whose representative presented it to him, wanted him to sign the petition, and if he did not sign the petition his employer would know that he refused to sign it?

Mr. CLARK. That might possibly be so, but it would not, except in a very few cases, affect his signature.

Mr. KEATING. But in a great majority of cases the mill owner would know how the operative voted, would he not?

Mr. CLARK. Well, in many cases it was probably signed in the presence of the overseers.

Mr. WATSON. Do you think that is a fair proposition?

Mr. CLARK. I do not see how it could be any fairer. You can not coerce the mill employees. It would go the other way if you tried.

Mr. NOLAN. In voting in your State elections down there, does the voter have to go in and sign his name or is there a secret ballot?

Mr. CLARK. He is seen when he votes. There is nothing secret about it.

Mr. NOLAN. But does he have the opportunity of going in and marking the ballot without signing his name?

Mr. CLARK. Yes, sir.

Mr. NOLAN. Then, it is a secret ballot?

Mr. CLARK. Oh, no; it is no secret. We see him write his name. Mr. NOLAN. I am speaking of election. You did not give the mill operatives the same privilege that they have at elections.

Mr. CLARK. Not in the same way, because it was impossible to do that. We were not holding an election.

Mr. NOLAN. You state that the question of compulsory education in North Carolina is a political question?

Mr. CLARK. It is optional; yes.

Mr. NOLAN. What do you mean by a political question?

Mr. CLARK. Well, the State is Democratic-most of it and our western counties are largely isolated communities. Those people are on the balance of power, and if we put on a State-wide system of compulsory edcation it would swing the balance the other way, because people of the isolated rural sections do not want compulsory education.

Mr. NOLAN. Do you not think you are giving a mighty lot of consideration to the minority down there?

Mr. CLARK. If it will make them the majority; yes, sir. They have been in the majority in our tenth district. We often elect a Republican Congressman from there. We have one in this Congress. Mr. COOPER. You people in North Carolina blame your condition on the Republicans?

Mr. CLARK. Oh, no; they blame it on a certain class of people who live in the mountains.

Mr. NOLAN. They do not want to educate the Democrats, because they are afraid that they might vote the Republican ticket if they were educated. [Laughter.]

Mr. CLARK. They vote the Democratic ticket now. If you force on them compulsory education, they might change around and vote. the other way for spite.

Mr. WATSON. Mr. Clark, have you concluded all you desire to say upon this bill?

Mr. CLARK. You hear a great deal about the matter of accidents in the cotton mills. The children work in very well-lighted rooms,

and it is very rare that there is any injury to those employed in the mills. The best evidence that accidents are rare are the reduced rates charged by accident and liability insurance companies for mill em ployees. They charge a certain rate for different kinds of employment. For instance, a street car employer pay $4.80 per $100 of pay roll. It work down to 68 cents for farm labor and 49 cents for cotton-mill operatives. In other words, they insure cotton-mill employers against accidents to their employees for less rates than they will insure planing-mill, street-car, and farm employees. I think that is the best evidence to disprove the theory that there are a great many accidents resulting in the killing of children in the cotton mills. There was a picture recently run by the Universal Film Co. called "The Blood of the Children," showing children falling down at work in the mills and having hemorrhages. Of course, that is not the situation. I expect to-morrow to put on a tuberculosis expert who has investigated the conditions in the textile plants. I would like to call your attention to the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co.'s figures on tuberculosis in the different occupations. The figures for employees over 15 years of age in various occupations show that the percentage is 22 per cent for textile workers, as against 34 per cent for printers and 46 per cent for clerks, etc. The percentage for textile mill workers, as you see, is only 22 per cent. There is very little tuberculosis now in the cotton mills; not as much as in other communities. The health conditions are better in the mills. Tuberculosis depends a great deal on how people feed and the living conditions. of the workers.

Mr. SMITH. But they do not have child-labor saloon keepers there, do they?

Mr. CLARK. These figures for tuberculosis cover all classes of employees of 15 years and over.

Mr. SMITH. But we are investigating child labor and you are giving figures for adults there.

Mr. CLARK. But these people worked before they were 15, and the tuberculosis would not have developed at once. This bill does not touch the farmers, although there is more danger of accident on the farms, and children work longer hours and under worse living conditions. A very significant matter to be considered is insanity statistics. At the State sanitarium, at Milledgeville, Ga., in 1910 there were 20 cotton-mill employees who came into the sanitarium, which is an insane asylum, against 450 from the farms. Those figures have particularly prevailed for the last five years. In the last five years a total of 117 came from the cotton mills, against 2,586 from the farms. Now, if mill labor is so hard and hurts the children, it should show in insanity.

Mr. HOUSTON. Do your figures show to what extent the injuries in the cotton mills compare with injuries in farm work?

Mr. CLARK. No, sir; but it is 117 against 2,586 for insanity. That is one comparison.

Mr. HOUSTON. But you ought to have the percentage of insanity in the farm population, and the percentage of insanity in the cotton mills.

Mr. SUMNERS. Well, I suppose you fire them from the cotton mills when you find them going crazy.

Mr. CLARK. In Morganton, N. C., 6 came in from the cotton mills = and 92 from the farms in two years.

Mr. LONDON. In other words, the work in the cotton mills does not involve as much of a mental strain?

Mr. CLARK. Practically none.

Mr. MAHER. What are the monthly wages of children employed in = the cotton mills?

Mr. CLARK. Of course, you can not employ them under 13 except i out of school time. The Department of Commerce figures show that spinners got 95 cents in 1910. That is a very low wage to-day.

Mr. MAHER. I am not speaking about spinners. I am speaking about children 12 years old.

