Again, quoting from the same Report: "The law regulating labor conditions of women, youths and children: When it is understood that this law authorizes the employment of children of 12 years in factories; when it is seen that little children toil through long work days in certain industries; when it is known that the law does not touch domestic labor, the worst of all, one can but conclude that such protection is illusory, especially since we have no law limiting the hours of labor of adults."
And so on, with all laws whose enforcement would interfere with the interests of the master class. Such laws are all "dead letters," according to that Socialist Report.
The history of the United States is conclusive on this point. In 1866 a labor organization known as the National Labor Union was founded in Baltimore, Maryland. Within two years it had gained a membership of 640,000, and had given a powerful impulse to the agitation for an eight hour day. Largely due to this economic movement, Congress in 1869 passed a law granting an eight hour work day to certain divisions of government employes. Prof. Richard T. Ely, in his work, "The Labor Movement in America," published in 1886, says that the National Labor Union only lived about three years, dying of the "disease known as politics," and that the eight hour law of Congress' remained a dead letter on the statute books. Less than two months ago, the Associated Press reported an interview between Samuel Gompers and President Taft, in which, among other requests made to the Chief Executive by Gompers was that of a "more strict enforcement of the eight hour law for government employes."
Prof. Ely concludes from the facts at his command in 1886 that an eight hour day will only be obtained by a "general refusal to work more than eight hours" on the part of the American working class.
The experience of Colorado in the eight hour movement is another case in point. For more than ten years,
