THE CHILD, THE STATE, AND THE NATION
It has been shown that children are working in their homes, in the
streets, in commerce, and in manufacture; and it appears that there are
divers economic and social causes for their work.
Chief among these causes of child labor is the greed of parents, due
largely but not exclusively to poverty. Two cases out of the writer’s
acquaintance may illustrate the false ideals which underlie much
parental exploitation of young children.
An Italian immigrant arrived in this country possessed of nothing
beyond his wife, little son and daughter, and railroad fare to Chicago.
In that city he rented one dark room in a tenement-house and proceeded
to pick rags in the streets. His wife sorted the rags in the court of
the tenement-house with the help of the daughter; and the boy became
a boot-black as soon as he was strong enough to make leather shine.
The children never attended school, the compulsory attendance law
being, at that time, wholly illusory. The father prospered, placed
money in the savings-bank, and in an incredibly short time began to
buy, under a third mortgage, the house in which he lived. The court
of the tenement-house becoming too small for his work, he rented a
vacant lot on which he stored rags, old iron and junk of all sorts.
He never ceased to pick rags, and transferred the labors of his wife
and daughter from their court to the new place of business which he
surrounded with a high fence. He completed the payments for all the
mortgages upon the tenement-house, continuing to the time of his death
to live, with all his family, in the dark room which he had occupied
on his arrival. He paid for the corner-lot upon which he conducted his
business and made other investments. It was his ideal to leave his
children a large fortune. But one day he trod upon a rusty nail, and
with characteristic niggardliness, bound up his bleeding foot with
one of his own rags. Lockjaw followed and he died, leaving to his now
grown up, illiterate son and daughter one hundred and forty thousand
dollars. The son, by drinking and gambling, dissipated the fortune in a
few months, and the daughter disappeared into the sad obscurity of the
Levee.
In the case of the second family, a young Bohemian, able-bodied and
eager to work, brought his bride to this country, both filled with the
hope of earning and owning a home. When the eldest child was eleven
years old, the father was killed on the railroad, where he was at work
as a section-hand, and the home, half-paid for, was lost by the widow.
But she never wavered from the early ideal, and sent her eldest boy
at once to work in a cutlery, where he riveted the wooden handles of
knives, performing an entirely mechanical task adapted to his feeble
intellect. This child was hunchbacked, feeble-minded and consumptive.
When the mother was remonstrated with for exposing him to the fatigue
and danger attending his work among wood-dust and steel-filings, her
reply was: “Him no good. Him work, send Valeria and Bocumil school, buy
house, them some good.” For years, the factory inspectors of the state,
and the local school officer, after the enactment of the compulsory
attendance law, endeavored to free the unfortunate boy from his deadly
occupation. The mother made whatever affidavits might be necessary from
time to time, to enable him to continue, and relentlessly sent his
brother and sister to work at the earliest moment possible. When last
seen, she was rising at three o’clock in the morning to dig onions for
a pickle factory in the outskirts of the city; the daughter Valeria,
ten years old, was working from dawn to dark throughout the summer,
sorting onions; the cripple was dying of overwork and neglect; and
the other boy, Bocumil, originally healthy, had become deformed from
beginning too early to carry boards on his back in a furniture factory.
The widow, however, regarded herself and was regarded by her approving
pastor as a model of thrift because she had bought and partially paid
for a tiny frame cottage, on the prairie, far from any school, in the
immediate neighborhood of the pickle-factory. She will never know that
she has lost for her children all the best things that America offers
to the immigrant child, in the life of the public schools. Fortunately,
the recently enacted stringent laws will make it impossible for other
children coming to Chicago to be deprived, by the false ideals of
their parents, of those precious possessions of child life in America,
leisure and school.
A second cause of child-labor is the greed of employers for cheap
labor, enhanced by every improvement in machinery of the kind that
makes the work of children available; and enhanced, also, by the
very cheapness of the children to such an extent as to delay the
introduction of new machinery if its installation is costly. This greed
is exhibited in its most odious form in the glass industry, the textile
industry, and the sweating-system. It knows no restraints except those
of effective legislation enforced by enlightened public opinion, as
is shown by the action of those Northern cotton mill men who obey the
laws of Massachusetts and New York in their mills in those states, but
in Georgia fall to the level of their local competitors, employing
children ten years old and less, throughout eleven hours a day.
A third cause of child labor is the greed of the community in desiring
to keep down the cost of maintenance of its dependent class. This greed
disguises itself under the form of solicitude for the moral welfare of
the children. Just as the managers of the worst so-called reformatories
insist that children must work under the contract system, “because they
must be kept busy to keep them from being bad,” so this solicitude
for childish morals insists that “children must not be habituated to
dependence,” quite forgetting that dependence is the quality bestowed
upon childhood as its distinguishing characteristic.
Any candid person, on being asked, “What virtues may be reasonably
expected of children?” must reply that we do not yet know. Our studies
of the psychology of childhood are still so imperfect and inconclusive
that it is not safe to dogmatize in this field. But by a process of
elimination it is possible to arrive at certain conclusions which seem
worth at least careful consideration.
Thus, observation of so-called self-made men suggests a serious danger
that a child precociously self-respecting in the matter of earning
his living may pay a high price, later in life, for his precocity.
It is proverbial that the employer who began life as a working boy
and through continuous exertions rose to power and responsibility,
is apt to be a ruthless employer. The unnatural strain of his own
early experience seems to entail this penalty upon his character
and consequently upon his unhappy employees. Self-respect due to
self-maintenance seems to be a virtue suitable to the later years of
adolescence and to adult life,--never to childhood. Moral precocity
seems to be quite generally followed by exhaustion or by reaction
taking the form of greed, rapacity and calculating self-seeking.
Just as excessive fatigue, or habitual loss of sleep in childhood is
punished in later life by the craving for stimulants, and by nervous
insufficiency manifesting itself in the most diverse ways,--so the
burden of industrial employment borne in early, tender years, disables
the boy or girl for enlightened, self-supporting citizenship in later
life.
To impute a virtue not normal to childhood and then insist that the
children shall live up to adult standards applied to that virtue, is
perverted, and injurious alike to the community which follows this
course and to the children who suffer under it. If the burden of
self-maintenance or the attempted maintenance of others is placed upon
young children,--if child labor is tolerated,--the ethical standards of
the community are bad. For a task which is normal and right for adults
cannot be performed by children without sacrificing in the process
their future usefulness to the Republic.
The insistent plea that children must work in order that they may
acquire habits of thrift and attain prosperity for themselves and
their families is uttered with greatest persistence by the employers
who profit by the labor of the children. It is the glass manufacturers
who voice this tender solicitude for the moral well-being of the
wage-earning children in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, when there is a
growing movement in those states for prohibiting night work, as it has
been prohibited in Illinois. In the South, it is the cotton-mill owners
and their legal advisers who insist that little children from the
mountain farms must toil eleven hours a day in the mills of Georgia,
working throughout the night whenever it may be useful to their
employers to have them do so.
