passing a law in 1907 which operated largely to supplant State regulation. The limitation of hours in mining came next in 1896 but has been able to make only slow headway. By 1900, 4 States had acted; 8 more were added in the next decade, and 3 in the decade 1911-20, but no further laws appeared to have been passed till the depression of the 1930's. General hour legislation for men has been conspicuously absent.31

A frontal attack on adequate labor standards by the setting of minimum wages was even later in coming among the States; but when Massachusetts passed its first law in 1912, its lead was promptly followed in the next year (1913) by 8 States, and by 1920 a total of 15 States had acted. Constitutional issues immediately arising, the wage laws were nullified by 3 State courts and 2 State legislatures before the United States Supreme Court ruled that the setting of minimum wages violated due process of law, a barrier only removed in 1937.32

Of greater contemporary significance to the working classes than hour and wage standards, which have failed to apply to the vast mass of workers until the immediate present, has been the growth of standards applying to the con ditions of work, and to industrial safety and rehabilitation in particular. The rules of the common law, derived from the preindustrial era, constituted one of the greatest grievances of the worker, for they forced him and his family to bear personally the risks attendant upon industrial employment, under the slogans of "assumption of the risk," "fellow servant," and "contributory neg. ligence." These rules, which might have been reasonable in an agrarian and small craft era, were slowly modified by statutes which denied the employer the right to "contract out" of liability to his employees, created the right of legal suit in death cases, and abrogated or modified the specific common-law defences already cited. However, the mere removal of the barrier to legal action in the case of industrial injuries was not sufficient, for it afforded no practical assurance that the workingman or his dependents, after weathering the combat in law offices and court chambers, would substantially collect the economic content of whatever judgment that the courts might eventually render. The United States Labor Department in 1893 called attention to the system of compulsory insurance against industrial accidents that was so prevalent in European countries. No action was taken till 1902 when the State of Maryland provided by law that the employers might exempt themselves from legal liability for industrial accidents by taking out industrial accident insurance. This measure promptly met the ire of the courts, as did a Montana law of 1909 which provided for compulsory compensation for mining accidents. In 1910 New York passed its first workmen's compensation law, but the courts were still not to be reconciled except by express constitutional amendments which was adopted in 1913. Other States appointed investigating committees, 8 in 1910, 12 in 1911, and 7 in 1913.33 Although judicial opposition remained so strong in other States as well that constitutional amendments had to be secured in 6 of them, the workmen's compensation movement was not measurably slowed down, although the emphasis was definitely thrown to the elective instead of the compulsory type (i. e., the employers could choose to come under the statute or stand on their common-law rights and obligations).34

31 Ibid., pp. 457-461, 541, 560-562. Also see U. S. Women's Bureau, Bulletin No. 66.

The States passing minimum wage laws in 1913 were California, Colorado, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin; followed in 1915 by Arkansas and Kansas, in 1917 by Arizona, in 1919 by North Dakota and Texas, and in 1923 by South Dakota, culminating the first phase of the movement under the direct onslaught of the U. S. Supreme Court. In Adkins v. Children's Hospital, 261 U. S. 525 (1923), and Morehead v. People, 298 U. S. 587 (1936), minimum wage laws were declared unconstitutional, but these decisions have apparently been overruled in West Coast Hotel Co. v. Parrish, 300 U. S. 379 (1937). In 1933, however, in response to a specific invitation of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, a number of States passed minimum wage laws, as in Connecticut (c. 131a), Illinois (p. 597), New Hampshire, c. 87), New Jersey (c. 152), New York (c. 32), Ohio (p. 502), and Utah (c. 38). Adapted from Millis, op. cit., pp. 306–307. 320.

88 Brandeis, op. cit., pp. 564-571; Cunningham v. Northwest Improvement Co., 44 Mont. 180 (1911); Ives v. South Buffalo Ry., 201 N. Y. 271 (1911). 34 Also see Wm. F. Dodd, Administration of Workmen's Compensation (1936), pp. 35, 823.

