of playtime and growth by the hardening exactions of such a daily routine, is to doom him to a gray monotony of uninspiring prospect from which beauty, art, joy in labor, hope of better things, are forever shut out. If these were isolated instances of premature child labor, there would still remain cause for a protest against that which sacrifices life for gold; for the progress of the race waits breathless upon the unfolding of every human life. But this appropriation of the days of childhood to the service of material gain is a settled policy of the coal region, against which the best public sentiment has hardly ventured to express disapproval. Those who do not participate in the custom still condone it with the mature wisdom that "the children are better off than they would be running the streets.' It is not denied that shiftless and dissolute parents add to the volume of child labor, here as elsewhere. One will see fine, manly boys, who have never attended school with any regularity, and who have been the main breadwinners of the family from eight, ten, or eleven years of age, and who, in addition to the hard toil of the mine, begin and end their day carrying a pail of beer from the saloon for the physical comfort of their thirsty parents. But the number of parents who place their personal comfort above the welfare of their children is not large, and it is believed that a reasonable effort to point to the advantages of an elementary education, and to disclose the injurious effects of too early employment, will meet with a ready response among a people as kind-hearted and generous as are to be found in any commonwealth. The third factor contributing to the volume of child labor in this region is the attitude of the employer. One is everywhere assured that these children work in the breakers only during the summer months, beginning in April and returning to school when the snow falls. This is true of many of the boys, yet the breaker continues to run and the slate is picked from the coal at all seasons of the year. If the boys are not there in winter, by whom is the work performed? When the boys come on in the spring, whose places do they take at the coal chute? The fact is, a boy of twelve, working for fifty or sixty cents a day, can do as much work in some parts of the breaker as a man who would demand one dollar a day. The law of supply and demand explains the rest. Again, we should fall into error were we to conclude that the coal operator is greedy above other employers. He is a business man facing the problems of the business world. Competition with other producers is keen. The appetite of his stockholders for dividends is insatiable. The obvious duty of the superintendent of any department in the concern is to get the work done as efficiently and cheaply as possible. Frequently employers, when questioned regarding certain little boys in the breaker, have replied with unconcern: "We have their certificates of age all right. That lets us out!" The sense of social responsibility is slowly dawning. We are beginning to learn that nothing comes to our convenience or comfort without sacrifice somewhere in the process. Society is rising from the plane in which a cash payment for goods was regarded as the final discharge of obligation, and coming to recognize that we have not discharged all duty, or made full payment for goods, until we have done our utmost to secure to every person engaged in their preparation a fair reward for service, a full share of liberty, and an adequate opportunity for the complete development of body and mind to symmetrical maturity. That the individual can fulfill this social obligation alone is not expected, but that society must discover methods by which we can be fed and clothed and warmed without oppression or injustice is fundamental to democracy. Let the housekeeper who next becomes annoyed by a "clinker" in the range or furnace pause in his anger long enough to remember that the "clinker" is now his problem because it escaped the eyes of some ten or eleven year old slate-picker, bent for nine hours above the dusty chute, peering by the aid of a smoking whaleoil lamp into the black shadows that creep across the fair face of all his days. At the recent session of the Pennsylvania legislature two laws were enacted, one governing employment in the mining industry, the second covering other forms of gainful occupation. Both establish a fourteen-year age limit, require proof of age to accompany the sworn statement of the parent, and place in the hands of school superintendents and factory inspectors the details of enforcement. If the sentiment of the people can be aroused to the importance of the protection of the children, if school systems can be adapted to the realized needs of these communities, and if parents can be led to place the coming years above the material advantage of the passing day, there is brightness in store for the children of the mining communities which at present is unknown. For, while many of these boys are full of the playfulness and enthusiasm of youth, there are some whose little spirits seem lost in the desert of their daily drudgery, whose environment stifles ambition, and who stand, at the close of the day, with a culm bank for a background and a bewildered gaze toward a future barren of inspiration or hope. L TEXAS ANTI-TRUST LAW VALID. Does Not Apply to Combinations of Laborers or Professional Men. It will no doubt be recalled by many that when the present Anti-Trust Law of Texas was before the Legislature for passage, grave doubts were entertained by many members of organized labor of the entire sincerity of those who were advocating the measure. Many claimed it was a direct stab at trades unions, and much opposition and a good deal of feeling resulted. The attorney general of the state gave a lengthy elaboration of what it was hoped the law would do, and that view of the advocates of the law has been sustained thus far. Recently the Llano-Mason Medical Society asked the Attorney General if an agreement, fixing a schedule of fees, was a violation of the anti-trust laws of the State. To this question Mr. Jewel P. Lightfoot, special Assistant Attorney General, made the following reply: You are respectfully advised that Art. 5313 of the Revised Statutes, Sec. 1, provides that a trust is a combination of capital, skill or acts by two or more persons, firms, corporations or association of persons, or either two or more of them for either, any or all of the following purposes: (among which are): (1) To create, or which may tend to create, or carry out restrictions in trade * * * or (2) to create or carry out restrictions in the free pursuit of any business authorized or permitted by the laws of this State. If the agreement entered into infringes the anti-trust statute of this State, it must fall within the terms of the above provisions. 