These pleas are heard with willing ears by communities which begrudge
money for the maintenance of schools and the assistance of dependent
widows and orphans; and not without good reason. No sooner had the
new law of New Jersey required children to attend school to the
fourteenth birthday, and prohibited boys under that age from working
in manufacture, than it became necessary to build a new schoolhouse
in a suburb of Millville, to accommodate the boys turned out of the
glassworks. In Alton the enforcement of the child labor law of 1893 led
to the immediate construction of a new schoolhouse for the children
freed from the glassworks, and to the reopening of a building which
had long been out of use. Wherever children are freed from work, the
community must provide for them schools, teachers, attendance agents,
factory inspectors and all those officials and provisions which are
essential to the care and defense of childhood under the pressure of
the competitive system.
Besides being essentially immoral, the effort to burden young children
with the task of self-maintenance is doomed to failure, for under
existing conditions a child does not, and cannot achieve complete
self-maintenance. The three great series of industries in which
children are largely employed,--the textiles, glass-making and the
needle-trades,--are parasite trades. They are all protected by tariffs
for the advantage of the employers;--and by more or less stringent
trade regulations for the advantage of the adult male employees. In
the case of the needle-trades, there are lavish subsidies from the
public treasury of New York City, the great center of the needle-trades
for the western hemisphere. By the help of these subsidies, sewing
is done by the inmates of institutions erroneously called private,
while maintained by the taxes of the community, at rates with which
no private manufacturer can long compete. But more insidious than
all these contributions to the parasite industries is the steady
contribution of underpaid work from children who carry home wages too
small to support them.
Parents become willing to exert themselves less when the eldest boy
and girl begin to contribute something towards the family maintenance,
and are not strenuous in the demand that the child’s wage shall afford
self-support. “Every little helps,” is the hand-to-mouth consideration
with which the hard-worked immigrant withdraws his son or daughter from
school on the first day that the law allows.
The unthinking community tends to approve every exertion in the
direction of money earning on the part of those who are most nearly at
the line of submergence, asking no questions as to the ultimate effect
upon the future citizen.
The oncoming generation neither knows nor cares what burden of
incapacitated members the present generation is preparing for it. But
the burden will have to be borne, just in proportion as the children
of to-day are deprived of the right to childhood. And nothing is
more surely handed down than the callous indifference of the mass of
the people to the _causes_ of that destitution which is an intrinsic
part of the life of every manufacturing community;--as, for instance,
the death or disability of the breadwinner, or the widespread and
ever-increasing custom of desertion by the fathers of burdensome young
children.
Thus the essentially immoral effort to place upon the children the
burden of self-maintenance not only fails at the moment,--it reacts
injuriously upon the community, preparing for the next generation an
undue share of incapacitated members, bequeathing to the future a large
proportion of unfit and incapable citizens, and finally generating,
among the people at large, indifference to the causes of death or
disability of the breadwinner.
On the other hand, with the growing recognition of the right of the
child to maintenance and education throughout a prolonged period, goes
a lively interest in the health and welfare and probity of the normal
breadwinner, who is theoretically responsible for its support.
In other words, while the demand for child labor is an economic one,
the causes of its persistence are moral and social and are rooted
in the false ideals of parents, employers, taxpayers, and all those
indifferent people who care nothing what citizens are being trained for
the future life of the Republic.
=Consequences of Recognition of the Child’s Right to Exemption from
Work.=--Wherever the community recognizes the right of the children
to freedom from labor, the question of maintenance comes to the front
and the widows and dependent orphans loom large in the imagination of
the kindly. On the other hand, where the effort is made to place the
burden of maintenance upon young children, the loss of the breadwinner
appears of less vital importance to the community. Tuberculosis,
carrying off heads of families, burdens the manufacturing communities
of the United States annually with thousands of widows and orphans.
Preventable deaths of breadwinners in the railway service burden in the
same way the communities in which their families live. If now, these
communities face the task of cherishing the children and educating
them throughout childhood to full fitness for citizenship, the problem
of orphanage relates itself, in a new and vital way, to the question
of the prevention of needless deaths of men in the prime of life.
Orphanage becomes recognized, not as an accident or an inevitable
misfortune for the individual family, to be borne with what fortitude
can be summoned; but as a social and industrial phenomenon, a burden
to be minimized by preventive and precautionary measures. It is not
accidental that Massachusetts, the state which has longest guarded the
right to childhood, is also the state in which the safety of life and
limb of the adult worker is best safeguarded by statutory provision.
The enforcement by the Interstate Commerce Commission of statutes
providing for life-saving devices to be used upon railways, has
undoubtedly diminished the preventable deaths of breadwinners, reduced
the number of orphans, limited the temptation to exploit young
children, and thus reacted in an important way to the ethical gain of
the nation, quite aside from its direct value to the railway employees.
When young children are made ineligible as breadwinners, the
responsibility is placed where it belongs, upon their parents or upon
the community. And there is nothing more moralizing going on at
present in the United States than this shifting of responsibility from
the weaker to the stronger.
Hand in hand with restriction upon the work of little children goes
increased care to prevent the importation into the state of dependent
and delinquent boys and girls. Thus, for instance, Illinois and
Michigan have now rigid statutes prohibiting bringing into those
states any child whose future maintenance is not provided for either
by the presence of an accompanying parent or guardian, or by a bond
furnished by an incorporated society for the care and guardianship
of the child. Recent revelations of the importation of boys from one
state into another, for the use of glass manufacturers, show an urgent
need for similar care on the part of all states in which this industry
flourishes. Just as the textile mills, in the days of Sir Robert Peel’s
act, sought apprentices among the little children in the workhouses
of England, so the glass manufacturers, to-day, seek orphans and
other detached boys from poorhouses and voluntary charitable bodies;
and the traffic in such boys goes forward where it is not checked by
legislation and by the coöperation of labor organizations and child
labor committees working together.
When the orphans are scrutinized and provided for, it becomes clear
that the problem of child labor is really not the problem of the
orphan. It is the problem of cheap hands for the employer of cheap
labor;--the problem of permitting to selfish parents the luxury of
absorbing the premature earnings of young children. But it is the
pride of the enlightened employer that he supplants human labor with
mechanical devices as rapidly as ingenuity enables him to do this;
and every restriction upon the supply of children in the labor market
stimulates this process.
It is clearly the duty of the parent to support his children; that is
his obligation to the Republic. He must insist upon wages sufficient
to enable him to do this; and the withdrawal of thousands of young
children from competition with adults contributes to his ability to
make his own terms for wages wherewith to support his own. An aged
Welsh miner, of the writer’s acquaintance, who had emigrated to
Illinois, once related upon the floor of the state legislature, of
which he was a member, his own experience in this respect. In Wales,
he and his wife and two little sons had all worked underground, making
the barest living. It was proposed to prohibit the work of women and
children underground and he was filled with consternation lest they
all starve. But the law was passed, the wife and children, instead of
mining coal, lived above ground, the children attending school and the
wife cultivating a garden; and within twelve months the father of the
family was earning more than all four persons had previously earned by
their combined labor. So convinced was the speaker that his experience
was typical of the depressing effect of the work of women and children
in unsuitable occupations, that he convinced his colleagues, who passed
unanimously the pending child labor bill.
