THE BOY LEADER OF A CRUSADE
So long as Hamilton's work dealt with the larger manufactories of the
district he encountered comparatively little trouble, as he knew enough
of the desires of the Census Bureau to be able to help those business
men whose books did not specifically divide receipts, expenses, and so
forth in the same order as the government required. Indeed, he made
several very pleasant acquaintanceships during the weeks in New Haven,
and it was not until he was "checking up," going to all the small places
that had not been listed, that he really found himself in difficulties.
He anticipated trouble with the dressmakers, and consequently his
delight was great when he learned that this had been omitted from the
census since 1904 because it is a "neighborhood industry." But the
milliners proved just as bad.
In the first place, Hamilton could not work up any enthusiasm over a
millinery establishment, and although he had definite instructions that
each one was to be considered as a factory and entered upon the
schedules as one, he thought such an idea was stretching the point a
little far. Fortunately he had covered a large number of them during the
first weeks of the work, visiting the places in the early morning and in
the evening when the offices of the larger factories were closed. His
worst clash occurred at almost the very last one to which he went.
It was a little after five o'clock, just as it was beginning to get
dark, that Hamilton, having ascertained from the Business Telephone
Directory the address of a milliner not down on his lists, who did work
for wholesale as well as retail trade, went up the steps of a really
handsome house, and rang the bell. He did so reluctantly, for there was
no plate on the door, and he did not wish to annoy strangers. But the
address seemed straight enough.
The door was opened by a becapped maid, and Hamilton was shown into a
handsomely furnished drawing room. On a table in the corner, the boy
caught sight of a pile of fashion magazines, and he was sure that he was
on the right track. After a few moments' delay, a richly dressed little
Frenchwoman bustled in. She seemed surprised to see the boy, and halted
on the threshold. Hamilton rose.
"I understand, Madame," he said, "that you are an 'exclusive' milliner?"
The woman looked bewildered.
"You make hats?" Hamilton continued, perceiving at a glance that the
woman was foreign-born.
"Is it a hatter zat you want?" she asked.
"No, no," the boy replied, "I just want to know if you are a milliner?"
The Frenchwoman, not at all enlightened by this explanation, answered:
"I do not make ze hats; I design zem, and ze ozzers make zem."
"Oh, I thought you were the proprietor," said Hamilton; "then you don't
own this place!"
"I am ze proprietor, but I do not own ze house," she said; "I pay ze
rent. But why you ask? I pay my rent!"
"Oh, of course," answered Hamilton, "but that has nothing to do with it.
I did not wish to trouble you that way. I come from the census, and
wanted to make sure that this was the place I was looking for."
"What is zat--ze census?"
"That is the way the government finds out about all the people in the
country," explained Hamilton, "their names and how old they are, what
they work at and how many people they employ, the wages they pay or are
paid, and all sorts of things."
The Frenchwoman's eyes had been getting bigger and rounder at every
sentence, and when Hamilton had finished, she said with an air of
regretful surprise:
"An' they tol' me zere was no police spy in America!"
"There isn't, so far as I know," the boy answered.
"But you--"
"I'm not a police spy," the boy said, a little nettled at being
misunderstood.
"No? Zen zat is all ze more strange. In my country zose are ze questions
ze gendarmes ask. An' if you are not policeman, why do you wear badge?"
she queried, pointing to the little census shield on Hamilton's coat.
"That has nothing to do with the police," the boy insisted, "that's a
census badge. Madame," he added, "do I look like a policeman?"
The Frenchwoman, remembering the military appearance of the gendarmes
of her native land and the burly make-up of the American policeman,
shook her head.
"Perhaps you are disguise'?" she said, with a smile.
"No, I'm not disguised," Hamilton responded, "and the badge is just to
show that I have the right to ask you these questions."
"I do not know anyzing at all about it," the milliner objected, "but if
you say you have ze right!" she shrugged her shoulders and sat down.
Hamilton promptly picked up his portfolio, opened it on his knee, and
began to put some of the queries required. He got along well enough
while the formal questions about name, address, nature of work, and so
forth were in hand, but the question about the number of hours worked
during the year made the woman most indignant.
"What is ze good of a question like zat?" she asked. "What does it
matter if ze girls work all ze night to finish ze hat for ze gr-rand
occasion, ze wedding, ze garden party? When zey work more, zey get more
pay!"
"Of course," said Hamilton diplomatically, "with such a number of
society people as you deal with that must happen very often."
It was a successful move. The Frenchwoman beamed on him.
"In ze season, yes, perhaps twenty or thirty evenings, but even zen ze
girl go home by twelve o'clock."
Hamilton smiled to himself as he did a little figuring and filled up the
schedule to show the prevailing practice followed in the establishment
during the year. He was a little dubious about asking the questions
concerning the wages paid, but he found no trouble.
"In your kind of work," he said, "I suppose the girls get good wages."
