with which he had dealings required him to be against it, but that I
was a free agent, and that if I would look into the matter he believed I
would favor the legislation. As a matter of fact, I had supposed I would
be against the legislation, and I rather think that I was put on the
committee with that idea, for the respectable people I knew were against
it; it was contrary to the principles of political economy of the
_laissez-faire_ kind; and the business men who spoke to me about it
shook their heads and said that it was designed to prevent a man doing
as he wished and as he had a right to do with what was his own.

However, my first visits to the tenement-house districts in question
made me feel that, whatever the theories might be, as a matter of
practical common sense I could not conscientiously vote for the
continuance of the conditions which I saw. These conditions rendered
it impossible for the families of the tenement-house workers to live
so that the children might grow up fitted for the exacting duties
of American citizenship. I visited the tenement-houses once with
my colleagues of the committee, once with some of the labor union
representatives, and once or twice by myself. In a few of the
tenement-houses there were suites of rooms ample in number where the
work on the tobacco was done in rooms not occupied for cooking or
sleeping or living. In the overwhelming majority of cases, however,
there were one, two, or three room apartments, and the work of
manufacturing the tobacco by men, women, and children went on day and
night in the eating, living, and sleeping rooms--sometimes in one room.
I have always remembered one room in which two families were living. On
my inquiry as to who the third adult male was I was told that he was
a boarder with one of the families. There were several children,
three men, and two women in this room. The tobacco was stowed about
everywhere, alongside the foul bedding, and in a corner where there were