States for this purpose in 1920, 11 other States had also passed rehabilitation laws, and this pattern of State action was rapidly universalized as a result of the Federal grant. 35

U. S. Office of Education, Vocational Education Bulletin, No. 190.

The victims of industrial accidents were also assisted by programs of industrial rehabilitation, starting with a Massachusetts act of 1917 which provided for special training facilities. When Congress made Federal aid available to the

FIGURE 8.-Growth of State Bureaus of Labor Statistics

Workmen's compensation and industrial rehabilitation, however, are designed to make the best of accidents that have already occurred. The States have also taken steps to prevent the occurrence of industrial accidents and to lessen the toll of industrial disease. The need for ventilation and sanitary working conditions was early recognized in mining, special inspectors of which were appointed by the State of Pennsylvania in 1869. In 1877 the State of Massachusetts extended the inspection device to general manufacturing by estab lishing a system of factory inspectors, authorized to enter industrial premises to ascertain whether the State labor and safety laws were adequately observed. State inspection authorities had been established in approximately half the States by 1900 and are now found in almost all the States. A significant shift in emphasis on industrial safety took place in 1911 when the State of Wisconsin repealed its existing safety laws and substituted the requirement that all manufacturers must provide a safe place of employment, as prescribed by the indus trial commission after due investigation of the particular industrial hazards. By 1930 seven States were rated as definitely successful in using administrative orders to promote industrial safety.36

The States have also indicated their concern with the laboring classes and the conditions of work by the establishment of bureaus of labor statistics. The first and probably most representative agency was the Massachusetts bureau which was established in 1869 to

collect, assort, systematize, and present

statistical details relating to commercial, social, educational, and sanitary conditions of the laboring classes and to the permanent prosperity of the productive industry.37

Other States were quick to follow, in fact considerably quicker than in estab lishing the regulatory system of factory inspectors, for all that was proposed was fact-gathering and research, not regulation. By 1880 bureaus of labor statistics had been established in 8 States; the next decade added 15 more States, but then the movement tended to slacken off, adding 6 States in the decade 1891-1900, and 10 States in the period since 1901. (See fig. 8.) The more recent tendency has been to incorporate the fact-gathering and research functions of the bureaus of labor statistics and the regulatory functions of the factory inspectors into a single State labor department.

The establishment of employment offices represents another attempt of the States to improve laboring conditions by expediting the concurrence of job and man in search of job. The first such office was established by the State of Ohio in 1890, patterned closely after a French model. An elaborate program of State employment offices was inaugurated by Illinois in 1899. By 1910 State employment offices were authorized in 18 States; 10 more States acted in the next decade, but then intervened "the decadence of public employment offices" from 1920 to 1930. By 1933, 36 States were found to have passed legislation authorizing the establishment of a State employment office, but in 12 States no office had recently been in operation. In the remaining 24 States appropriations were usually "ridiculously small" and the offices "sadly lacking in adequate employment facilities." Hostile judicial attitudes also contributed to minimize the effectiveness of State employment work by hampering the regulation of private agencies.38

36 Commons, op. cit., III, pp. 366-370; W. F. Willoughby, State Activities in Relation to Labor in the United States (1901), p. 34 et seq.; Wis. Laws 1911, c. 485; A. Bromage, State Government (1936), p. 480.

37 Mass. Laws 1869, c. 102.

38 The chronological growth of State employment office legislation has been as follows: 1890, Ohio; 1895, Montana (repealed 1897); 1896, New York (inactive 1906-14); 1897, Nebraska*; 1899, Illinois and Missouri; 1901, Connecticut, Kansas, West Virginia, and Wisconsin; 1903, Maryland*; 1905, Michigan and Minnesota; 1906, Massachusetts; 1907, Colorado; 1908, Oklahoma and Rhode Island; 1909, Indiana; 1913, South Dakota; 1915, California, Iowa, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania; 1917, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, New Hampshire and Utah; 1921, Louisiana, North Carolina, and North Dakota; 1923, Nevada; 1924, Virginia; 1931, New Mexico and Vermont; and 1932, Kentucky. The asterisk indicates that the office was found not to be in operation by Ruth Kellogg in her survey of Public Employment Offices in the United States (1933), pp. 15-16. State regulation of private employment agencies has fared ill in a judicial climate worshipful of "freedom of contract.' See Adams v. Tanner, 244 U. S. 598 (1917), and Ribnik v. McBride, 277 U. S. 350 (1927).

