The hardship entailed on a certain proportion of the home workers, without means of support, the distress they will suffer, their loss will be greater than the benefit coming to the public through the elimination of that work.
I have seen children working in factories, and I have seen them working at home and they were perfectly happy.
[Those killed in factory fires are] an infinitesimal proportion of the population.
There really is a close competition between the canned good industry of this state and that of other states, and that while the canners of other states are operating under general exemptions from the labor law provisions, it will produce a harsh, if not destructive, competition to compel the New York canner to attempt to operate under strict regulation as to the hours of employment.
They are not over-intelligent…They formed habits of living that they carried with them to their work, and that made it very difficult indeed to correct them.
[On why they don’t have medical inspections of their workers] In every case where the men have claimed to have been infected or affected by the lead they were intemperate men…[Meaning:] A man that drank a good deal of beer. …the other men who worked longer at it, who don’t drink, are not affected by it.
The only tendency toward illness comes to men who are intemperate in their habits. In every case of poisoning I have heard of, the man was an exceedingly hard drinker….Where the men are temperate in their habits I never found a case…
You are putting a lot of people out of business and perhaps raising the price of bread….things are getting a little bit better [without “drastic” reforms], slowly, and I am not certain whether or not that would not be a pretty drastic remedy, not against the worst ones, but against the best of that class.
This night work has been rendered necessary largely because of the Government’s perfectly unreasonable attitude towards large corporations, which has made it impossible for managers of large concerns to know whether….they could expand their plans to keep up with increasing demands or not.
We have laws that in a crisis we find are no laws and we have enforcement that when the hour of trial comes we find is no enforcement.
