Senator POMERENE. That is what I mean.

Dr. HOPE. I would not, if they had to labor; no, sir.

Mr. KITCHIN. Our next will be Mr. Scott Roberts, of Alabama. STATEMENT OF MR. SCOTT ROBERTS, TREASURER ADELAIDE MILLS, ANNISTON, ALA.

The CHAIRMAN. Please state your name, residence, and occupation. Mr. ROBERTS. My name is Scott Roberts, and I am treasurer of the Adelaide Mills, Anniston, Ala. I am 37 years old.

Mr. Chairman, I will ask your permission to read a very brief excerpt from the Congressional Record, in connection with the hearing held there about six weeks ago. I quote from page 2543, being the extension of remarks, Wednesday, February 2, 1916, by Hon. John R. K. Scott, of Pennsylvania. He makes this statement:

The opponents of this bill lack the courage to come out and squarely attack the measure upon its merits. Instead they are attempting to becloud and confuse the real issue and conceal their real objection by bringing forward a feigned and fictitious reason to sustain their opposition.

Senator POINDEXTER. Whose statement is that?

Mr. ROBERTS. John R. K. Scott. [Continues reading:]

They will not and dare not attack this bill upon its merits. They lack the audacity to come forward and argue in favor of the exploitation of the children by the merciless, avaricious industrial interests of the South, and so they proceed to contemptuously attack the provisions of this most meritorious piece of legislation by raising the hue and cry of constitutional infringements.

Gentlemen, I am one with sufficient audacity to attack this measure on its merits and solely on its merits. I feel that in this legislation we are attempting to infringe upon the inherent human rights of the poor young children in the South and everywhere else. When we have been shown the means to care for these people when they are thrown out of employment I would even then be willing to debate with anyone the wisdom of leaving them without an occupation; but until you do show us some satisfactory provision for these young people, I can not see what merits there can be in such a proposition. As I look around me I am struck with the fact that almost every successful man I have ever known not only went to work early in life but boasts of it and credits that fact with his ultimate success-that early he learned the habits of thrift and industry.

Now, why is it that we have turned so completely around against the experience of almost every successful man in the acquaintance of everyone here? Of course, that is not every man, but it is so much so that I judge almost any man would admit it. There can be but one reason, and that is that we feel that the work that the children are doing is injurious to them.

Well, in connection with this, some years ago the Beveridge investigation-I suppose you would call it-was responsible for the appropriation of something like $300,000 to make an investigation of the condition of the woman and child workers throughout the United States, including the South. It has been charged that that investigation was biased from the first. I shall not attempt to say whether it was or not. But they discovered some very remarkable

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things in connection with it. Their various agents were sent all over this country, and the results of their investigations were published in 19 volumes. This is one of them [referring to book]. It is volume 1, Cotton Textile Industry, Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage Earners in the United States; Senate Document 645, Sixty-first Congress, second session. The quotation I have before me is not exactly the one I was looking for, but while I have it I will read it, to save the time of this committee and all others interested. In this report, on page 120, I quote as follows:

The personnel of the family often accounts for migration from the farm to the cotton mill. The widow with children too young for farm work readily seizes the opportunity for her children to help in the support of the family at lighter work. The father who is disabled is also easily induced to bring his family from the farm to the mill, where he can get the benefit of his children's labor.

Fathers whose only disablement is laziness are also easily induced to bring their families to the mill village for the same reasons, but the percentage of fathers of this kind found during the investigation was very small and leads to the conclusion that the extent to which these cases exist in southern mill villages has been very much exaggerated.

I am very glad that I ran across that, because I believe it was Representative Howard, from my neighboring State of Georgia, who laid some stress upon the proposition that this whole trouble hinged under the imposition of worthless and drunken fathers, or "drunken daddies," as he called them. The investigators have reported that that is grossly "exaggerated."

Farther down, on page 121 of this volume, we find this paragraph: Another type of family attracted to the cotton mill is that which has a predominance of females. Necessity may compel the women and girls to assist in the support of the family, and while the farm work is not suited to their strength the work at the mill, which is lighter and unaffected by the vicissitudes of the weather, is attractive to them.

Gentlemen, we will turn to the actual work that is being done by the children between the ages of 14 and 16 years in southern cotton mills.

Senator POMERENE. Are you speaking generally now, or of your own State?

