notably the Stone Cutters' Association, have endeavored to abate the "harvester" evil by charging a high INITIATION FEE to applicants from outside the United States. (See BIRDS OF PASSAGE.)

Hazardous Occupations. Those which are dangerous to the life, limbs, or health of the workers who engage in them. According to a recent exhaustive investigation, there are eight general industries which are more hazardous, in regard to fatal accidents, than service in the United States Army, and of these metal and coal mining head the list. The classification of hazardous industrial processes usually includes the cleaning and oiling of machinery, adjustment of belts, operation of machine saws or of stamping, washing, grinding, and mixing machines, and the manufacture of lead products or of compositions containing poisonous acids. Under the head of extra-hazardous occupations is generally included work in mines, at blast furnaces, or on railroads, in the outside erection of electric wires, or in the manufacture of explosives. (See PROHIBITED EMPLOYMENTS; HEALTH HAZARDS; INDUSTRIAL HAZARD; SAFETY FIRST MOVEMENT.)

Health Hazards. With reference to industrial workers, these may be classified as dangers arising from (1) poisons, dusts, fumes, gases; (2) heat, humidity, improper ventilation; (3) bad or insufficient lighting; (4) overcrowding; (5) inadequate or unsanitary washroom and toilet arrangements; (6) SPEEDING UP, long working spells, OVERTIME Work, NIGHT WORK, lack of proper REST PERIODS; (7) association with diseased fellow-workers. (See INDUSTRIAL HAZARD.)

Health Insurance. See SICKNESS INSURANCE.

Helper or Handy-Man. An unskilled or semi-skilled worker who assists a JOURNEYMAN in any industrial task. The helper must not be confused with the APPRENTICE. "The latter is in training to become a journeyman. He uses journeymen's tools; he is permitted if efficient to do journeyman's work, and he is under the supervision of the journeymen's union. The helper or LABORER, except in a few of the trades, is not in training; he is not allowed to use journeymen's tools, and in most cases he belongs to an independent union. As his name implies, he helps the journeyman; he is supposed to do the unskilled work and to lend a hand when required to do so." Clauses limiting the number of helpers a journeyman may have, and restricting the work which they may perform, are found in the rules of many trade unions. (See BERKSHIRE SYSTEM; IMPROVER.)

Hirsch-Duncker Unions. See GEWERKVEREINE.

Hoboes. See MIGRATORY Labor.

Hold-Up Unionism. See PREDATORY UNIONISM.

Holding Company. See TRUST.

Holland, Labor Organizations in. See DUTCH LABOR OR

GANIZATIONS.

Home Finishing. See HOME WORK; TENEMENT-HOUSE WORK; PIN MONEY WORKERS.

Home Work. Immense quantities of small articles are manufactured wholly or partly in the homes of workers. The latter may give practically all their time to industrial tasks, as is usually the case in TENEMENT-HOUSE WORK; they may be factory workers who eke out their day wages by night work at home; or they may be what are called PIN MONEY WORKERS, for whom the industrial task is incidental to the customary home concerns. In any case, they are in much the largest part women and children. Home work is particularly prevalent in the garment-making industry. A considerable part of the felling, hemming, button-sewing, basting-pulling, etc., (collectively known as "finishing") on certain garments is done by home workers in city tenements and in the country districts adjacent to garment-making centres. But home work is the rule rather than the exception in a number of other industries as well. Considered in its general social implications, industrial home work conflicts with family duties, children are neglected, homes are uncared for, mothers are exhausted, and the children of home workers are made to labor during time they should spend in play and study. Even when the children do not actually assist in the industrial home work, they carry goods to and from the factory and inadequately perform many of the household tasks that their mothers have not the time or energy to do, such as dishwashing, sweeping, cooking, and taking care of the babies. School records indicate that "many children engaged regularly in home work attend school irregularly, are dull when they do attend and frequently fail in their term's work." From the trade union point of view, remark Mr. and Mrs. Webb, home work "necessarily involves INDIVIDUAL BARGAINING, and makes, moreover, the enforcement of any COMMON RULE practically impossible. . Nor are these insidious effects confined merely to the outworkers. The operatives employed on similar tasks on the employer's premises have to submit to reductions of wages and extensions of hours,

under the threat of the diversion of more and more of the business to their out-working competitors. Home work, in fact, makes all Trade Unionism impossible." (See OUTWORK; COTTAGE INDUSTRY; SWEATING SYSTEM; SUB-CONTRACTING; FARMING OUT; PARASITIC INDUSTRIES.)

Homestead Act. This Congressional enactment of 1862, providing for free occupation of public lands under certain conditions, is generally regarded as early LABOR LEGISLATION, as it furnished an outlet to laborers from the overcrowded mines and factories of the East, and thus had an important effect upon industrial conditions for a long period.

Honorary Card. See WITHDRAWAL CARD.

Horizontal Combination. See LARGE-SCALE PRODUCTION. Horizontal Wage. A uniform time wage paid to all workers in a single class, regardless of differences in individual efficiency.

Hospital-Fee System. Where an employer provided medical and surgical treatment for sick or injured workers, it was long customary to deduct a certain amount (usually fifty cents to a dollar) from the monthly or semi-monthly wages of each employee, as a compulsory fee for the services thus provided. This "hospital-fee system," which still survives to a limited extent, was a source of much dissatisfaction among the workers.

Hour Laws. Legislative enactments regulating the hours of labor for specific kinds of labor or for particular industries or occupations are generally so called. In the United States, the numerous state statutes of this sort may be divided into four classes, the first class including those which merely fix what shall be regarded as a full day's labor in the absence of any contract between the parties, and these may either be general or extended only to special occupations; second, those laws which fix the labor of persons not fully sui juris, as minors, or, in some states, women of all ages; third, those which fix the hours of labor under the POLICE POWER in occupations specially dangerous or unsanitary, or in which the safety of the public is specially concerned; and, finally, those which fix the hours of adult laborers, male as well as female, in general occupations, and prohibit contracts for longer hours without special rates or pay for OVERTIME. While nearly all the states have laws restricting women's and children's hours of work in all industries, and men's hours in certain industries, only two have imposed a general restric

tion regardless of age, sex, or kind of industry. The basis of all hour laws "is not the need of the working people for fewer hours in order that they may have more leisure in general, but simply the injury imposed by the occupation upon their health. This of course is a broad position and is indefinite in extent. Legislation regulating the hours of women applies to all factories, and often in practice makes it necessary for employers to fix the same hours for men in the same establishments. While it is doubtless true that in many occupations excessive hours are injurious to the health of men as well as women, conditions differ greatly in different industries, or even in different establishments in the same industry. Legislation, therefore, upon this subject cannot be general, but must be based upon accurate investigation of the conditions in the several industries." While in manufactures and mining the regulation of hours belongs to the several states, yet in transportation the interstate character of the industry brings the subject under the powers of Congress. There is one phase of legislation affecting the hours of labor wherein the interests of private employment are not directly affected-namely, the hours of workmen employed directly by the Federal, state, and local governments. These different governments combined are undoubtedly the largest employers of labor in the United States, and whatever labor legislation is enacted affecting them has relatively important weight upon the condition of the working people in general. The Federal government has been the pioneer in reducing the hours of labor of its employees, and a considerable number of state and local governments have followed its example in adopting the EIGHT-HOUR DAY. (See SHORT HOUR MOVEMENT; SIXTEEN-HOUR LAW; ADAMSON LAW; WORKING HOURS IN RUSSIA; WORKING HOURS IN GERMANY.)

Hour Work. The system of wage payment under which the worker receives a specified sum per hour of working time. The term "hour work" is sometimes used as a general synonym for TIME WORK.

House of Call System. A method practiced in several important British trades, by which an employer needing a workman is encouraged or required to send to a specified place of resort for the unemployed, termed a "house of call," and the man who has been longest on the list or "call book" of such a place is, if suitable, deputed to fill the vacancy.

Household Assistant System. In an effort to solve the vexed problem of DOMESTIC SERVICE, the United States EmPLOYMENT SERVICE organized early in 1919 a special committee to study

this problem and make recommendations for its solution. The committee has outlined a system on the following lines: "Regular eighthour assistants engaged to be exclusive employees for the housewives (preferably working for no one else at the same time) and engaged to work quite as permanently as ever servants do. They give eight hours a day, six days a week. They eat and sleep at home. They agree to give extra service whenever required, for which they are always to receive extra pay. The wage is determined according to a sliding scale of efficiency and length of time in employment, and does and should compare favorably with that which obtains in factory, shop, and office. These assistants are engaged for regular specific duties, just as resident maids are, but-and here is to be found the safety valve never existing in our present order of domestic servicenever, under any condition, is specialization permissible. During the eight hours they hold themselves ready to do whatever the circumstances of the particular day require."

Household Economy. In an historical sense, this is the name commonly given to the first stage in economic organization. Household economy "is characterized by restriction of the whole course of economic activity, from production to consumption, to the exclusive circle of the household (the family, the clan). The character and extent of the production of every household are prescribed by the wants of its members as consumers. Every product passes through the whole process of its manufacture, from the procuring of the raw material to its final elaboration in the same domestic establishment, and reaches the consumer without any intermediary. Production and consumption are here inseparably interdependent; they form a single uninterrupted and indistinguishable process. The earnings of each communal group are one with the product of their labor, and this, again, one with the goods going to satisfy their wants, that is, with their consumption. . . . The members of the household have not merely to gather from the soil its products, but they must also, by their labor, produce all the necessary tools and implements and, finally, work up and transform the new products and make them fit for use." With the increasing concentration of society into walled towns, and the resulting complexity of economic organization, household economy was succeeded by what is commonly known as TOWN ECONOMY; that in turn later giving place to NATIONAL ECONOMY. (See FAMILY OR HOUSEHOLD SYSTEM; FEUDALISM.)

Household System. See FAMILY SYSTEM.