"Ze very best," the woman answered, and Hamilton found that this was
true. Indeed, so anxious was she to impress on him how much better were
the wages paid by her than those in other establishments that the boy
secured a large amount of unexpected valuable information. But he came
to a dead stop on the question of raw material used during the year. For
the material used in wholesale work the figures were easily secured, but
the retail trade was another matter. This the milliner really could not
give, for, as she pointed out, most of the few especial customers she
had, brought the materials to her to be made up, and she had no means
of knowing what had been paid for them. Nor would she even try to make
an estimate.
"But I must know," said Hamilton, in despair. "See for yourself,--here
it says that every factory must state the total cost of all material
used during the year and the value of the products."
"Factory!" the milliner jumped to her feet. "What you say--a factory!
Zis establishment a factory! And me, one of ze designers of ze great
Maison Chic in Paris! Zis is insult!"
For a moment Hamilton was amazed at the tempest he had so suddenly
evoked; then he tried to pacify the woman.
"That's just a general word," he said, "and it is used for every place
where things are made."
"No, no, no," she cried, "I know bezzer zan zat. A factory has chimney,
high, high, and smoke, an' nasty smells, an' machines. I have seen zem!"
"That's one kind of factory," answered the boy, "but it is only one
kind. But if you like we won't use the word at all."
This time, however, Hamilton's persuasions were of no avail. The
milliner had taken offense at the word "factory," and not another word
could the boy get out of her on any subject; the deadlock had become
absolute when the door opened and the maid showed in a young girl,
evidently a customer. The proprietress immediately greeted her in
voluble French, recounting as nearly as Hamilton could judge from her
gestures her sorrows and trials at the boy's hands.
As soon as there was a lull, Hamilton said to the newcomer:
"I beg your pardon, but since you seem to know French, would you mind
explaining to Madame what the census is? She seems to think I am a
police spy, or something."
"Oh, the census!" the girl exclaimed. "I could not make out what it was
all about. I thought it must be some question of taxes."
"No," Hamilton explained, "it is the Census of Manufactures, and
millinery places have to be counted. I got along all right, and have
finished my schedule but for one thing, and that I cannot get hold of.
If you would just ask her the cost of the materials in the hats she made
last year, I'll be through and then I won't be delaying you."
But not even the girl's fluent French could bring any light on this
subject, and laughingly she had to admit to the boy that her success
had been no greater than his own.
"I'll tell you," said Hamilton; "I've got an idea how we could get at
it."
"How?" asked the girl interestedly, for having taken a part in it, she
was American enough to be unwilling to give up; "what have you to
suggest--what is your plan?"
"You are one of Madame's customers?"
"Yes."
"And, of course, whatever kind of books are kept here, there must be
some sort of ledger, so that your bills can go to you every month."
The girl made a little grimace.
"The bills certainly come," she assured him.
"Well, then," said Hamilton triumphantly, "if we can find out from
Madame what proportion of all her trade your account is, and if you can
make a guess as to what the material you have brought her cost you, we
shall come pretty close to being able to make an estimate on the cost of
goods of all her customers."
"That's an excellent scheme," the girl said. "I don't know that I can
give very exact figures, but you want just a rough idea?"
"I'd like it exact, of course," the boy answered, "but since that
doesn't seem easy to get, the next best thing is a close estimate."
With this device in mind, very few minutes elapsed before the required
information was secured, a rough guess made at the result, and the
schedule finally filled out. As Hamilton rose to go, the girl said
laughingly: "I think I should at least receive 'honorable mention' in
the dispatches as a census-taker, the same as soldiers do in war."
"Very well," said Hamilton, smiling in return, "I'll bear it in mind,"
and thanking her heartily, he went on his way, greatly relieved that the
difficulty was over.
In a piece of extra territory that Mr. Burns had assigned to the boy,
there were several factories in which there had been some difficulty in
securing properly filled schedules, partly because much of the work was
done on the night shift. Because of this, Hamilton had got in touch with
some of these factories--they were principally glass works--on the night
side first. He frequently found it necessary to work thus in the
evenings, especially after this added work, which was given him because
the district proved too large for the agent having it in charge.
Little by little he worked these down until but one remained, owned by
Germans, where the boy experienced great difficulty in securing any sort
of attention. The night superintendent, however, was ready to help, and
Hamilton went to him constantly in the endeavor to have the schedule for
that factory filled. This was the easier, as the night superintendent in
question had recently been promoted to that position from head
bookkeeper.
One night, waiting for the superintendent to work out these figures, he
sauntered through the works. A phrase from Edwin Markham's "The Hoe-Man
in the Making" kept ringing through his head. It ran as follows--"It is
in the glass-factory perhaps, that the child is pushed most hopelessly
under the blind hammer of greed," and the boy wondered whether this
especial works was one of those which the poet-author had visited. Owing
to the number of times Hamilton had been forced to go to this factory,
two or three of the men had come to know him by sight, and they nodded
now as he passed through. Noticing a boy that looked even younger than
himself,--for unconsciously his eye was seeking that of which he was
thinking,--he turned to one of the men who had nodded to him, and said
casually, and with an air of surprise:
"Why, that chap there doesn't look any older than me!"