The practical value, to the state and to the children, of effective
child labor legislation is well illustrated by a comparison of the
employment of children in New York, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.
When rated according to their population and the value of their
manufactured products, the two leading states are New York and
Pennsylvania, the former excelling in both respects according to the
census of 1900. In the number of children under the age of sixteen
years engaged in manufacture, these states excel all the others, as
appears from the following table of states having more than five
thousand such children.
CHILDREN UNDER 16 YEARS OF AGE ENGAGED IN MANUFACTURE[3]
Pennsylvania 33,135
New York 13,189
Massachusetts 12,556
Illinois 10,419
North Carolina 10,377
South Carolina 8,560
New Jersey 8,042
Georgia 6,373
Maryland 5,884
Wisconsin 5,679
Rhode Island 5,036
In this table, however, it is Pennsylvania which comes first and New
York which takes second place, there being 33,135 children under
the age of sixteen years engaged in manufacture in Pennsylvania,
compared with 13,189 children under that age in the state of New York,
a difference of 19,946. This does not include children engaged in
commerce and mining;--does not take into account mine boys or breaker
boys, office boys, newsboys, bootblacks, peddlers, delivery boys, cash
children, or children who work out of school hours while regularly
attending school. It is strictly a statement of the children employed
in manufacture in both states.
The astonishing excess of children employed in Pennsylvania is
emphasized by the circumstance that New York has not only a larger
population but a larger total value of manufactured goods than
Pennsylvania. How then is the fact to be explained that Pennsylvania
employs in manufacture two and one-half times as many children as New
York?
One explanation may be found in certain differences in the child labor
laws in force in the two states for several years preceding 1900. Thus
in Pennsylvania children entered upon factory work a year earlier
than they had been permitted to do in New York since 1889, the age
for beginning work having been, until May, 1905, thirteen years in
Pennsylvania and fourteen years in New York.
In Pennsylvania, a child was not, before 1900, required to be able to
read and write before beginning to work in a factory. In New York,
since 1893, a child under sixteen years of age must be able to read
fluently and write legibly simple sentences in the English language
before it can legally enter a factory.
In New York a minor under the age of sixteen years cannot legally be
employed in a factory after nine o’clock at night; in Pennsylvania,
boys and girls alike could, until May, 1905, at the age of thirteen
years be employed ten hours six nights in the week. Even yet, boys of
fourteen years may be employed all night in the glass industry and in
certain other branches.
There was greater difficulty in New York in obtaining the certificates
required to be filed with the employer before a child may legally begin
to work. In Pennsylvania, the parent was required merely to make oath
as to the age of the child before any notary, and, until May, 1905,
the affidavit thus made protected the employer against prosecution for
violation of the child labor law, while the parent was nominally liable
to the charge of perjury if the age of the child was falsely stated.
In New York, since 1896, the affidavit of the parent is only one of
three assurances of the child’s age and qualifications which must
be included in the certificate deposited with the manufacturer. The
parental oath must be supplemented by the written statement of the
teacher that the child has regularly attended a school in which
instruction is given in reading, writing, arithmetic, geography and
English grammar; and this must be farther strengthened by the statement
of the officer of the board of health, who alone can issue the
certificate, that he is satisfied that the child is fourteen years of
age.
This provision, in force from 1896 to 1903, has now been supplanted
by a more drastic one. In the years 1896-1900, however, the threefold
requirement probably contributed to keep down the number of working
children in New York compared with the lax issuance of affidavits
by notaries in Pennsylvania, with no other check than the fear of a
remotely possible prosecution of the parent on the charge of perjury.
Briefly stated, the differences appear to be these. In Pennsylvania, a
child of thirteen years could, until May, 1905, work in a mill at night
without breaking the law. In New York, a child may not begin to work
under the age of fourteen years; an illiterate child may not work under
the age of sixteen years; and a minor under eighteen years may not work
after nine o’clock at night in manufacture. Moreover, the factory law
is better reënforced by the compulsory education law in New York than
in Pennsylvania.
In New York for several years preceding the census year, 1900, children
between the ages of twelve and fourteen years were required to attend
school 80 days in the year. The Board of Health of New York City
refused to issue certificates to such as had failed to complete the 80
days’ attendance in the year preceding the fourteenth birthday, sending
such children back to school to finish the uncompleted term.
In Pennsylvania, children were, in the same years before 1900, merely
required to attend school 70 per cent. of the school term in the
district in which they resided.
The results of these differences in the child labor law and the
compulsory education law are reflected in two other tables of the
Census of 1900 (printed elsewhere in this chapter) according to which
New York had 4,740 illiterate children between the ages of ten and
fourteen years, compared with 6,326 such children in Pennsylvania;
and New York ranks fourteen in the scale of fifty-two states and
territories when measured by the percentage of children between these
ages who are able to read and write, while Pennsylvania is number
twenty in the same scale.
The statistics of these two leading manufacturing states are discussed
thus in detail because they indicate both the need of farther
legislative protection for the children, and the gain which has
already been made in New York by the long enforcement of the imperfect
provisions of the earlier laws. For ten years, beginning in 1893, New
York is believed to have been the only state which required children
under the age of sixteen years to be able to read fluently and write
legibly simple sentences in the English language before permitting them
to begin to work for wages. The practical working of this provision was
illustrated when the first suit under it was brought against a clothing
contractor in New York City who had violated the law by employing a
Russian girl fifteen years of age who could neither read nor write in
any language. Six weeks elapsed after the arrest of the employer and
the dismissal of the child from work, before the case came up for trial
before the magistrate. The judge dictated to the girl: “This house is
built of bricks,” by way of a simple sentence to be written legibly.
The child promptly wrote: “This hous is bilt of briks,” and the case
was dismissed. The inspector, angry at losing his case, and puzzled at
the child’s speedy acquisition of the English language in words of one
syllable, made some investigation of the circumstances and learned
that, on the day following the girl’s dismissal from employment, she
had entered the public school, attending both the day and evening
sessions. She had also attended two different Sunday schools, one in
the morning and one in the afternoon, and had taken books from the
library. Thus, in the space of six weeks, by specializing strictly
upon learning English, she had saved her employer a heavy fine, and
had prepared herself to resume her work in his shop according to the
requirement of the law.
Recently the new statutes which require more educational preparation
for work, prescribing that every boy must attend day school until the
work of the fifth year of the public school is finished and night
school to the sixteenth birthday or the completion of the work of the
eighth year, have brought to light several instances of the padrone
system within the families of immigrants.
A man and his wife imported a sister aged fifteen years from Italy
for the purpose of securing for the wholly illiterate girl immediate
work in a silk-mill. When it became clear that the child would not be
ready to comply with the new educational requirements within a year the
intention of the relatives was betrayed by their cruel treatment of the
dependent girl.
