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education or courses in their affiliated schools of the learned professions. St. Louis College, also at Honolulu, is conducted by Roman Catholic Brothers, giving instruction from primary to classical grades, with music and drawing as specialties. It is only open to boys, but it has more pupils than any other school in the islands. Iolani College, owned and directed by the Anglican Bishop of Honolulu, with an able staff of instructors, is a high-class academy doing substantial work. The Kamehameha School for boys and girls, founded by the will of the late Mrs. Charles R. Bishop, a royal princess of Hawaii, besides giving tuition from primary to high school grades, inclusive, affords the benefits of manual training in various branches of industry. There is also a normal school for the training of teachers attached to this noble foundation. Manual training, it may be said, is being introduced into the common public schools of the country wherever practicable. Honolulu has long had a reformatory school in which agricultural and mechanical industry has been taught to the wayward lads sent there for reclamation.

Hawaii has practically a free school system, the only exception being a group centering in the Honolulu High School. This is under authority of a section of the new school law, which provides that the department may, in its discretion, establish, maintain, and discontinue select schools, taught in the English language, at a charge of such tuition fees for attendance as it may deem proper; provided, however, that such select schools shall be established only in places where free schools of the same grade for pupils within the compulsory age are readily accessible to the children of such district."

Out of the total appropriated expenditures of the Hawaiian government for all purposes, $1,939,978.50, for the two years ending December 31, 1897, the amount for the support of public schools is $404,000. As the independent schools are also sustained out of the pockets of the people, the aggregate contribu tions of the population to the cause of education are in nowise shabby. On the whole, Hawaii may be proud of her schools. They will not be the least valuable part of the estate that she will bring into the American Commonwealth.

DANIEL LOGAN.

THE UNION LABEL.

BY M. E. J. KELLEY.

THE development of industry and the progress of economic thought have lately evolved in the union label an economic force which promises to grow constantly stronger as it becomes more widely known. It is sufficiently interesting, at any rate, to deserve more attention than it has hitherto received. Although the union label has been a valuable factor in strengthening three of the most powerful of the American trade-unions, and has exerted an incalculable influence in bringing about some changes. that are of serious importance to society as a whole, it is within a year that it has begun to be noticed at all by the students of economics, or by anybody else outside the trade-unions. No mention of the label appears in any of the books on economics or sociology. Even Professor Ely, who has written exhaustively on the labor movement in America, apparently has never heard of the union label. The past year, however, has worked wonders for the spread of the label's particular light outside the ranks of the workers. Lectures on the subject have been delivered before the students of economics at Columbia, and one of the students has the label for his thesis. The National Labor Bureau has commissioned a special agent to investigate the union label. Consumers' Leagues, whose membership consists of wealthy buyers, have discussed it exhaustively. Evidently its day is near at hand.

To a great extent, no doubt, its neglect is due to the fact that American students of economics are forever studying the history of the English labor movement, with the conviction that the American organizations are bound to develop on identical lines, and that, given a similar situation, the step taken by the English unions twenty-five or thirty years ago is bound to be

followed by the American organizations of the present. They quite overlook differences in the American character and situation. The union label had never been heard of in England until a couple of years ago, when two delegates from the American Federation of Labor expatiated on its advantages at the convention of British and Irish trade-unions.

The union label is a distinctively American product. It originated with the cigarmakers, who used it at first on the Pacific Coast in the later seventies as a means of protection against Chinese industry, which was flooding the California markets with cigars and threatening to drive the white cigarmakers to starvation wages in order to compete with it. The feeling against the Chinese was particularly strong just then, and an appeal was made to the smoking public on æsthetic and sanitary, as well as ethical, grounds. Men were urged not to purchase goods made by leprous Chinese under all sorts of unhealthful conditions, but instead to buy the products of well-paid white citizens employed at living wages in decent shops. To distinguish the cigars made by the white workmen from those made by the Chinese the local cigarmakers' union issued a label, a strip of blue paper bearing the union seal, which was pasted around the cigar box after the fashion of the revenue stamp. The label was welcomed by the manufacturer, because with the public state of mind on the Chinese question its use meant increased sales of his wares. On the whole, the device of the California cigarmakers was so successful that it was adopted by the International Cigarmakers' Union at its next convention, and its use has extended gradually until now "blue label" cigars are common all over the country. The Cigarmakers' Union issues on an average about 20,000,000 blue labels annually. These labels are given on demand to any manufacturer who complies with the rules of the union as to wages and hours of labor. Besides indicating that the goods were made by members of a trade-union receiving fair wages, the union label is usually considered a guarantee that the article on which it appears was made in a factory complying with the factory laws, and not in a sweatshop or tenement. Occasionally, however, less stress is laid on this point than is desirable from the consumer's point of view.

