The Union Times

Conn. Has Its Own "Tobacco Road" In Conditions On Farms

Conn. Children Of 9 Report For Work at 5 AM

Legislation Needed to Place These Firms Under Labor Department Control

HARTFORD, Conn.—As the last of this season's bumper tobacco crop is being wheeled into drying sheds along the Connecticut River Valley north of this city, charges of "intolerable and disgraceful" labor conditions reverberate across the denuded plantations. Following exhaustive investigations by Miss Edna Purtell, of the State Labor Department, a drive is under way for legislation to govern the working conditions in this highly industrialized agricultural industry with the pledge:

"There'll be no Tobacco Road' in Connecticut if this department can stop it."

BAD CONDITIONS

Employment of children under fourteen years of age and bad conditions in dormitories where Negro workers lived were the chief complaints, though the reports brought in by state investigators covered a much wider field of harvest evils. Long hours, improper supervision and insufficient sanitary provisions that were dangerous to the "health, morals, safety and general welfare" of the workers were charged by the Labor Department.

Although many complaints of maltreatment were filed, the department had no power to act because the tobacco fields come under farming, the same as hay fields or cowsheds, and every effort to pass laws protecting children engaged in agricultural work has been defeated in the General Assembly.

COMPLAINTS

Miss Purtell reported complaints that children as young as nine years were on the fields in Somerville by 4:30 or 5 a.m. Other complaints included boys being kicked and cuffed by bosses, girls injured in a truck bringing them to work, young children being left to walk miles to their homes after being at work twelve hours, and others being so crowded into trucks that they had to stand up in vehicles without tailboards.

In one case forty-six boys were brought from Florida and Georgia and housed in a building the Labor Department calls a fire hazard. The Department is seeking a ruling from the United States Department of Labor on the legality of transporting under-age youths in this manner. It was said that in some cases the parents did not know where their children had gone.