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PREFATORY NOTE.

The statutes herein referred to will be found printed at length in the second special report of the United States Commissioner of Labor of 1896, and in the bimonthly bulletins published by the Department of Labor since that date, upon which mainly, owing to considerations of time and the materials at hand, I have had to rely. The object of this report being to give a clear, comparative view of the present condition of legislation upon this subject, the substance of the statutes is set forth as briefly as possible in the text. Specimen statutes, selected either as being most complete or most characteristic of different tendencies of legislation, will be found in full in the footnotes; and on some important subjects all existing statutes will be found thus copied in full.

It has not been thought necessary to complicate this report with references to the decisions of courts upon the statutes embodied therein except that in certain cases, where they have been held unconstitutional, citations of laws are marked with an asterisk (*).

For the sake of brevity, references are made to chapter and section or running section, of the last State revision code or general statutes in common use. When chapter and section are preceded by a year number, it means that the reference is to the annual laws of that year. Where there is no citation, reference should be had to the reference to the same State next preceding in the text.

To save duplication, matters assigned to special experts are not fully covered by this report; but for the sake of a complete scheme chapters are duly assigned to them where they would otherwise have fallen into the body of this report. Of these special reports on legislation, those relating to convict-labor laws and to mining-labor laws are presented in this volume; that relating to trust legislation has already been presented to Congress by the Industrial Commission.

It seems desirable that Congress adopt an exhaustive code applying to all railway matters, thereby doing away with the necessity of further legislation by the States. Whether Congress can also legislate as to cases involving the fellow-servant doctrine in other employments, which may be tried in the United States courts, is an interesting constitutional question, depending, it seems, on whether such matters be regarded as going to the cause of action or to matters of procedure merely. The decisions even of the Federal courts are upon this point conflicting. The same remarks apply also to cases arising from accidents caused by defective machinery, appliances, etc.

FREDERIC JESUP STIMSON.

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ART. F. As to Interference with the Labor Contract of Others, Intimida-
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