1. The Supreme Court of Texas, in the case of the Queen Insurance Company et al. vs. the State, 86 Texas, 250, held that the word "trade" in the statute, as used, is synonymous with "traffic." In this sense it embraces the buying and selling of any article of commerce. The services of a physician is not a commodity that could become a subject of trade or traffic, within the meaning of those terms. Webster's International Dictionary defines "traffic" as follows: "To pass goods and commodities from one person to another, for an equivalent in goods or money, to buy or sell goods, to barter, to trade. Hence, it is obvious that the agreement can not be held to be a combination to create or carry out restrictions in trade. 2. Is the agreement a restriction in the free pursuit of any business authorized by law? Obviously this clause was intended to apply to such restrictions as grow out of combinations and acts whereby persons are hindered or prevented by force, intimidation, coercion, threats or other unlawful means from freely pursuing their vocation or business, and was not intended, nor does it apply, to laborers or professional men who may combine for the purpose of securing increased charges or fees for services rendered. (Insurance Company vs. State, 86 Tex., 250.) It is not a restriction in the free pur of playtime and growth by the hardening exactions of such a daily routine, is to doom him to a gray monotony of uninspiring prospect from which beauty, art, joy in labor, hope of better things, are forever shut out. If these were isolated instances of premature child labor, there would still remain cause for a protest against that which sacrifices life for gold; for the progress of the race waits breathless upon the unfolding of every human life. But this appropriation of the days of childhood to the service of material gain is a settled policy of the coal region, against which the best public sentiment has hardly ventured to express disapproval. Those who do not participate in the custom still condone it with the mature wisdom that "the children are better off than they would be running the streets." It is not denied that shiftless and dissolute parents add to the volume of child labor, here as elsewhere. One will see fine, manly boys, who have never attended school with any regularity, and who have been the main breadwinners of the family from eight, ten, or eleven years of age, and who, in addition to the hard toil of the mine, begin and end their day carrying a pail of beer from the saloon for the physical comfort of their thirsty parents. But the number of parents who place their personal comfort above the welfare of their children is not large, and it is believed that a reasonable effort to point to the advantages of an elementary education, and to disclose the injurious effects of too early employment, will meet with a ready response among a people as kind-hearted and generous as are to be found in any commonwealth. The third factor contributing to the volume of child labor in this region is the attitude of the employer. One is everywhere assured that these children work in the breakers only during the summer months, beginning in April and returning to school when the snow falls. This is true of many of the boys, yet the breaker continues to run and the slate is picked from the coal at all seasons of the year. If the boys are not there in winter, by whom is the work performed? When the boys come on in the spring, whose places do they take at the coal chute? The fact is, a boy of twelve, working for fifty or sixty cents a day, can do as much work in some parts of the breaker as a man who would demand one dollar a day. The law of supply and demand explains the rest. Again, we should fall into error were we to conclude that the coal operator is greedy above other employers. He is a business man facing the problems of the business world. Competition with other producers is keen. The appetite of his stockholders for dividends is insatiable. The obvious duty of the superintendent of any department in the concern is to get the work done as efficiently and cheaply as possible. Frequently employers, when questioned regarding certain little boys in the breaker, have replied with unconcern: "We have their certificates of age all right. That lets us out!" The sense of social responsibility is slowly dawning. We are beginning to learn that nothing comes to our convenience or comfort without sacrifice somewhere in the process. Society is rising from the plane in which a cash payment for goods was regarded as the final discharge of obligation, and coming to recognize that we have not discharged all duty, or made full payment for goods, until we have done our utmost to secure to every person engaged in their preparation a fair reward for service, a full share of liberty, and an adequate opportunity for the complete development of body and mind to symmetrical maturity. That the individual can fulfill this social obligation alone is not expected, but that society must discover methods by which we can be fed and clothed and warmed without oppression or injustice is fundamental to democracy. Let the housekeeper who next becomes annoyed by a "clinker” in the range or furnace pause in his anger long enough to remember that