Advisory Commission of the Council of National Defense
  
                                                                                                                               May 4, 1917.

Mr. W. P. Hamrick,
General Superintendent, Pacific Mills,
Columbia, South Carolina.

Dear Sir:

      Your letter of recent date to the Honorable A. F. Lever, Chairman of the Committee on Agriculture, House of Representatives, was transmitted to me.

      As you say in your letter, there is on foot a movement to render child labor and compulsory education inoperative, or to secure the suspension of provisions restricting hours of work. This movement seems to be part of a larger movement to nullify or to destroy all humanitarian safeguards that protect the health and welfare of those who work. Those directing this movement have taken advantage of the first period of transition during which the people are appalled by their new problems and are fearful of what the immediate future may contain for them; there is an effort being made to confuse change and activity that will direct intelligent plans for self-defense.

     The declaration of war means that the activities and resources of this country shall be diverted to an entirely different purpose from what obtains under conditions of peace. Transition to a war basis means a re-direction of activity, not a change of fundamental principles and policies. Under all conditions the purpose of our government is to conserve and further the interests of humanity. Those standards which safeguard the health and well-being of the people cannot justifiably be suspended or removed unless the nation is reduced to the direst extremity. We are not facing such emergencies, nor have we exhausted our resources to such a degree that we would be justified in setting aside safeguards that insure the physical and mental well-being of future citizens. In protecting the childhood of the nation we are protecting the nation itself. This protection is just as necessary as the military defense of the nation. There can be no justification for rendering child labor laws inoperative during this war except when it shall have been demonstrated that all other methods have failed and an extreme emergency shall have been proved to that body charged with the defense of the nation--the Council of National Defense.

     You say in your letter that to suspend the child labor law would be of advantage to manufacturers in helping them to overcome the shortage of labor. Until the manufacturers shall have first tried to readjust their industries to a war basis, shall have made all mechanical substitutes for human labor wherever that is possible, and shall have done everything within their power to meet the needs of the nation, and then demonstrate the inadequacy of the number of workers to be secured and the indispensable character of the product under consideration, they will have no good reason for demanding that the children be deprived of their right to opportunity for physical and mental growth in order that the industrial needs of the country may be served. The men and women of the country must first try to defend the nation and do its work before they call upon the children to give like service.

                                                                                Yours very truly,

                                                                                 Saml Gompers.
                                                                                 Chairman, Committee on Labor.