TABLE SHOWING REASONS FOR THE EMPLOYMENT OF 213 CHILDREN_The Bitter Cry of the Children

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No. of │ Occupations[F] │Reasons given which│Reasons given Other

Children │ │ indicate Primary │ than Apparent

│ │ Poverty │ Primary Poverty

───────────┼───────────────────┼───────────────────┼───────────────────

Boys, 34.│Glass factory │Wages of father 9│Parents saving 8

│ Workers.[G] │ less than $10 │ money to buy

│ │ per week │ their homes,

│ │ │ etc.

│ │Father sick or 5│Children working 2

│ │ injured │ to keep father

│ │ │ who is able to

│ │ │ work but won’t

│ │Father dead 2│

│ │Father 1│

│ │ unemployed │

│ │Father in prison 1│Not determined 6

Boys, 23.│Textile mill │Wages of father 14│Tired of school 13

│ workers. │ less than $10 │

│ │ per week │

Girls, 57.│ │Father 6│Discouraged by 6

│ │ unemployed │ being “put

│ │ │ back” at

│ │ │ school every

│ │ │ time family

│ │ │ moved

│ │Father dead 5│Parents saving 5

│ │ │ the money

│ │Father sick or 6│Because 9

│ │ injured │ companions

│ │ │ went to work

│ │Father deserted 2│To get better 4

│ │ family │ clothes

│ │Father drunkard 1│Not determined 9

Boys, 33.│Cigarette, │Father’s wage 14│Because friends 6

│ cigar, and │ less than $10 │ worked

│ tobacco │ per week │

│ workers. │ │

Girls, 22.│ │Father dead 3│Tired of school 5

│ │Father sick or 4│Parents saving 4

│ │ injured │ money

│ │Father 4│To get better 3

│ │ unemployed │ clothes

│ │Father drunkard 3│Sick while at 2

│ │ │ school

│ │ │Not determined 7

Boys, 18.│Delivery wagon 4│Wages of father 15│Couldn’t get on 6

│ boys │ less than $10 │ at school

│ │ per week │

Girls, 26.│Match packers 12│Father dead 2│To get better 4

│ │ │ clothes

│Candy factory 10│Father sick or 4│Because friends 3

│ girls │ injured │ went to work

│Wire factory 7│Father 2│Sick while at 3

│ workers │ unemployed │ school

│Rubber factory 11│Father deserted 2│Not determined 3

│ workers │ family │

Boys, 108.│ │Low wages 52│School 30

│ │ │ difficulties

Girls, 105.│ │Unemployment 13│Because friends 18

│ │ │ went to work

│ │Father’s death 12│To get better 11

│ │ │ clothes

│ │Father’s 19│To enable 17

│ │ sickness │ parents to

│ │ │ save

│ │Father’s 4│Sickness of 5

│ │ desertion of │ child while at

│ │ family │ school

│ │Father’s 4│Father’s 2

│ │ intemperance │ laziness

│ │Father in prison 1│Not determined 25

Total, 213.│ │Total, 105 = 49.30%│Total, 108 = 50.70%

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I do not offer this table as conclusive testimony upon the point under

discussion. The number of cases investigated is too small to give the

results more than suggestive value. Personally, I believe that the cases

given are fairly typical, and that is the opinion also of some of the

leading authorities upon the subject to whom I have submitted the table.

No private investigator can ever hope to investigate a sufficient number

of cases to establish anything conclusively in this connection. What is

needed most of all is a coöperative investigation under the direction of

the leading sociological students of the country until such extensive

returns are gathered as will justify more positive conclusions. In the

meantime such tables as this can at best only serve to call attention to

what _may_ be a general fact.

The table shows more than mere poverty. First of all there is the

senseless, feverish, natural ambition of the immigrant to save money, to

be rich. “Ma boy getta much mona—I get richa man,” said one of the

Italians included in the first line of the fourth column of the

foregoing table. How often I have heard that speech! Not always in the

broken music of Italian-English, but in the many-toned, curious English

of Bohemian, Lithuanian, Scandinavian, Russian, Pole, and Greek—all

drawn by the same powerful magnet of wealth—all sacrificing, ignorantly

and blindly, the lives of themselves and their children in their fevered

quest. In this, as in so many other problems of the republic, the

immigration of hundreds of thousands of people of alien races, customs,

and speech enters. Whether their admission is wise or unwise is a

subject outside the scope of this discussion, but one thing is certain,

and as vital as it is true, namely, that hospitality has its obligations

and duties. If the nation is to receive these immigrants, the nation

must accept the responsibility of protecting them and itself. It must

protect the immigrants from the dangers which their ignorance does not

permit them to see, and protect itself from having to bear in the near

future an Atlantean load; an economic burden which must come to it if

these “strangers within the gates” in their ignorance are allowed to

barter the manhood of their sons and the womanhood of their daughters

for gold.

The virtual breakdown of our school system is one of the gravest

problems indicated by the table and enforced by general observation. The

children who go to work in factories and mines because they are “tired

of school,” or “because they could not learn,” are, it is to be feared,

not always but too often, the victims of undernutrition. The school

spends all its energies in the vain attempt to educate wasting minds in

starving bodies, and then the child, already physically and mentally

ruined, goes to the mine or the factory, there to linger on as

half-starved plants in arid soil sometimes linger, or to fade away as a

summer flower fades in a day. Poverty began the ruin of the child by

denying it proper nourishment, and ignorance and greed combine to

complete the ruin by sending the child in its weakness forth to labor.

The other reasons for the employment of children shown in the table

cannot be discussed separately. The moral contagion of poverty and

ignorance, evidenced by the number of those who work, not from

necessity, but because their friends work, is not new to those who have

studied this and kindred problems. The influence of a single family in

lowering the moral and economic standards of a whole street, especially

in our smaller towns, is notorious. The pathos of the mothers of

families who are worse than widows, with their drunken, dissolute

husbands, and the tragedy of little child lives crushed by brutal,

selfish, indolent fathers who place the responsibility of maintaining

the family upon their young shoulders, are familiar phases of the

problem of child labor.

It is a solemn responsibility which the presence of this menacing evil

of child labor places upon the nation. It is not only the interests of

the children themselves that are menaced; even more important and

terrible is the thought that civilization itself is imperilled when

children are dwarfed physically, mentally, and morally by hunger, heavy

toil, and unwholesome surroundings. If one of the forts along our

far-stretching coasts were attacked by an enemy, or if a single square

mile of our immense territory were invaded, the nation would rise in

patriotic unison, and there would be no lack either of men or money for

the defence. Surely, it is not too much to hope that, before long, the

nation will realize in the destruction of its future citizens by greed

and ignorance a far more serious attack upon the republic than any that

could be made by fleets or armed legions. To sap the strength and weaken

the moral fibres of the children is to grind the seed corn, to wreck the

future for to-day’s fleeting gain.

A great Frenchman once said of the alphabet, “These twenty-six letters

contain all the good things that ever were, or ever can be, said,—only

they need to be arranged.” To complete the truth of this aphorism, he

should have included all the bad things as well. And so it is with the

children of a nation. Capable of expressing all the good or evil the

world has known or may know, it is essentially a matter of arrangement,

opportunity, environment. Whether the children of to-day become

physical, mental, and moral cretins, or strong men and women, fathers

and mothers of virile sons and daughters, depends upon the decision of

the nation. If the responsibility of this is fully recognized, and the

employment of children under fifteen years of age is forbidden

throughout the length and breadth of this great country; if the nation

realizes that the demand for the protection of the children is the

highest patriotism, and enfolds every child within its strong,

protecting arms, then and not till then will it be possible to look with

confidence toward the future, unashamed and unafraid.

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Footnote E:

“Messenger boys” includes errand boys in stores.

Footnote F:

No inquiry was made among mine workers because, on account of the

large number of boys whose fathers have been killed or permanently

disabled, the data would be less representative. (See Roberts’

_Anthracite Coal Communities_, p. 176.)