Mr. ROBERTS. I am speaking generally; and I will speak more particularly of my own State.

The children working in the cotton mills invariably work in the spinning room. The process involved is what we have heard described here once or twice before to-day. The best way I can explain it to you, gentlemen, so that you can understand it is to say that it is even less of an effort to the child to do than it would be to tie a knot in a common piece of twine; but there is something a little unusual and out of the ordinary about that knot that the child ties. It is of such a nature that you and I could not possibly do it. If the child does not learn to do that when it is young, and when its fingers are supple and when it is capable of acquiring the necessary skill, it will never be able to do it. I do not mean to say that a child 16 years of age can not possibly learn to do it; but I will say that one of 16 years will never become as proficient in the art of spinning as one who has commenced at the age of 12 or 14. It is impossible. It is the same in the teaching of music or anything else that a child is forced to learn in school. You send them early, so

that they will acquire it when they are able to do it-when they are in a receptive condition. It is peculiarly true of this business that we are in.

It seems to me that there is a point that should be entitled to your serious consideration-that in legislating out of the mills children under a certain age you are legislating them out at a time when they are most likely to become proficient in their chosen life's work. It has an important bearing on the child's outlook on life.

In regard to the vital statistics, in which I notice you gentlemen take a great interest, it is well to bear in mind that because of these fundamental conditions, of which I have spoken and about which these reporters or these special agents were writing, that the frail and the weaker physical developments seek employment where the work is light. Therefore, that would have a tendency to make the vital statistics of any industry employing them very much against that industry as such. But to show you that the cotton-mill industry does not contribute to those conditions, the vital statistics do not prove that the death rate from tuberculosis and other diseases is any greater there than in any other line of human endeavor.

In connection with that, I have here a later volume from the United States Department of Labor, Royal Meeker, commissioner, in which he deals directly with the questions that I see you are all particularly interested in. It is entitled "Dangers to Workers from Dusts and Fumes and Methods of Protection."

Senator BRANDEGEE. What is the date of that, please?
Mr. ROBERTS. August 12, 1913, whole number 127.

He gives here a very brief description of various occupations, and he comes over to this particular one which we are discussing, "ring spinning." Everything that is being said here really has reference to what is taking place in a ring-spinning room, because that is the only place in the cotton mill where children work.

Senator BRANDEGEE. What page?

Mr. ROBERTS. This is on page 12; it is illustrated with a number of plates, and this is a description of plate No. 11, and he says here:

Ring spinning: The roving now goes to the spinning machine, which may be either a "ring frame" or a "mule." Except for the noise of the machinery (which is very great, but is uninterrupted and unvarying) and for the loose cotton dust in the air of the room, the spinners in a modern well-regulated ringspinning room—

Mark this, gentlemen

work under favorable conditions. Such a room is well ventilated, properly heated, has large windows and transoms which open, clean walls and ceilings, and is lighted by incandescent bulbs. The employees are mostly women, girls, and boys.

Over at plate No. 11 is given a picture of a ring spinning mill, or a ring spinning room, of a modern mill.

I may say, in connection with that, that, broadly speaking, that picture is typical of the ring-spinning room of nearly every southern cotton mill. One reason for that is that our southern mills are comparatively new. They are the modern type, as distinguished from those of the East, for instance, or the older spinning centers; and all of them, even those mills that are not the "show" mills have these same general inherent advantages, great, wide windows that are just one right next to another, as close as we can get them, all with

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transoms that open; and they all have this peculiar advantage that is, peculiar" in its relations to the persons who work in those rooms; that the machines themselves are great, long affairs, and a little child 12 or 14 years of age can run four or five or six or seven or eight of them, and the result is that when you take a spinning room and put in its complement of boys and girls to operate that room, you have fewer people in there than you have in any other sheltered occupation in the world, I suppose; certainly very many less than you would have in a school room, or in a shoe factory, or any other factory that you might mention.

That means they get more fresh air; it certainly means that they get more sunlight and more daylight.

Those things are not things that the cotton-mill owners deserve any credit for. They are things that they have to provide. It is to their interest to provide them; but the workers get the benefit of it. This volume that you gentlemen are looking at [referring to report of the Department of Labor] and dealing especially with the so-called occupational diseases, reached the conclusion in the early pages of it there, that that is more or less of a myth, not only with relation to this particular industry, but to a very great many in other lines of human endeavor

Senator LIPPITT. What is a "myth "?

