH. I never heard of any cotton mills in Ohio.
Senator CLAPP. We will discuss that later.

Senator THOMPSON. And I understand you could go to an 8-hour basis.

Mr. SMYTH. Yes, sir; an 8-hour or a 6-hour basis.

Senator THOMPSON. It is simply a financial proposition now, as I understand it.

Mr. SMYTH. Yes, sir; but you are undertaking in this bill to protect other States against Southern children who are working under the age of 16. You are not going to protect this country against the goods made by the cheap labor of children, after this war is over,

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