There could scarcely be more undesirable immigrants than half-grown,
illiterate children brought into the congested manufacturing centers
by their sordid relatives for the express purpose of crowding into
factories and sweat-shops. It is a most valuable function of child
labor legislation to discourage the immigration of families coming
to this country for the purpose of exploiting their children in the
textile mills, the street trades and other undesirable occupations.
However welcome immigration may be to the employers and the
transportation companies, it is a valuable addition to the national
life only so far as the immigrant children can be made into trustworthy
American citizens. To check that form of the padrone system which
consists in bringing young sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law to this
country for the purpose of sending them into silk-mills, or hiring them
out to master boot-blacks under the pretense that they are dependent
orphans, is one of the beneficent functions of compulsory education
laws and child labor laws,--though of course a merely incidental
feature of such legislation. The correspondence between the Italian
and Russian colonies in America, and the relatives remaining in the
old country, is so continuous, that the new educational requirements
of the State of New York will be well known on the other side of the
ocean within a year and may well be regarded as one of the wisest
forms of restriction upon undesirable immigration. The state of New
York welcomes immigration on the largest scale that the world has ever
beheld. But it humanely insists that the immigrant must meet the terms
prescribed by the state, which include maintaining his children until
they can read and write English, even though that keep them at school
and away from work until the sixteenth birthday.
The same general result was observed in Chicago, in the fall of 1903,
after the enactment of a similar provision in Illinois. A professional
beggar was seen taking his children to school. A friendly visitor who
had labored in vain for seven years to induce him to let them go to
school, was greatly interested in the change and, on inquiring about
it, was told by the beggar that the children would soon be old enough
to go to work, but would not be granted the necessary papers unless
they had proper certificates of school attendance. The statute thus
reënforces the parental sense of duty when that is under the heaviest
pressure of temptation to exploit young children, in a strange land, in
dire poverty, in the helplessness of illiterate adults out of work and
in need of reënforcement of all kinds.
A comparison of the status of child labor in Massachusetts and in
Pennsylvania confirms the opinion that legislation has long been
gradually benefiting both the children and the community just in
proportion as it has been effectively stringent. It is not accidental
that Massachusetts had in 1900 12,556 children in her mills compared
with 33,135 in Pennsylvania. The textile industry in both states calls
for children. In Massachusetts, the public conscience has registered
gradually throughout a series of years, and the restraints imposed by
frequently amended legislation have kept the number of working children
from growing rapidly. In Pennsylvania there were, until May, 1905, only
the most meager changes in the factory law since its enactment in 1889.
In Massachusetts, a child cannot legally work in a mill under the age
of fourteen years. In Pennsylvania, it could, until May, 1905, legally
enter a mill on the thirteenth birthday, and defects in the wording
of the law facilitated perjury to such an extent that children were
found in textile mills and tobacco factories at the age of ten years.
In Massachusetts, a woman or minor under eighteen years of age cannot
legally work in a mill after ten o’clock at night; but in Pennsylvania
whosoever could work at all, could work all night, little girls only
thirteen years of age included. In this respect Pennsylvania compared
unfavorably, as has been pointed out, with Alabama, whose new law
restricts to eight hours at night the work of children between the
ages of thirteen and sixteen years. It is not generally known that
there was a serious danger to little girls arising from the custom,
which prevailed in some Pennsylvania mills where night-work was done,
of turning the children out into the dark, at midnight during the
warm weather, just as employees are expected to go forth at noon when
working on the day shift. The associations of such little girls, at
such hours, in such surroundings, are a fit subject, not only for
painful contemplation, but for the most vigorous action of all persons
interested in the prevention of one of the direst forms of cruelty to
children.
Undeterred by the competition of textile mills in less progressive
states, as, for instance, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, Massachusetts
excelled all rivals in her statutory care for children employed
in manufacture, from 1874 to 1903. In the latter year New York
and Illinois enacted laws which went beyond the provisions of
Massachusetts, both in the educational requirements exacted of children
before going to work, and in the hours of their labor.
In 1904, Governor Bates appointed a Committee on the Relations of
Employer and Employee, consisting of Carroll D. Wright, United States
Commissioner of Labor, Davis R. Dewey, of the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, Henry Sterling, Royal Robbins and William N. Osgood.
These gentlemen embodied in their report, dated January 13, 1904, a
series of recommendations with regard to the employment of children
which, if enacted into law, would still leave Massachusetts fourth
in rank among the states when ranged according to the length of the
working day permitted to children under the age of sixteen years.
They say: “From such inquiries as we have been able to make we do
not believe that the manufacturing interests of the state would be
seriously affected by the extended prohibition of night labor after 7
P. M. to all children under sixteen years of age.... The arguments in
favor of shutting children out from night-work are so obvious that they
do not need extended discussion, nor does it appear that one kind of
employment should be favored as against another. The physical and moral
advantages to be gained by exclusion from night-work are common to all
children. We therefore recommend that no children under sixteen years
be permitted to engage in any gainful occupation between 7 o’clock in
the evening and 6 o’clock in the morning.”
The extended restriction of the hours of young mercantile employees to
58 in one week during the month of December became law in 1904, but
children may still be employed in stores and mills to ten o’clock at
night provided they do not work more than 58 hours in the week.
The significant point is that the Committee[4] does not recommend that
the hours of labor of children be at once reduced to eight in one day
as in Illinois, or to nine in one day as in New York and Delaware,
or to fifty-five in one week as in New Jersey. On the contrary, the
Committee said: “Inasmuch as the labor of children in some industries
interlocks with the labor of adults who now work ten hours per day, we
fear that such restriction would practically result in the discharge of
children from employment. Such an outcome would be unfortunate, unless
children were forced to attend school by a change in the compulsory
school law already referred to. We therefore do not favor consideration
of legislation further limiting the number of hours of labor until that
question is reported upon by the State Board of Education.”
It is never to be forgotten that, hitherto, Massachusetts has
fearlessly gone forward in her course of educating and protecting her
children regardless of the action of other states and their competing
interests. Neither, however, is it to be forgotten that there are now
more spindles in the cotton industry south of Mason and Dixon’s line
than north of that line; and that the pressure of Southern competition
renders it increasingly difficult to maintain the position already
achieved by Massachusetts. The enforcement of existing requirements
becomes more burdensome as the reductions in wages of adults incite
parents to perjured affidavits stating that children are older than
they really are, in order to add the child’s wage to the decreasing
family income, and the force of the statute is thus undermined.
=Inter-State Aspect of the Right to Childhood.=--Hitherto the right
to childhood has been considered in the light of the experience of
children in certain occupations, and in the light of the legislative
provisions of certain states for protecting children from too early
toil. The broader question, what the people of this nation as a whole
are doing to assure to the Republic, a generation hence, an intelligent
citizenship, has scarcely been formulated. The question is, however,
compendiously answered by two tables of the United States Census
of 1900, which have not yet received that general and widespread
discussion which their significance renders imperative.
The first table shows the percentage of children between the ages of
ten and fourteen years who were able to read and write, in 1890 and
in 1900. Except Nevada, whose Indian children were first included in
1900, all the states have been reducing the percentage of illiteracy.
The figures upon which the percentages are based are given in a second
table, wherein the states are twice arranged, once alphabetically and
again in the order of the ability of the children to read and write,
those states being grouped at the top which have the least number of
illiterate children and those states grouped at the bottom which have
the largest number of illiterate children.
PER CENT. ABLE TO READ AND WRITE AMONG PERSONS 10 TO 14 YEARS OF AGE
_1900_ _1890_
1. Nebraska 99.66 Iowa 99.23
2. Iowa 99.63 Massachusetts 99.17
3. Oregon 99.58 Ohio 98.92
4. Ohio 99.51 Kansas 98.86
5. Kansas 99.48 Connecticut 98.79
6. Indiana 99.45 Illinois 98.75
7. Connecticut 99.43 Nebraska 98.75
8. Utah 99.34 New York 98.62
9. Massachusetts 99.33 Wisconsin 98.35
10. Michigan 99.30 Minnesota 98.21
11. Washington 99.30 Oregon 98.20
12. Minnesota 99.29 Michigan 98.17
13. Wisconsin 99.27 Indiana 98.00
14. New York 99.26 California 97.93
15. Illinois 99.18 New Jersey 97.86
16. Wyoming 99.08 Pennsylvania 97.82
17. Vermont 99.05 Washington 97.75
18. South Dakota 99.00 Maine 97.57
19. California 98.99 Vermont 97.57
20. Pennsylvania 98.99 South Dakota 97.55
21. New Jersey 98.81 Colorado 97.21
22. Idaho 98.77 New Hampshire 96.63
23. Colorado 98.48 Montana 96.47
24. New Hampshire 98.31 Utah 96.24
25. Dist. of Columbia 98.25 Wyoming 96.23
26. Rhode Island 98.12 Idaho 96.18
27. Montana 98.07 Rhode Island 96.03
28. Maine 97.92 North Dakota 95.58
29. North Dakota 97.65 Dist. of Columbia 94.61
30. Oklahoma 97.26 Missouri 94.48
31. Missouri 96.64 Nevada 92.83
32. Delaware 95.49 Oklahoma 91.81
33. Maryland 95.36 Delaware 90.96
34. West Virginia 94.74 Maryland 90.54
35. Nevada 91.88 West Virginia 89.16
36. Kentucky 91.56 Texas 85.55
37. Texas 90.74 Kentucky 85.17
38. Florida 86.24 Florida 82.43
39. Tennessee 85.08 Tennessee 80.94
40. Virginia 84.33 Arizona 79.62
41. Arkansas 83.80 Arkansas 77.89
42. New Mexico 80.07 Virginia 77.32
43. North Carolina 78.25 Mississippi 73.47
44. Arizona 77.79 New Mexico 72.04
45. Mississippi 77.62 North Carolina 69.38
46. Georgia 77.21 Georgia 66.73
47. Indian Territory 75.61 Alabama 64.50
48. Alabama 71.11 South Carolina 61.03
49. South Carolina 70.44 Louisiana 57.26
50. Louisiana 67.12
CENSUS 1900
(Population, Vol. II, Part II, Table 65--pp. 422)
ILLITERATE CHILDREN BETWEEN THE AGES OF 10 AND 14 YEARS IN EACH STATE
Alabama 66,072 1. Wyoming 72
Alaska 1,903 2. Oregon 175
Arizona 2,592 3. Idaho 209
Arkansas 26,972 4. Utah 220
California 1,279 5. Nevada 275
Colorado 742 6. Vermont 287
Connecticut 435 7. Washington 340
Delaware 845 8. Montana 374
Dist. of Columbia 398 9. Hawaii 394
Florida 8,389 10. Dist. of Columbia 398
Georgia 63,329 11. Nebraska 412
Hawaii 394 12. Connecticut 436
Idaho 209 13. South Dakota 472
----------------------------
Illinois 4,044 14. New Hampshire 557
Indiana 1,453 15. Rhode Island 691
Indian Territory 12,172 16. Colorado 742
Iowa 883 17. North Dakota 836
Kansas 878 18. Delaware 845
Kentucky 21,247 19. Kansas 878
Louisiana 55,691 20. Iowa 883
Maine 1,255 21. Maine 1,255
Maryland 5,859 22. California 1,279
Massachusetts 1,547 23. Oklahoma 1,295
Michigan 1,744 24. Minnesota 1,365
Minnesota 1,365 25. Indiana 1,453
Mississippi 44,334 26. =Massachusetts= =1,547=
----------------------------
Missouri 11,660 27. Wisconsin 1,688
Montana 374 28. Michigan 1,744
Nebraska 412 29. Alaska 1,903
Nevada 275 30. =Ohio= =2,048=
New Hampshire 557 31. =New Jersey= =2,069=
New Jersey 2,069 32. Arizona 2,592
New Mexico 4,354 33. =Illinois= =4,044=
New York 4,740 34. New Mexico 4,354
North Carolina 51,190 35. =New York= =4,740=
North Dakota 836 36. West Virginia 5,819
Ohio 2,048 37. Maryland 5,859
Oklahoma 1,295 38. =Pennsylvania= =6,326=
Oregon 175 39. Florida 8,389
----------------------------
Pennsylvania 6,326 40. Missouri 11,660
Rhode Island 691 41. Indian Territory 12,172
South Carolina 51,536 42. Kentucky 21,247
South Dakota 472 43. Arkansas 26,972
Tennessee 36,375 44. Virginia 34,612
Texas 35,491 45. Texas 35,491
Utah 220 46. Tennessee 36,375
Vermont 287 47. Mississippi 44,334
Virginia 34,612 48. North Carolina 51,190
Washington 340 49. South Carolina 51,536
West Virginia 5,819 50. Louisiana 55,691
Wisconsin 1,688 51. Georgia 63,329
Wyoming 72 52. Alabama 66,072
----- ----------------------------
United States 579,947 United States 579,947
The vitally significant fact revealed by the first table is the fall in
the scale, between 1890 and 1900, of the six great industrial states
when measured by the percentage of literacy of their children between
the ages of ten and fourteen years.
When measured by the value of their manufactures, New York,
Pennsylvania, Illinois, Massachusetts, Ohio, and New Jersey stand at
the head of the scale of the states in the order in which they are here
printed. When measured by the percentage of their children between
the ages of ten and fourteen years able to read and write, in 1900,
these states rank altogether differently. Thus New York, instead of
being first is fourteenth; Pennsylvania, instead of being second,
is twentieth; Illinois, instead of being third, is fifteenth; the
other three are Massachusetts, ninth; Ohio, fourth; and New Jersey,
twenty-first. Nor is their position in this scale either stable or
improving. On the contrary, all the six great states fell from a
better relative position during the ten years from 1890 to 1900. In
1890, New York occupied the eighth place, Pennsylvania the sixteenth,
Illinois the fifth, Massachusetts the second, Ohio the third, and New
Jersey the fifteenth. All alike have fallen relatively to the western
states (Nebraska, Oregon, Indiana, Utah and Washington), which have
correspondingly risen.
Pennsylvania and New Jersey seem to have competed for the place of
dishonor at the foot of the list of the six great industrial states.
Pennsylvania occupied that position in 1890, being then sixteenth in
the scale of all the states, and sixth and last of the great industrial
states. In 1900, New Jersey had sunk from the fifteenth to the
twenty-first place, and now ranks one point below Pennsylvania, when
measured by the percentage of her children between the ages of ten and
fourteen years of age who are able to read and write.
The relative fall of Massachusetts from the second to the ninth place
in the scale may be due to several causes. The influx of French
Canadian, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, and Syrian children of the
ages between ten and fourteen years is large, and would doubtless
continue to depress the position of Massachusetts in the table under
consideration. Moreover, Massachusetts was slow to raise the legal age
for beginning to work to fourteen years, and to make attendance at
school compulsory throughout the full school year to the fourteenth
birthday. Not until 1905 did Massachusetts prohibit the employment of
illiterate children before the sixteenth birthday.
Discouraging is the position in the first table of the four great
Southern cotton manufacturing states in which large numbers of young
children are employed in manufacture. In none of the four are eighty
per cent. of the children between ten and fourteen years of age able to
read and write. Of the four, North Carolina stands highest, as number
forty-three in the scale; followed by Georgia, forty-six; Alabama,
forty-eight, and South Carolina, forty-nine. Lowest in the scale is
Louisiana, fifty. Only one of them has risen. North Carolina, which
stood forty-five in 1890, stands forty-three in 1900.
An interesting ray of light upon the child-labor problem shines from
the first table. The six great industrial states whose descent in the
scale it registers, are exceptionally wealthy and progressive in all
other respects, but they are the chosen home of child labor on a large
scale.
The first table thus confirms the opinion that child-labor and
illiteracy are coextensive, and that all these factors, far from
being local and to be dealt with by a small group of Southern states,
form a great and growing series of national problems. The four great
manufacturing states of the South stand at the foot of the scale
of states when graded according to the ability of children between
the ages of ten and fourteen years to read and write; and the six
great industrial states of the North are falling in that scale,
simultaneously and conspicuously. Surely there is need of organized
effort, national in scope, to ascertain the cause of so sinister a
phenomenon, and to remove that cause with the least possible loss of
time.
In the second table there are many significant points, one being
the position of the six leading manufacturing states, New York,
Pennsylvania, Illinois, Massachusetts, Ohio and New Jersey, all nearer
the bottom of the scale than the top, with the single exception of
Massachusetts which is twenty-sixth in the scale of fifty-two. The
other five are all in the third group, ranking as follows: Ohio,
thirty; New Jersey, thirty-one; Illinois thirty-three; New York,
thirty-five; and Pennsylvania, thirty-eight.
When placed according to the actual number of her illiterate children,
Pennsylvania stands lowest among the six leading manufacturing states
and ranks with the states of the South, coming after Maryland and West
Virginia and next above Florida.
Taken together, the six leading manufacturing states had, in 1900,
20,774 illiterate children between the ages of ten and fourteen years,
distributed as follows:
Massachusetts 1,547
Ohio 2,048
New Jersey 2,069
Illinois 4,044
New York 4,740
Pennsylvania 6,326
------
Total 20,774
It is, of course, to be observed that the six leading manufacturing
states receive a vast immigrant population. One conclusion derivable
from the table seems, therefore, to be this: that since these states
attract immigrants whose children tend to remain illiterate, it is
necessary to take energetic measures for dealing with those children;
such, for instance, as the requirement that they must learn to read and
write English before leaving school to begin to work. It is conceivable
that such a requirement, universally and effectively enforced, might
permanently remove one incentive to immigration on the part of the
least desirable immigrants--_i. e._, the hope for wages to be earned by
illiterate young children.
In this table, as in the percentage table, it is the great cotton
states of the South which constitute the foot of the scale, North and
South Carolina, Louisiana, Georgia and Alabama.
The more closely the two lower groups of states are scrutinized, the
clearer the inference becomes that the problem of child labor and child
illiteracy are twin problems, and that together they demand for their
solution no mere sectional effort, but the vigorous determination of
the whole people that the years of childhood shall be held sacred to
the work of education, free from the burden of wage-earning.
The states which stand at the foot of the scale in both tables are
Arkansas, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Mississippi, Louisiana,
Georgia and Alabama. These states have no compulsory education laws.
They are the states which are commonly designated as the “New South”
in discussions of industrial development, particularly in the cotton
industry. In them manufacture increases by leaps and bounds while
legislation lags behind. As has been pointed out, Georgia deliberately
voted at two sessions of the legislature of 1903 to adopt a position
ethically lower than that of England at the time of the enactment of
Sir Robert’s Peel’s act, in 1802. The new laws of North and South
Carolina, Alabama and Virginia approximate closely to the factory
acts of England in 1842, except that the English laws provided for
factory inspectors, which the Southern states have not yet done. It
is with the competition of such communities that Massachusetts has
to do when her Committee on the Relations of Employer and Employee
recommend the consideration of the feasibility of raising the age for
compulsory school attendance to fifteen years, and defer recommending
any shortening of the hours of labor of children beyond the limit of
fifty-eight hours in one week. In view of facts like these, the child
labor problem can never again be regarded as a local problem. It is the
problem of the nation as a whole.
The foregoing somewhat desultory observations upon the effort made to
establish the right to childhood, reveal how far the whole still falls
short of any clear policy of cherishing all future citizens as such in
the interest of the Republic.
All legislation thus far has been a series of compromises achieved by
stirrings of the public conscience concerning some one enormity here
and there. On one side the demands of employers for cheap labor are
reënforced by the pressing poverty of parents; and on the other, there
has until recently been only the inarticulate child, not always even
aware of the injury he was suffering. Then came the trade union eager
to be rid of the child in industry, perhaps for the child’s good,
perhaps in the interest of better wages for the adult competitors. Only
sadly recently has the philanthropist come forward as a person to be
reckoned with, and last of all, the purchaser of the product, demanding
the privilege of buying with a clear conscience the goods for which he
pays.
The resultant patchwork quilt of statutes leaves the children
unprotected, as has been shown, in many places, and is nowhere adequate
to the needs of the children and the rapid development of industry. It
is the purpose of the following pages to suggest what seems reasonable
to strive for during the decade 1900-1910.
=Legislation Needed in the Near Future.=--First of all desiderata
is uniformity among the states on the basis of the best which has
yet been achieved in the most enlightened communities. For lack of
uniformity, progress has been hindered in many states, notably in
the glass industry which, during 1904, successfully represented to
the legislature of New Jersey that, if deprived of the privilege of
employing boys under the age of sixteen years at night, it would
migrate to Delaware and West Virginia, where no such restrictions yet
await it.
