It is not my purpose to deal specifically with all the various forms of
child labor. That would require a much larger volume than this to be
devoted exclusively to the subject. Children are employed at a tender
age in hundreds of occupations. In addition to those already enumerated,
there were in 1900, according to the census, nearly 12,000 workers under
sixteen years of age employed in the manufacture of tobacco and cigars,
and it is certain that the number actually employed in that most
unhealthful occupation was much greater. In New Jersey and Pennsylvania,
I have seen hundreds of children, boys and girls, between the ages of
ten and twelve years, at work in the factories belonging to the “Cigar
Trust.” Some of these factories are known as “kindergartens” on account
of the large number of small children employed in them.[125] It is by no
means a rare occurrence for children in these factories to faint or to
fall asleep over their work, and I have heard a foreman in one of them
say that it was “enough for one man to do just to keep the kids awake.”
In the domestic manufacture of cheap cigars, many very young children
are employed. Often the “factories” are poorly lighted, ill-ventilated
tenements in which work, whether for children or adults, ought to be
absolutely prohibited. Children work often as many as fourteen or even
sixteen hours in these little “home factories,” and in cities like
Pittsburg, Pa., it is not unusual for them, after attending school all
day, to work from 4 P.M. to 12.30 A.M., making “tobies” or “stogies,”
for which they receive from eight to ten cents per hundred.
In the wood-working industries, more than 10,000 children were reported
to be employed in the census year, almost half of them in saw-mills,
where accidents are of almost daily occurrence, and where clouds of fine
sawdust fill the lungs of the workers. Of the remaining 50 per cent, it
is probable that more than half were working at or near dangerous
machines, such as steam planers and lathes. Over 7000 children, mostly
girls, were employed in laundries; 2000 in bakeries; 138,000 as servants
and waiters in restaurants and hotels; 42,000 boys as messengers; and
20,000 boys and girls in stores. In all these instances there is every
reason to suppose that the actual number employed was much larger than
the official figures show.
In the canning and preservation of fish, fruit, and vegetables mere
babies are employed during the busy season. In more than one canning
factory in New York State, I have seen children of six and seven years
of age working at two o’clock in the morning. In Oneida, Mr. William
English Walling, formerly a factory inspector of Illinois, found one
child four years old, who earned nineteen cents in an afternoon
stringing beans, and other children from seven to ten years of age.[126]
There are over 500 canning factories in New York State, but the census
of 1900 gives the number of children employed under sixteen years of age
as 219. This is merely another illustration of the deceptiveness of the
statistics which are gathered at so much expense. The agent of the New
York Child Labor Committee was told by the foreman of one factory that
there were 300 children under fourteen years of age in that one factory!
In Syracuse it was a matter of complaint, in the season of 1904, on the
part of the children, that “The factories will not take you _unless you
are eight years old_.”[127]
In Maryland there are absolutely no restrictions placed upon the
employment of children in canneries. They may be employed at any age, by
day or night, for as many hours as the employers choose, or the children
can stand and keep awake. In Oxford, Md., I saw a tiny girl, seven years
old, who had worked for twelve hours in an oyster-canning factory, and I
was told that such cases were common. There were 290 canning
establishments in the state of Maryland in 1900, all of them employing
young children absolutely without legal restriction. And I fear that it
must be added with little or no moral restriction either. Where regard
for child life does not express itself in humane laws for its
preservation, it may generally be presumed to be non-existent.
In Maine the age limit for employment is twelve years. Children of that
age may be employed by day or night, provided that girls under eighteen
and boys under sixteen are not permitted to work more than ten hours in
the twenty-four or sixty hours in a week. In 1900 there were 117
establishments engaged in the preservation and canning of fish. Small
herrings are canned and placed upon the market as “sardines.”[128] This
industry is principally confined to the Atlantic coast towns,—Lubec and
Eastport, in Washington County, being the main centres. I cannot speak
of this industry from personal investigation, but information received
from competent and trustworthy sources gives me the impression that
child slavery nowhere assumes a worse form than in the “sardine”
canneries of Maine. Says one of my correspondents in a private letter:
“In the rush season, fathers, mothers, older children, and babies work
from early morn till night—from dawn till dark, in fact. You will
scarcely believe me, perhaps, when I say ‘and babies,’ but it is
literally true. I’ve seen them in the present season, no more than four
or five years old, working hard and beaten when they lagged. As you may
suppose, being out here, far away from the centre of the state, we are
not much troubled by factory inspection. I have read about the
conditions in the Southern mills, but nothing I have read equals for
sheer brutality what I see right here in Washington County.”
In the sweatshops and, more particularly, the poorly paid home
industries, the kindergartens are robbed to provide baby slaves. I am
perfectly well aware that many persons will smile incredulously at the
thought of infants from three to five years old working. “What can such
little babies do?” they ask. Well, take the case of little Anetta
Fachini, for example. The work she was doing when I saw her, wrapping
paper around pieces of wire, was very similar to the play of
better-favored children. As play, to be put aside whenever her childish
fancy wandered to something else, it would have been a very good thing
for little Anetta to do. She was compelled, however, to do it from early
morning till late at night and even denied the right to sleep. For her,
therefore, what might be play for some other child became the most awful
bondage and cruelty. What can four-year-old babies do? Go into the
nursery and watch the rich man’s four-year-old child, seated upon the
rug, sorting many-colored beads and fascinated by the occupation for
half an hour or so. That is play—good and wholesome for the child. In
the public kindergarten, other four-year-old children are doing the same
thing with zest and laughing delight. But go into the dim tenement
yonder; another four-year-old child is sorting beads, but not in play.
Her eyes do not sparkle with childish glee; she does not shout with
delight at finding a prize among the beads. With tragic seriousness she
picks out the beads and lays them before her mother, who is a
slipper-beader—that is, she sews the beaded designs upon ladies’ fancy
slippers. She works from morn till night, and all the while the child is
seated by her side, straining her little eyes in the dim light, sorting
the beads or stringing them on pieces of thread.
In the “Help Wanted” columns of the morning papers, advertisements
frequently appear such as the following, taken from one of the leading
New York dailies:—
WANTED.—Beaders on slippers; good pay; steady home work. M. B——,
West —— Street.
In the tenement districts women may be seen staggering along with sack
loads of slippers to be trimmed with beadwork, and children of four
years of age and upward are pressed into service to provide cheap,
dainty slippers for dainty ladies. What can four-year-old babies do? A
hundred things, when they are driven to it. “They are pulling basting
threads so that you and I may wear cheap garments; they are arranging
the petals of artificial flowers; they are sorting beads; they are
pasting boxes. They do more than that. I know of a room where a dozen or
more little children are seated on the floor, surrounded by barrels, and
in those barrels is found human hair, matted, tangled, and
blood-stained—you can imagine the condition, for it is not my hair or
yours that is cut off in the hour of death.”[129]
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