industry be purchased at the cost of the welfare of the workers? This is the problem that often confronts the voter. How have the Pacific coast states met this dilemma?
The first modern labor laws protecting the wage-earner were those dealing with child labor. California was one of the first states to provide child-labor legislation. Such legislation was passed in 1889, amended in 1901 and greatly improved in 1907. Washington and Oregon passed excellent laws in 1903. There have been further amendments so that the laws in these three states have a general age-limit of fourteen years, prohibitions of night-work by children, compulsory school attendance and highly important provisions for adequate enforcement. Suggested improvements are to raise the general age-limits and to provide a broader foundation of education through a longer period of compulsory school attendance.
Society is very much interested in the labor laws known as employer’s liability and workmen’s compensation. Modern industry bears only a slight resemblance to the craft and the rural work dealt with by the common law. Modern industry is a huge machine for which there must be workmen. Every year men, like machinery, are cast on the scrap heap. Under the common law there is no adequate financial aid for widow and children or for a dragged-out life as a cripple. California, Washington and Oregon early developed laws making employers financially liable by recourse to the courts to the employees for accidents. But the courts were slow and strange to the workmen; lawyers were expensive, and a thriving insurance consumed funds. Hence workmen’s compensation laws making payments definite and automatic were passed. California passed a workmen’s compensation law in 1911, being the fifth state to put it into effect. Washington passed a similar law the same year, and Oregon also in 1913. At the close of 1914 there are twenty-four states thus protecting workmen. Washington and California compel employers to operate under the law, while Oregon’s law is elective, the alternative being employer’s liability.
Of equal consequence to workmen are occupational diseases, such as anthrax, compressed-air illness and lead poisoning. California in 1911 was the second state to put into effect a law requiring the reporting of occupational diseases, and her law has served as a model for many of the fifteen other states which now make such requirements.
Labor has also been attacking its problems without the aid of legislation, namely, through the labor union. The methods of unions have been severely criticized, perhaps more than their aims. This is to be expected because labor is on the firing line of conflict, that has for its stakes bread and butter and housing. The daily labor of workmen is rough, direct and concrete; the efforts of their organization are of the same nature. The Pacific coast has had its share of labor-union activities.
