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labor - William O'Connell. Every time that anybody tried to make a law in Massachusetts or anywhere else for that matter, though Massachusetts was his only jurisdiction, that would limit the hours of labor of children, or provide that children shouldn't go to work before the age of twelve, or that they should have health certificates, or something, the Archbishop would fume, blast and say that that couldn't be done - that was the exclusive right of the parents. It was a family problem. The family was to decide what the child should do. God would give the family wisdom to do the right thing by the child. The state could not take over the child. It was very strong talk. So it was sometimes thought that the Church wouldn't look with favor on child labor laws.

Al Smith became Governor. We already had a child labor law in New York State, but it needed a good deal of amending, strengthening, modifying, bringing up to date, raising the working age and all that kind of thing. I've already said that when he called me to Albany to become Industrial Commissioner, I had thought he wanted to talk about my proposals about the changes in the child labor law. He knew where I stood on these mutters. We had never had any great debate on child labor matters. The things that were debatable were more controversial or newer things.