Footnote G:

Mostly foreign born or the children of foreign-born parents, Slavs and

Italians. The entire absence of reference to school matters is

suggestive. Most of them never entered a school.

REMEDIAL MEASURES

“But pity will not right the wrong,

Nor doles return the stolen youth;

When tasks are done without a song

And bargains wrung at cost of truth,

’Tis mockery to talk of ruth.”

—DAVID LOWE.

Having stated the problem of poverty, as it bears upon the child, as

plainly and comprehensively as possible, I would fain leave it without

further comment, feeling with Whewell that, “Rightly to propose a

problem is no inconsiderable step towards its solution,” and believing

that once the facts are known, and their significance understood, reform

cannot be long delayed. Beyond the measures briefly suggested in the

preceding pages, I would gladly leave the whole subject of remedial

action untouched, regarding the purpose of this book as fulfilled in the

statement of the problem itself. But when I have submitted the substance

of the evidence herein presented to those whose knowledge and experience

entitle them to be regarded as experts, or to popular audiences in the

form of lectures, they have, with scarcely an exception, expressed the

view that the statement of such a problem should be accompanied by some

suggestions as to its solution; some indication of social and individual

duty, lest the result be heaviness of heart and blackness of despair.

Whoever has seriously contemplated the misery and suffering which, like

a poisonous cloud, encompasses modern society, must have experienced

doubts and fears for the future, and, like the chastened patriarch of

Uz, felt his hope “plucked up like a tree.” So many of the beacons that

have shone out over the rough, perilous path of Humanity’s pilgrimage

have turned out to be false lights, like the swinging lantern-lights of

the old Cornubian wreckers, which lured trusting mariners to head their

vessels to destruction upon the rocks, that we sometimes lose faith and

despair of the visions of world-ecstasy, the “passionate prefigurings of

a world revivified,” with which the seers of the race have beckoned us

onward. And such despair blights and starves the soul of progress. When

men cease to yearn for, and to believe in, justice, when they no longer

aspire to social perfection, when old men cease to dream dreams, and

young men to see visions of a nobler world than this economic anarchy,

there can be no progress. Beautiful ideals seem to mock us at times, but

it is doubtful if ever a beautiful ideal found lodgment in the heart of

the humblest man without enriching the world.

If I were asked wherein the hope of the future lies, I should adopt for

answer the message of a great rock. Travelling along the Yellowstone

River, in the autumn of 1904, I saw an immense rock column, a veritable

landmark for many miles, upon which some enthusiast had painted in large

red letters, “Socialism is the Hope of the World.” Doubtless some

ranchman, dreaming of a future world-righteousness, had conceived the

idea of making that great natural obelisk a missionary for the faith he

held, just as other enthusiasts had pasted the similar legends I had

seen along the trails of the North Dakota prairies. I share that faith

and hope, and believe that nothing short of the socialization of the

means of life will ever fully and finally solve the problems inhering in

our present industrial system, resulting in strife, bitterness, and the

denial of human brotherhood. But long, weary years of suffering and

struggle stretch between the present and that ideal state of the future.

Socialism will, it is to be devoutly hoped, save the world from red ruin

and anarchy and make possible a sweeter, nobler heritage for the

generations yet unborn. But the most sanguine Socialist must see that it

is little short of mockery to talk of the future triumph of his ideal in

connection with the problem of relieving present misery and distress, to

answer the hunger-cry of to-day with the promise of a coöperative

commonwealth in far-off years. All the Socialist parties of the world,

with the exception of a few minor and unimportant factions, frankly

recognize this and have formulated programmes of palliative measures for

the amelioration of present evils. So far as I am aware, no

non-Socialist political party has ever included in its programme demands

for such measures as the abolition of child labor, the feeding of school

children by the municipality, and the maintenance of municipal

_crèches_—demands which are included in practically all Socialist

programmes. In suggesting only such remedial measures as may be taken by

society or individuals within the present social state, and involving no

fundamental change in the social structure, I do so, therefore, as one

believing in the ultimate necessity of such change, and the right of

every child born into the world to equal opportunity and equal share in

all the gifts and resources of civilization.