In the interest of uniformity, it seems most practicable to adopt as
the minimum age for beginning work, the fourteenth birthday, while
endeavoring to bring to this minimum all the children now engaged in
street occupations, hitherto exempt from restrictions in nearly all
states; and endeavoring, also, to bring to this minimum the statutes
of those states which, as yet, prescribe no minimum age (Georgia),
or a minimum age of ten years (Nebraska), or twelve years (Alabama,
Louisiana, Maine, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Texas,
and Virginia), or thirteen years (Rhode Island).
No one acquainted with the diminutive stature of city children of the
working class at fourteen years of age, can regard the adoption of
this standard minimum age for beginning work as final. It is merely
the best attainable for the present and the immediate future, in the
evolution of child labor legislation.
In the century since the movement for child labor laws began with Sir
Robert Peel’s act, in 1802, effort has been devoted chiefly to placing
about the labor of children restrictions based upon age or school
attendance; and these have been found unsatisfactory by reason of the
willingness of parents to perjure themselves. It is the tendency of the
present to consider the fitness of the child itself for the prospective
occupation. Under the present statute of New York, for instance, a
child must be “of normal development and in sound health” before
receiving the certificate of the local board of health without which it
cannot legally begin to work.
As has been shown, effective legislation involves the child, the
parent, the employer, the officials charged with the duty of enforcing
the statutes, and the community which enacts the laws, provides the
schools for the children when these are prohibited from working,
supports and authorizes the officers who enforce the laws, prescribes
penalties for their violation and assists dependent families in which
children are below the legal age for work. In the long run, the
effectiveness of the laws depends upon the conscience of the community
as a whole far more than upon the parents and the employer taken
together.
With the foregoing reservations and qualifications duly recognized,
the following schedules are believed to outline the substance of the
effective legislation which it seems reasonable to try to secure in the
immediate future. They deal only with the provisions for the child as a
child, taking for granted the provisions for fire-escapes, safe-guards
for machines, toilet facilities and all those things which the child
shares with the adults.
An effective child labor law rests upon certain prohibitions, among
which are the following:
LABOR IS PROHIBITED
(1) for all children under the age of fourteen years,
(2) for all children under sixteen years of age who do not measure
sixty inches and weigh eighty pounds,[5]
(3) for all children under sixteen years of age who cannot read
fluently and write legibly simple sentences in the English language,
(4) for all children under the age of sixteen years, between the
hours of 7 P. M. and 7 A. M., or longer than eight hours in any
twenty-four hours, or longer than forty-eight hours in any week,
(5) for all children under the age of sixteen years in occupations
dangerous to life, limb, health or morals.
THE CHILD
Effective legislation requires that before going to work the child
satisfy a competent officer appointed for the purpose, that it
(1) is fourteen years of age, and
(2) is in good health, and
(3) measures at least sixty inches and weighs eighty pounds, and
(4) is able to read fluently and write legibly simple sentences in
the English language, and
(5) has attended school a full school year during the twelve months
next preceding going to work.
THE PARENT
Effective child-labor legislation requires that the parent
(1) keep the child in school to the age of fourteen years and longer
if the child has not completed its required school work, and
(2) take oath as to the exact age of the child before letting it
begin to work, and
(3) substantiate the oath by producing a transcript of the official
record of the birth of the child, or the record of its baptism, or
some other religious record of the time of the birth of the child,
and must
(4) produce the record of the child’s school attendance, signed by
the principal of the school which the child last attended.
THE EMPLOYER
Effective child-labor legislation requires that the employer before
letting the child begin to work,
(1) obtain and place on file ready for official inspection papers
showing
(_a_) the place and date of birth of the child substantiated by
(_b_) the oath of the parent corroborated by
(_c_) a transcript of the official register of births, or by a
transcript of the record of baptism, or other religious record of
the birth of the child, and by
(_d_) the school record signed by the principal of the school which
the child last attended, and by
(_e_) the statement of the officer of the board of education
designated for the purpose, that he has approved the papers and
examined the child.
(2) After permitting the child to begin to work, the employer
is required to produce the foregoing papers on demand of the
school-attendance officer, the health officer and the factory
inspectors.
(3) In case the child cease to work, the employer must restore to the
child the papers enumerated above.
(4) During the time that the child is at work, the employer must
provide suitable seats, and permit their use so far as the nature of
the work allows; and must
(5) post and keep posted in a conspicuous place, the hours for
beginning work in the morning, and for stopping work in the middle of
the day; the hours for resuming work and for stopping at the close of
the day; and all work done at any time not specified in such posted
notice constitutes a violation of the law. The total number of hours
must not exceed eight in any one day or forty-eight in one week.
THE OFFICIALS
Effective legislation for the protection of children requires that the
officials entrusted with the duty of enforcing it
(1) give their whole time, not less than eight hours of every working
day, to the performance of their duties, making night inspections
whenever this may be necessary to insure that children are not
working during the prohibited hours; and
(2) treat all employers alike, irrespective of political
considerations, of race, religion or power in a community;
(3) prosecute all violations of the law;
(4) keep records complete and intelligible enough to facilitate the
enactment of legislation suitable to the changing conditions of
industry.
THE SCHOOL
The best child-labor law is a compulsory education law covering forty
weeks of the year and requiring the consecutive attendance of all
the children to the age of fourteen years. If is never certain that
children are not at work, if they are out of school. In order to keep
the children, however, it is not enough to compel attendance,--the
schools must be modified and adapted to the needs of the recent
immigrants in the North and of the poor whites in the South, affording
instruction which appeals to the parents as worth having, in lieu of
the wages which the children are forbidden to earn, and appeals to
the children as interesting and attractive. These requirements are so
insufficiently met in the great manufacturing centers of the North,
that truancy is in several of them, at present, an insoluble problem.
No system of child-labor legislation can be regarded as effective which
does not face and deal with these facts.
The evolution of the vacation school and camp and play centers promises
strong reënforcement of the child-labor laws, which are now seriously
weakened by the fact that the long vacation leaves idle upon the
streets children whom employers covet by reason of the low price of
their labor, while parents, greedy for the children’s earnings and
anxious lest the children suffer from the life of the streets, eagerly
seek work for them. Nothing could be worse for the physique of the
school child than being compelled to work during the summer; and the
development of the vacation school and vacation camp alone seems to
promise a satisfactory solution of the problem of the vacation of the
city child of the working class.
THE COMMUNITY
Effective child-labor legislation imposes upon the community many
duties, among which are
(1) maintaining officials--men and women--school-attendance officers,
health officers, and factory inspectors, all of whom need
(_a_) salary and traveling expenses,
(_b_) access at all reasonable times to the places where children
are employed,
(_c_) power to prosecute all violations of the statutes affecting
working children,
(_d_) tenure of office so effectively assured that they need not
fear removal from office in consequence of prosecuting powerful
offenders;
(2) maintaining schools in which to educate the children who are
prohibited from working;
(3) maintaining vital statistics, especially birth records, such that
the real age of native children may be readily ascertained;
(4) maintaining provision for the adequate relief of dependent
families in which the children are not yet of legal age for beginning
work.
More important, however, than the enactment of the foregoing provisions
is the maintenance in the community of a persistent, lively interest
in the enforcement of the child-labor statutes. Without such interest,
judges do not enforce penalties against offending parents and
employers; inspectors become discouraged and demoralized; or faithful
officers are removed because they have no organized backing while some
group of powerful industries clamors that the law is injuring its
interest. Well-meaning employers grow careless, infractions become the
rule, and workingmen form the habit of thinking that laws inimical to
their interest are enforced, while those framed in their interest are
broken with impunity.
Upon parents there presses incessant poverty, urging them to seek
opportunities for wage-earning even for the youngest children; and
upon the employers presses incessant competition, urging them to reduce
the pay-roll by all means fair and foul. No law enforces itself; and no
officials can enforce a law which depends upon them alone. It is only
when they are consciously the agents of the will of the people that
they can make the law really protect the children effectively.
=A United States Commission for Children.=--If the right to childhood
is recognized, it follows that the welfare of the children is a
legitimate interest of the nation, for the right rests upon the future
citizenship of the children. The interest of the nation, as such, has
not hitherto found articulate expression, and it is desirable that it
should do so. It is therefore suggested that there be constituted a
Commission for Children, whose functions should be to correlate, make
available, and interpret the facts concerning the physical, mental and
moral condition and prospects of the children of the United States,
native and immigrant.
The proposed commission might be composed of men and women,
representing different parts of the country, for the purpose of
promoting the vital and social efficiency of the children of the United
States. It should do for the states, cities and smaller communities
what the Department of Agriculture does for the farmers,--make
accessible to them the latest word of science and the latest methods
of applying it. The commission might coöperate with the Bureau of
Education, for instance, in disseminating facts as to the grades in
the public schools from which the children leave, and the age of
the children at the time of leaving, in the different parts of the
country; it might coöperate with the Bureau of Labor in popularizing
the principles upon which child-labor legislation should be further
developed; and with the Census Bureau in focusing attention upon
the fact that in 1900 there were in the Republic 579,947 illiterate
children between the ages of ten and fourteen years, of whom about
510,000 are in thirteen states, and the remaining 70,000 are scattered
throughout the remainder of the United States. For lack of a recognized
national official body devoted to all the interests of the children,
the facts gathered by the three above named departments remain
uncorrelated and largely unused. If they are applied at all, it is by
volunteer organizations which exist in some states and are lacking in
others, and any results obtained, therefore, benefit the children in a
part of the country, but not in the whole country.
The problems suggested as forming, at first, the probable field of work
of the Commission are all vital to the welfare of the Republic. They
are inter-related in such complex ways that it is very difficult to
state them in logical order. The following list is purely tentative and
is framed in the hope that it may suggest constructive criticism.
PROBLEMS
1. Infant Mortality.
2. Registration of Births.
3. Orphanage.
4. Desertion.
5. Illegitimacy.
6. Degeneracy (sub-normal childhood).
7. Delinquency.
8. Offenses against Children.
9. Illiteracy.
10. Child labor.
The imperative need of such a commission becomes apparent as soon as
the first problem, infant mortality, is named. If lobsters or young
salmon become scarce or are in danger of perishing, the United States
Fish Commission takes active steps in the matter. But infant mortality
continues excessive, from generation to generation, in perfectly
well-defined areas;--yet no one organ of the national government is
interested in the matter sufficiently even to gather, collate and
publish consecutive information about this social phenomenon. On
the contrary, infant mortality, however excessive, continues to be
generally regarded as a matter safely left to the local officers whose
incompetence or lack of legal power it proves. Mere constructive
criticism from an authoritative source, consecutively afforded by the
proposed commission, could not fail to have a stimulating effect upon
such local officials.
Orphanage is now generally recognized as a phenomenon social and
permanent. To it is due much pauperism, delinquency and permanent
degeneracy among children. It is a matter of national importance that
continuous investigations should be carried on covering methods of
safeguarding adult life;--insurance, pensions for widows with young
children, adoption of total orphans, asylums and methods of boarding
out children. The children are the future Republic, the orphans no
less than those who have parents; and the maintenance of their vital
efficiency is no less essential than the care of fish, forests and
Indians by the United States Government.
With the development of disease and accidents incident to occupations
the number of fatherless children in the working class increases.
No employers’ liability legislation yet devised has made adequate
provision for the maintenance of surviving little children of workmen
who perish.
Desertion and illegitimacy are phenomena which, from the child’s point
of view, are to be classed with orphanage. It is desirable that methods
of enforcing paternal responsibility should be devised to relieve the
community of the support of children thus cruelly and unnaturally
fatherless.
The allied problems of orphanage, desertion and illegitimacy connect
on the one hand with the protection of life, limb, health and morality
of the adult workers; and on the other with child labor, illiteracy,
degeneracy and delinquency.
While a few cities have established children’s courts devoted to
the decision of cases affecting children, and probation officers
for the care of juvenile delinquents, it remains true that, in by
far the larger part of the country, the stockade or the county jail
is a school of crime for first offenders. On the other hand, the
widely prevalent method of crowding dependent and delinquent children
together in institutions promotes both dependency and delinquency;
while the reckless placing out of children at a distance from their
own original homes has its own serious dangers. The indifference
of local authorities to these subjects of vital importance to the
rising generation is due chiefly to ignorance of better ways. But the
desultory propaganda of volunteer bodies is inadequate to securing
within any calculable time, improvements which might readily and
rapidly be brought about by the dissemination, with method and
continuity, of the needed information by a Commission for Children.
Child labor can never again be regarded as a matter of local interest
in a few states, with cotton mills in the South, and canneries
from Maine to the Pacific, employing children at all hours, in
ever-increasing numbers as the industries develop. The lack of
legislation in one state renders it excessively difficult to establish
protective restrictions upon work in another state having the same
industries;--and the worse inevitably checks progress in the better.
It is, at present, impossible to secure comprehensive, trustworthy,
current information as to the conditions of labor of children in
the different states, except by having recourse to some volunteer
organization which, in turn, secures its facts by correspondence with
the officials of fifty-two states and territories. Moreover, the
publications of private societies cannot assure the continuity of
investigation which a Commission could give. It is believed that the
consecutive publications by a Commission, of the child-labor laws of
the different states in popular form (as the Department of Agriculture
furnishes in popular form information needed by farmers), as rapidly
as the laws are modified, might be the means of securing approximately
uniform legislation in this important field within a few years.
The foregoing list of problems with the comments upon them, are, of
course, mere suggestions of what a Commission would find awaiting it
in the way of investigation and dissemination of information on behalf
of the future citizens of the Republic. Obviously the creation of such
a Commission will mark one more important recognition of the right to
childhood and will register one more ethical gain.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] These figures are found in the Census, 1900, Manufactures, Part II,
States and Territories, p. 987.
[4] _Report of Committee on Relations of Employer and Employee_, 1904,
Boston, pp. 32, 33, 34.
[5] This measure is not now specified in any statute, though it is
implied in the statute of New York, enacted in 1903. Bills specifically
embracing this provision were introduced into the legislatures of Iowa
and Louisiana in 1904.