Mr. ROBERTS. The occupational disease. It is not so much due to what you do, as it is to your own personal hygiene, as to how well you take care of yourself, whether you have fresh air when you sleep, whether you are working in a well-ventilated, well-lighted placethings like that. We used to think-I thought myself that the lint in a cotton mill would actually produce tuberculosis. That no longer is even seriously considered.

The charge has been made that the work in the cotton mills is dangerous. I think the most practical answer to that assertion lies in the statement that the liability insurance companies of this country will insure children and other workers in cotton mills for a less rate per $100 of pay roll than they will any other occupation. To be exact, we pay in our little mill there at Anniston a rate of 30 cents; in other industries it runs from 50 cents on up to $4.

Senator LIPPITT. Thirty cents for what?

Mr. ROBERTS. For each $100 pay roll, for liability insurance.
Senator LIPPITT. Per annum?

Mr. ROBERTS. Per annum; yes, sir.

Senator CLAPP. For how much insurance?

Mr. ROBERTS. Based on the pay roll.

Senator LIPPITT. What is the liability of the insurance company? Mr. ROBERTS. I think it is $10,000. It is different; sometimes they will have a condition of $2,500 for any one individual and total of $10,000 for all persons that may have been hurt in that accident.

Senator POMERENE. Have you any statistics showing what that liability rate is per capita as comparing children with adults?

Mr. ROBERTS. No, Senator; they make no distinctions whatever. Senator POMERENE. I know, but I am not quite sure that you are justified in drawing the conclusion that you do. It is said-I am giving it as I understand it-that children are employed because it is cheaper to employ them; that is, you get more work per dollar of cost than you do when you have an adult. If that be so-I do not

say it is so-then your conclusion would not shed any light upon the case at all.

Mr. ROBERTS. Oh, yes; I think it would. It shows at once that it is not true. The mills in the South do not profit by child labor, because they are children. It would not make any difference to me in running our mill whether or not the individual who was running the frames was 14 years old or 40 years old. The pay would be so much per side. They work by the piece. That is one popular delusion in connection with this thing.

Senator LIPPITT. You would not be able to get adults to work at that rate per side?

Mr. ROBERTS. They would not do it, because it is mere child's play; it is too trival for a grown-up person to do.

Just think of it; a little child 10 or 12 years old can come in there and do it, and they seem to want to do it.

Senator POMERENE. Do you have any children 10 or 12 years of age there?

Mr. ROBERTS. Oh, no. We have had in the past; but they could do it. That shows how little the actual strain of the work amounts to.

But, getting back to your proposition, even if that were true, it would not reverse the basis of my figures on liability insurance. It would simply mean that if we were working the children for a mere pittance that we would still be paying upon the hundreds of dollars of pay roll, so that the insurance company would be taking the risk for a greater number in proportion to the amount of pay roll; quite the reverse of what I think you had in your mind.

It strikes me that these liability insurance companies are pretty cold-blooded institutions. Why are they willing to come and make you a proposition to protect you against the liability for accidents in a cotton mill where you are working children? There can be but one reason, gentlemen, and that is because they have found from experience that there are so few accidents in those mills.

Senator POMERENE. I presume they take insurance wherever they can get it, whether adults or small children, so far as that matter is concerned, do they not?

Mr. ROBERTS. Yes; but they will come to the same town-the same accident insurance company-and they will write the risk at our mill for 30 cents and they will go over to the locomotive and machine works in our same neighborhood and charge them $4.50. The CHAIRMAN. They classify those industries?

Mr. ROBERTS. Yes, sir; we are in the most-favored class. The same thing might be said of fire insurance. Farmers' liability insurance is very much higher; I think 50 per cent more than our rate. As to fire insurance, I do not suppose there is any structure on earth that takes any lower rate of fire insurance than the modern southern cotton mill. That is partly due to their slow-burning construction, partly due to the fire-fighting apparatus with which they are all equipped, but the fact remains that you can get insurance on a cotton mill for one-tenth of 1 per cent. That is what I pay. I presume on your home you are paying probably five or ten or twenty-five times that much for insurance.

Here is a rather succinct statement of my contention regarding the employers' liability insurance. It is available to cotton mills at the