REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF LABOR.

To the Legislature:

This report proposes to deal with the future and not with the past. It is hardly in order in any case for the present Commissioner of Labor, who did not take office until several weeks after the close of the fiscal year, 1913, and who was previously not connected with the Department, to undertake to review the Department's work in that year. Furthermore, the great event of that year for the Department was the passage of the reorganization act. That event, owing to the peculiar circumstances which left the office of Commissioner vacant during the remainder of the year after the passage of the law and so delayed the carrying out of the reorganization, points to the future and not to the past as the important subject for present consideration; in other words, it is what a new Commissioner with practically a new Department proposes to do that is the natural text for this, my first official report, leaving the record of the past year to be read by those who desire it in the reports of the several Department officials. These comprise for the Bureau of Inspection excerpts from the reports of the several Supervising Factory Inspectors, the reports of the Chief of the Division of Homework Inspection, Mercantile Inspector, Medical Inspector, Mechanical Engineer, and the Mine and Tunnel Inspectors, and other information, which will be printed herewith as appendices. The work of the Bureaus of Mediation and Arbitration and of Industries and Immigration is reviewed by the head of each. These are the three Bureaus whose duties are strictly administrative and whose work must be presented in annual reports if it is to be recorded in available form for the public. No formal report of the Bureau of Statistics and Information is presented as its work is of a different nature and is continuously set forth in the various Department publications prepared or edited by that Bureau.

DEPARTMENTAL LEGISLATION.

In this field a great and fundamental change in the Department's functions is specifically made or contemplated by the reorganization. There are two chief elements in this change. In the first place, while heretofore the Department's function has

been exclusively executive, confined to the enforcement of laws coming from the Legislature, now large legislative functions have been committed to the Department as well. For this new duty a special legislative agency has been created in the Industrial Board, whose function is the formulation and passage of the necessary legislation which shall then have the full force of law, not only to supplement the various health and safety provisions now in the Labor Law, but to carry out a broad charter which the law has given the Board in its declaration (see section 51 of the Labor Law) that it is "the policy and intent of this chapter that all factories, factory buildings, mercantile establishments and other places to which this chapter is applicable, shall be so constructed, equipped, arranged, operated and conducted in all respects as to provide reasonable and adequate protection to the lives, health and safety of all persons employed therein and that the said Board shall from time to time make such rules and regulations as will effectuate the said policy and intent." I shall not undertake here to discuss the policy or work of the Board, of which the Commissioner of Labor is but one of five members, albeit the Chairman, except to say that the various rules which will shortly be promulgated, and which will constitute the State's industrial code, will best reflect the spirit and ideals animating the Board.

Closely related to the work of the Board, however, is a new feature of the Department's scope which is the second of the important changes of function with reference to health and safety above referred to. This is not a purely new duty, but does represent a greatly enlarged function, namely, that of constructive investigation work as a basis for regulatory legislation by the Industrial Board. I say it is not an entirely new function, because essentially it has been within the Department's function in the past to furnish information of this kind to the Legislature. But in no such direct or specific fashion has this duty been laid upon the Department as now, and there has been created by the reorganization a new agency in the Department for this particular purpose, the Division of Industrial Hygiene in the Bureau of Inspection. This is the one essentially new piece of machinery, outside of the Industrial Board, created by the reorganization act. Its importance, and especially the value of the work it is designed to perform, can not be overestimated. This is evident in the

specific provision of law under which it is to "make special inspections of factories, mercantile establishments and other places subject to the provisions of this chapter, throughout the State, and shall conduct special investigations of industrial processes and conditions. The Commissioner of Labor shall submit to the Industrial Board the recommendations of the Division regarding proposed rules and regulations and standards to be adopted to carry into effect the provisions of this chapter and shall advise said Board concerning the operation of such rules and standards and as to any changes or modifications to be made therein."

It is evident that to meet the intent and purpose of the law, there should be developed in this Division as a center, what shall be conspicuously a pioneer agency pointing out and furnishing the necessary data for constructive and progressive regulations (as well as administrative action) to conserve the lives and health of wage earners in this State. As the first step of the present administration in fulfillment of the purpose of larger constructive investigation work along the lines of Industrial Hygiene, and as the first effort of the Division of Industrial Hygiene, it is already planned to make an industrial survey of the State. This survey will be the most comprehensive and far reaching of any that has ever been undertaken by the Department of Labor. Surveys of the State by industries will be made, and there will be issued special bulletins giving information that will be of value to both. employer and employee. In this way the principal industries of the State will be covered and especial attention will be given, both in the survey and in the bulletins that are to be issued, to the subjects of cleanliness, sanitation, ventilation, lighting, fire hazards and their related safeguards, means of exit, and in brief everything that goes toward the conservation of human life. Thorough survey along structual lines of all buildings over one story in height used for factory purposes will be made. The object is to obtain definite data regarding each building classified as a factory building. This survey will not take account of the manufacturing conducted in these buildings, except where the safety of the employees is affected. It is my intention to have this particular portion of the survey take in the following items: The location, type and size of the building; the number and type of stairways and fire escapes that are found in each building; the

fire walls and the horizontal exits, the exit doors, with a record kept of each door, where it is located, how constructed and of what material it is built. Another point to which attention will be paid will be the interior arrangement of the workrooms in relation to the exit facilities and the provisions for the physical needs and comforts of the workers. These, of course, will include the matter of sanitation and ventilation, washrooms, toilet facilities,

etc.

LAW ENFORCEMENT.

Let us turn now for a moment to another function of the Department which is not new, but for which greatly enlarged resources have now been provided, and for which there is both in that fact and in the intention of the present administration a new era in prospect. I refer to the function of law enforcement.

Under the reorganization act and the appropriation of 1913, there is now provided an inspection force, which, as compared with previous years, stands as follows: