Such [sanitary] certificates will give a possible opportunity for an unfair person to make demands for graft on the small baker, who is always reluctant to go into the courts to force recognition of his rights. We believe either or both of these sections would have the effect of gradually reducing rather than increasing the number of small bakeries.
[This package of bills is] superfluous and entirely unnecessary and is a menace to our business.
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.
This is not a charitable business.
We would consider it a grave injustice to ourselves as well as to the bakers and the public at large if the bakers in our city were unfairly discriminated against in their struggle for existence either by conditions such as they could not reasonably hope to contend against, or by making it possible for bakers of other localities to determine their business here in their home market by more favorable terms. This, we believe, will be the effect of section 116 of the proposed law, which prohibits the establishment of future cellar bakeries.
I don’t think the public is going to gain anything by forcing the small baker out of business.
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…
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.
The chief cause [of lead poisoning among color workers] used to be the careless habits of the men, in not properly washing themselves after handling the lead materials, eating their lunches with their hands covered with the stuff…
[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.