"

Labor standards appeared first in the regulation of the work of persons of certain ages and sex, then safety conditions and the provision of industrial compensation and rehabilitation, and on a very modest scale in connection with the concurrence of job and man in search of job, through the State employment offices, but the problem of hours and wages of the vast mass of the working classes has been largely untouched by the States.

39

Welfare.-Until the great depression of the 1930's, the responsibility of American Government toward the poor, the dependent, and the handicapped was largely local, in accordance with the tradition of the Elizabethan poor laws.3 The very phrase "public welfare" was unknown in Government parlance until 1917 when the Illinois Reorganization Act employed the term. Likewise, local private philanthropy appears to have been more conscious about welfare organization (particularly in connection with the device of a council of social agencies) than public authorities, except in very recent years.

40

The American State first became directly concerned with the people's welfare with the establishment of institutions for the care of special classes of the popula tion, i. e., the insane, the blind, the deaf, and the very poor. In 1773 Virginia opened an institution for the insane; in 1822 Kentucky established an institution for the deaf; in 1837 Ohio, an institution for the blind; in 1847 Massachusetts, an institution for the delinquent and in 1854 an institution for the poor. Pro fessor Breckinridge has pointed out in her Public Welfare Administration in the United States that these early State institutions frequently assumed a responsi bility that extended far outside the boundaries of the State in which the insti tution was located by taking care of the defectives of other States. This interstate service of the early welfare institutions was particularly pronounced in the case of the Connecticut and Kentucky institutions for the deaf, to such an extent, in fact, that special land grants were made to these States by the Federal Government. When, however, Miss Dorothea Dix, an American outstanding for her efforts to arouse public concern over the welfare of the handicapped citizens of the State, presented to Congress a "magnificient appeal" for national aid for the care of the insane by making a grant of 10 million acres of the public lands and succeeded in securing the passage of a bill, President Pierce vetoed it as an unconstitutional interference with the purely internal concerns of the States. The fact that similar aid was regularly available for the education of the normal was ignored. 41

With the growth of particular State institutions and the expansion of local welfare functions in the cities, it appeared necessary that some single agency of State-wide jurisdiction be established for the purpose of resolving conflicts between local jurisdictions over responsibility for particular persons, reforming financial procedures (and thus lower the cost of the welfare services) and also obtaining information about welfare needs and services. The first such agency was established by the State of Massachusetts in 1863 to "investigate and supervise the whole system of the public charitable and correctional institutions' and also to compile "all desirable information concerning the industrial and mate rial interests of the Commonwealth.' The immediate administrative function of the Massachusetts Board of State Charities was to order the transfer of pauper inmates from one charitable institution or hospital to another. 42

39 The Elizabethan law (XLIII, c. 2) divided the poor into (1) the lame, impotent, old, blind, and others unable to work, and (2) the able-bodied poor, "sturdy vagabonds" and "valliant beggars," and (3) poor children. The first group was to be aided by general taxation, the second must work as provided by justices of the peace, church wardens, and appointed house. holders; while the third was to be bound out as apprentices. See S. P. Breckinridge, Public Welfare Administration in the United States, c. 1 (1927).

40 See the Proceedings of the National Conference of Social Work from 1929 onwards, and Arthur Dunham, "Social Welfare Planning" in Social Work Yearbook 1937, pp. 482-487.

41 Op cit., pp. 14-15. See also Breckenridge, “Institutions, Public," Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, VIII, pp. 90–95. 43 Mass. Laws 1863, c. 240.

..

the States of Wisconsin and Michigan in 1871. The financial emphasis in the creation of State welfare agencies is indicated by the name "board of control, transferring fiscal supervision from separate administrative boards of particular

A number of other States followed Massachusetts' example, so that by 1870 there had been established a welfare agency in eight States, usually designated the board of State or public charities, to which the word "reform" was added by