1. Roosevelt wrote Frank Morrison on Mar. 22, 1906, asking for information on specific violations of the eight-hour law and stating his intention to ensure that the law was effectively enforced. SG replied on Apr. 21 with a thirty-page letter detailing seven violations that had occurred prior to Roosevelt's inquiry, as well as six additional complaints submitted to the AFL office since then. SG pointed out that each of the seven earlier cases had been reported to government officials--including, in at least one instance, Roosevelt himself--but that no steps had been taken to rectify the situation or enforce the law.

On Sept. 19 Roosevelt ordered that all cases where mechanics or laborers on government construction work were either permitted or required to work more than eight hours a day be submitted to the Department of Justice for action. SG reported to the 1907 AFL convention that following Roosevelt's order there were fewer violations of the eight-hour law and that the various complaints brought to the president's attention had been investigated, rectified, and in several instances punished.

2. The Maguire Act, which became law on Feb. 18, 1895 (U.S. Statutes at Large, 28: 667), protected seamen in the coastwise trade from imprisonment for desertion or attachment of clothing and prohibited the assignment of their wages. The prohibition of imprisonment for desertion was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1897 in Robertson v. Baldwin, although seamen subsequently received some relief under the White Act of 1898.

3. S. 529 (59th Cong., 1st sess.), introduced on Dec. 6, 1905, by Republican senator Jacob Gallinger of New Hampshire. The Senate passed the bill on Feb. 15, 1906, and referred it to the House, which passed it with amendments on Mar. 1, 1907; the Senate did not pass the amended bill.

4. On June 15, 1904, the excursion steamer General Slocum burned at Hell Gate in New York's East River with a loss of 1,021 lives.

5. On Feb. 22, 1901, the steamer City of Rio de Janeiro sank after hitting a rock while entering San Francisco Bay in a dense fog; 128 lives were lost.

6. President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 402 on Jan. 25, 1906.