There seems to be some confusion about my position upon the Child Labor question, and I desire to clear this up.

In my Biennial Message to the General Assembly I said:-

“Coupled with and as a part of the compulsory school law should be a child-labor law. The first sections of the act should provide for compulsory attendance upon school; the latter sections should make it unlawful for any mill or factory to employ any child between the ages of eight and fourteen during the public-school term. Of course no child under seventeen can be employed under existing laws. The weakness of child-labor legislation has been that it has dealt with the subject only in a negative way. It has declared that the child shall not work, but has not concerned itself with what the child shall do. The treatment of the problem has not been unlike that of the mother who told the servant to go out in the yard and see what the children were doing and make them stop it. A law that takes the child out of the factory and dumps it into the street is hurtful both to the child and to society. The law should say the child shall not work and furthermore that he shall go to school. In fact, the law should be primarily a part of the educational policy of the State and only in an incidental way a child-labor law. The law should be enforced by the officers of the educational department and it should be the duty of the truant officer to go out and find the child, whether in a factory or on the street, and place him in school. Provision might be made with proper safeguards for permitting a child between twelve and fourteen to work in a factory after the public-school term has expired, provided a certificate can be obtained showing that the child had actually attended the school during the entire term.”

In making the recommendations above quoted it will be seen at once that I was deeply interested in keeping the child in the school as well as out of the factory. What is known as the Connor-Saunders bill is a substantial compliance with the spirit of my message. It provides for a commission to be composed of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, the Secretary of the State Board of Health and the Commissioner of Labor and Printing. My information is that the authors of this bill are willing to amend it so that the inspector shall be appointed by the entire commission and not by any member of the same. I utterly fail to see any objection to the Commissioner of Labor and Printing being a member of this Commission, and in view of the turn that matters have taken in the General Assembly, I deem it eminently wise and proper for him to be a member of this Commission and to be the executive officer of the Commission as outlined in the bill. I have said this much to the members of the Legislative Committee of the North Carolina Manufacturers Association and to the members of the General Assembly interested in the Neal substitute. I respectfully submit that in view of the legislative history of these bills, which is known to all men, it would be unwise and unjust to ignore the Department of Labor in this matter.