Mr. CLARK. Well, those are the spinners and doffers. The girls spin and the boys doff. Doffing is removing the bobbins.

Mr. MAHER. I know what doffing is.

Mr. CLARK. There are very few now who can get under 90 cents.
Mr. MAHER. Is that 90 cents a day?

It

Mr. CLARK. Ninety cents a day. That is a very low wage now. used to be about 45 cents for doffers in 1898, but since that time wages have gone up remarkably. I have figures covering the period from 1904 to 1914.

Mr. MAHER. Children of 12 years of age get 90 cents a day?

Mr. CLARK. Yes, sir; and they go up above that. I have the tariff board figures, the Department of Commerce figures, and the figures obtained by comparison in a Georgia cotton mill.

Mr. HOUSTON. I wish you would give those figures.

Mr. WATSON. Just give them to the reporter and they will go in the hearing.

The December, 1914, report of M. L. Shipman, commissioner of labor for North Carolina, gives the wages paid in North Carolina cotton mills as follows: High average daily wage for males, $2.80; low average, 97 cents. High average daily wage for females, $1.48; low average 82 cents. The report does not distinguish between children and adults.

The report of the United States Department of Commerce issued under date of May 11, 1914, gives in detail the wages paid in Southern cotton mills, and I take the following figures for North Carolina from same:

The report of the Tariff Board issued in 1912 (p. 647) gives the average wages of operatives in the southern cotton mills from which they compiled data, as follows:

The

Cotton Mills, Ga., have furnished me a comparison of the actual weekly earnings of operatives that worked full time in 1894, 1904, an 1914. It is a table of much value, as it shows that mill operatives' wages hav more than doubled in the last 20 years.

Comparative wages and percentages for the first week in May, 1894–1904, and 1914, as shown by pay roll of cotton mill:

Mr. CLARK. Now, in regard to family wages, before I appeared before the Commission on Industrial Relations, I went to a mill and obtained from the books the wages of several operatives' families. I have them here, with the names left out. In one family three boys, between the ages of 14 and 22, and a girl of 17 worked in the mills. The father runs a truck garden. That family had an income of $42.78 a week.

Mr. MAHER. How many in that family worked in the mills?

Mr. CLARK. Four. In another family four girls and one boy worked in the mills. The father was working as a roving hauler, and that family had a weekly income of $47.94.

Mr. MAHER. Did the father work in the mill?

Mr. CLARK. Yes, sir.

Mr. MAHER. Could you give us any information as to what percentage of the men working in the mills have their children also working in the mills?

Mr. CLARK. Well, it is hard to give an exact percentage. There used to be a lot of fathers who put their children into the mills while they loafed.

Mr. MAHER. The opinion prevails in some States that the wages are so low for the adults that they are compelled to put their children in the mills.

Mr. CLARK. Well, the wages there do not seem to be so low. Mr. MAHER. Forty dollars a week is considered a good average wage for a good mechanic in some parts of the country.

Mr. CLARK. You hear a good deal about the minimum wage for girls in New England. It is said that they can not live on $7 a week. Our girls work for $9 a week and their board averages $3 to $3.50 a week. According to these figures, which I have here and which I will put in the record, one family made $42.78, another made $47.94, and another $40.50 a week. That is the family income.

Mr. MAHER. What did the man himself earn out of that $47-the man that worked in the mill?

Mr. CLARK. He got about $1 or $1.20 a day.

Mr. MAHER. It would not be possible for him to keep his family on $1.20 a day.

Mr. CLARK. One of the children was 14; the ages ran from 14 to 20. The third family made $40.50. The average earnings of families of three operators in a Georgia mill was $25.50 a week, and, considering the cost of living in the South, that is a very good in

come.

Mr. SMITH. Do they work by the piece or by the hour?

Mr. CLARK. The spinners work in the spinning room by the day and not by the hour. Weaving is almost entirely by the piece, so much for a cut of cloth.

Mr. SMITH. Labor in the North is nearly all by the hour.

Mr. CLARK. I will put in the record the statement regarding family wages.

FAMILY WAGES.

Realizing that the total income of mill families would have a considerable bearing on the wage question, I went on last Saturday to the Mills,

N. C., and obtained data relative to several of their best families. I secured the wage figures from the pay roll of the previous week.

family Three boys between ages of 14 and 22, one girl of 17. Father runs a truck garden. Mother keeps house. Boys work in weaving and slashing rooms and make $1, $2, and $2.50 per day, respectively. Girl works in the spinning room and makes $1.63 per day. Total weekly income of family, not including profit of father's truck garden, which also helps to feed them, $42.78.

family: Four girls between the ages of 14 and 20, and one doffer boy. Father works as roving hauler. Mother does not work. Three of the girls work in the spinning room and two of them make $1.50 per day while the other makes $1.46 per day. The other girl in the spooler room makes $1.63 per day. Doffer boy makes 90 cents, and the father $1 per day. Total weekly family income $47.94.

family: Two girls between 14 and 19 years of age, a boy 17 and the father. Mother does not work. The three children are weavers, paid by piecework, and average slightly over $10 per week each. The father is a loom fixer and makes $10.50. Total weekly family income $40.50.

These are what might be called "top-notch incomes, but there are many families making the same, and they are in reach of most of the other families of equal size, as wages are largely based upon piecework.

A georgia mill has taken from their roll the earnings of families of three workers only and find the average to be $25.50 per week. This is more than $100 per month for small families and is better than in most of the other lines of work.

Mr. CLARK. I thought it would be of interest to the committee to know the number of mills in the South, the approximate number of employees, and other statistical data. I will put the table in the record.