Labels have been adopted by more than twenty national trade-unions, and they represent all stages of development. All

the labels indicate a struggle for improved conditions. Some of them represent partial attainment. In most cases particular abuses have called the label into being and it is chiefly valuable at present as an indication that a certain evil has been abolished in the cases where the label is in use.

The hatters were the first to follow the example of the cigarmakers by the adoption of a label to distinguish the hats made in "fair" shops from those made in "unfair" establishments. Twelve years ago, at a national convention, an inch square of buff paper, perforated around the edges like a postage stamp, was adopted as the hatters' union label. It is sewed under the sweatband of the hat. A majority of hat manufacturers employ union men and the label is in use wherever there is any demand for it. All grades of men's hats from the cheapest to the most expensive may be had with the label in them.

The National Garment Workers' Union has a cambric label an inch wide by two inches long, which is stitched into the pockets of men's and boys' suits and overcoats. About five millions of these labels are used each year. One-fifth of all the clothing made in the United States bears the union label. The demand for the label on ready-made clothing has been worked np within the past three or four years. The Garment Workers' Union was organized only six years ago with 250 members. Its membership in 1896 was estimated at 40,000.

Within the past five or six years labels have been adopted by the bakers, tack-makers, iron moulders, shoemakers, coopers, beer brewers, horseshoe nail makers, wagon-makers, broom. makers, collar and cuff makers, canners of domestic sardines, and a number of other trades. If one rides in a carriage one may have a union label on the horse's collar, if one insists, and on one's coupe or brougham. If one is an enthusiast on the subject it is quite possible to help create a demand for union labels by refusing to wear shoes, hats, collars, cuffs or coats or trousers which do not carry on them the union workman's guarantee of fair making. Custom tailors and custom shoemakers have union labels, as well as those who make the readymade articles. Housekeepers have it in their power to make or unmake the bakers, broom-makers, and a host of other tradeunions. They may if they choose serve their families with union labelled bread and crackers, union-labelled canned vegetables and

fruit. The housewife may put down her carpet with unionlabelled tacks, sweep it with union-labelled brooms, and set a union-labelled stove upon it. If one elects to do so one may patronize union-labelled shops. The retail salesmen have a button which they wear indicating membership in the Retail Clerk's Union. The Barbers' Union issues a card to master barbers who pay union wages and keep union hours. The card is hung in a conspicuous place in the shop or in the shop window.

The union label appears more frequently on goods used by working people than on those in demand among the well-to-do. The reason for this is simple. The demand for articles bearing the union label originated with members of trade-unions acting in their capacity as consumers, and so far very few outside the working class have taken any interest in the union label. In fact until recently it was practically unknown outside the tradeunions. Overalls are the great staple for labels. They come under the head of ready-made clothing, of course, and the Garment Workers' Union issues the label, but overall making is a distinct branch of the business. Indeed, the ready-made garment trade is exceedingly interesting as an example of the extreme to which the subdivision of labor has been carried. It is very rarely that a manufacturer makes more than one distinct kind of goods. No workman nowadays ever works on men's coats and trousers and children's jackets, for instance, as he might have done thirty years ago. These different garments are made in widely separated shops by different people. And no one person makes a whole garment. One cuts it, another runs the seams, another hems, another bastes, another makes pockets. A coat passes through at least twenty hands in the process of making. The Garment Workers' Union is an amalgamation of numerous branches, each composed of workers employed at some particular division of the work.

But to return to overalls, which, of course, are articles used exclusively by working men. It is hardly possible to buy a pair without the union label. The "scab" and the man who considers the union a great engine of oppression and injustice are likely to come in contact with evidence of its success every time he puts his hand in his overall pocket. The supply of overalls seems to come from half a dozen immense factories where thousands of women are employed. In this case the union label guarantees to

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