the "clinker" is now his problem because it escaped the eyes of some ten or eleven year old slate-picker, bent for nine hours above the dusty chute, peering by the aid of a smoking whaleoil lamp into the black shadows that creep across the fair face of all his days. At the recent session of the Pennsylvania legislature two laws were enacted, one governing employment in the mining industry, the second covering other forms of gainful occupation. Both establish a fourteen-year age limit, require proof of age to accompany the sworn statement of the parent, and place in the hands of school superintendents and factory inspectors the details of enforcement. If the sentiment of the people can be aroused to the importance of the protection of the children, if school systems can be adapted to the realized needs of these communities, and if parents can be led to place the coming years above the material advantage of the passing day, there is brightness in store for the children of the mining communities which at present is unknown. For, while many of these boys are full of the playfulness and enthusiasm of youth, there are some whose little spirits seem lost in the desert of their daily drudgery, whose environment stifles ambition, and who stand, at the close of the day, with a culm bank for a background and a bewildered gaze toward a future barren of inspiration or hope. TEXAS ANTI-TRUST LAW VALID. Does Not Apply to Combinations of Laborers or Professional Men. It will no doubt be recalled by many that when the present Anti-Trust Law of Texas was before the Legislature for passage, grave doubts were entertained by many members of organized labor of the entire sincerity of those who were advocating the measure. Many claimed it was a direct stab at trades unions, and much opposition and a good deal of feeling resulted. The attorney general of the state gave a lengthy elaboration of what it was hoped the law would do, and that view of the advocates of the law has been sustained thus far. Recently the Llano-Mason Medical Society asked the Attorney General if an agreement, fixing a schedule of fees, was a violation of the anti-trust laws of the State. To this question Mr. Jewel P. Lightfoot, special Assistant Attorney General, made the following reply: You are respectfully advised that Art. 5313 of the Revised Statutes, Sec. 1, provides that a trust is a combination of capital, skill or acts by two or more persons, firms, corporations or association of persons, or either two or more of them for either, any or all of the following purposes: (among which are): * (1) To create, or which may tend to create, or carry out restrictions in trade * or (2) to create or carry out restrictions in the free pursuit of any business authorized or permitted by the laws of this State. If the agreement entered into infringes the anti-trust statute of this State, it must fall within the terms of the above provisions. 1. The Supreme Court of Texas, in the case of the Queen Insurance Company et al. vs. the State, 86 Texas, 250, held that the word "trade" in the statute, as used, is synonymous with "traffic." In this sense it embraces the buying and selling of any article of commerce. The services of a physician is not a commodity that could become a subject of trade or traffic, within the meaning of those terms. Webster's International Dictionary defines "traffic" as follows: "To pass goods and commodities from one person to another, for an equivalent in goods or money, to buy or sell goods, to barter, to trade.' Hence, it is obvious that the agreement can not be held to be a combination to create or carry out restrictions in trade. 2. Is the agreement a restriction in the free pursuit of any business authorized by law? Obviously this clause was intended to apply to such restrictions as grow out of combinations and acts whereby persons are hindered or prevented by force, intimidation, coercion, threats or other unlawful means from freely pursuing their vocation or business, and was not intended, nor does it apply, to laborers or professional men who may combine for the purpose of securing increased charges or fees for services rendered. (Insurance Company vs. State, 86 Tex., 250.) It is not a restriction in the free pur suit of business for a person or combination of persons to refuse to render professional services for less than the value he or they place upon said services. A man has the right to value his own labor; the right of every man to refuse to work for, deal with or associate with any man or class of men, according as he sees fit, is fundamental. This doctrine is founded upon the fundamental right of every man to conduct his own business in his own way, subject only to the condition that he does not interfere with the legal rights of others, and in the right which one man may exercise singly, many, after consultation, may agree jointly and make simultaneous declaration of their choice. This has been repeatedly held as to associations of workmen and associations of men in other occupations or professions must be governed by the same principle. (Commonwealth vs. Hunt, 4 Met., 111; Carew vs. Rutherford, 106 Mass; Mogul Steam ship Co. vs. McGregor, App. Cases, 25.) Under the agreement entered into by the members comprising the Medical Society, if any restrictions to a free pursuit of business resulted, it would merely operate as a restriction upon their own private business, and would not interfere with the rights of the public or any other individual not a member of the association, nor does it prevent competition by other physicians not members of said society. You are, therefore, advised that in our opinion the agreement referred to does not come within the terms of the antitrust statute of this State. If agreements of the character named were inhibited, it would also include labor unions which agree on the scale of wages, associations of farmers who agree to hold the fruits of their labor for a stipulated price, and would interfere and prevent the free exercise of other constitutional rights not subject to legislative control. |