"I don't suppose he is so very old," the man replied, "sixteen, maybe."
"Seems a shame to have to start in so young," Hamilton went on, with an
assumed air of carelessness, "and I suppose he's been here some years."
"Probably about four or five," was the reply.
"You know," continued Hamilton, in a conversational tone, "I should
think it would be hard for a boy to start in working like that, and at
night especially."
The man paused in his work an instant, and looked at the lad, passing
his hand over his forehead as he did so.
"I was just ten years old when I began," he said. "I'm only thirty now.
I look fifty, don't I?"
"You certainly look over thirty," Hamilton admitted.
"Oh, I look fifty all right, I know that, and I'm as nearly played out
as a man of fifty. And it's all due to work when I was a youngster.
Every year that a boy is put to hard physical work before he is sixteen
is equal to five years taken off his life."
"I wonder that any employer does it, and that any State permits it,"
said Hamilton.
"There's not as much of it in Connecticut as in other States, although
the figures show that it is growing here," was the reply. "But you talk
as though you had been having a session with 'the crusader,'" the
workman continued.
"Who's the crusader?" asked Hamilton.
"Haven't you seen him, then? With your ideas, you ought to get along
well together. And," he added, more seriously, "'the crusader' will be
heard of yet."
"Why?"
"He's a boy who started at work in this place when he was only seven
years old," the workman answered. "He's been here eight years now, and
he's an odd genius. He taught himself to read and write, but he doesn't
read anything except about labor conditions all over the world, and he
knows all there is to know, I guess, about this business of children
working. All the labor union people and the socialists know 'the
crusader,' young as he is, and they send him, free, nearly every book
and paper that's published."
[Illustration: YOUNG BOYS FROM THE PIT. A group of workers in a coal
mine during dinner-time. Many even younger work on the night shift.
(_Courtesy of the Ridgway co._)]
"But why do you call him 'the crusader'?" asked Hamilton.
"Because he has some crusade idea on the brain,--thinks he can start a
revolution or something that will put a stop to child labor, and he
talks all the time of getting ready for this 'crusade' as he calls it.
But everybody likes him just the same, and he's a good worker--when he's
not talking."
"Which is he?" asked Hamilton. "I'd like to talk to him, if I might."
"No reason why you shouldn't," the other answered "he's kept busy of
course, but there are minutes in which he can talk, and 'the crusader'
is given special favors, anyway. That's the boy, 'carrying in' over
there."
Hamilton looked with interest at the boy thus pointed out. He would have
been noticeable, even without the knowledge of his peculiar position,
but with it, his difference from his fellows became most marked.
Hamilton had a couple of large apples in his pocket, and he thought this
might be a good opening. Taking one of them out of his pocket, he
started to eat it, and sauntered leisurely over to where the boy was
working. He watched him for a minute or two; then, when the boy looked
up, he said casually:
"Have an apple?"
Almost wolfishly the work-boy took the fruit from Hamilton and commenced
to devour it. It was clear either that he was hungry or that such a
luxury as an apple seldom fell to his lot. A few sentences passed, and
then Hamilton asked:
"How long have you been in the factory here?"
"Eight years," 'the crusader' replied.
"You must have been just a youngster when you first came, then?"
"Seven years old," was the answer, "and small at that!"
"It's a shame to let little children work like that, I think," said
Hamilton, wondering whether this would have the effect of rousing the
other, "it must do them harm."
But even though expecting some fiery retort, Hamilton was unprepared for
the transformation in the lad. A moment before he had been a stooped
childish figure with an old and weary face, carrying trays of hot glass
from furnace to bench and bench to furnace, but at the word he turned.
The air of weariness fell from him, his back straightened, life and
passion flamed into his eyes, and despite the grime and sordidness of
his surroundings, despite the rags in which he was clothed, under the
dull glow of the furnaces and the flickering violet play of a distant
arc light he seemed the bearer of some high message as his boyish
treble, rich in the tones of a familiar despair, rang through the
factory.
"The land is filled with the voice o' cryin'," he began, "an' no one
seems to hear. Tens o' thousands o' children cry themselves to sleep
every night, knowin' that the mornin' only brings another day o' misery.
Think of a little boy or girl o' ten years old, sufferin' already so
much that hope is gone, an' tired enough to die! There are twenty-five
thousand children less than ten years old in the fact'ries of America."
"Perhaps the people who could help don't know about it," suggested
Hamilton.
"They know," the other continued, "but they don't care. They stop their
ears to the cryin' o' the children an' talk about America as the land of
opportunity. It _is_ the land of opportunity--opportunity for the
children to starve, opportunity to suffer, opportunity to die wretched
an' to be glad to die. There's no country in the world where children
are tortured as they are in the fact'ries of the United States."
"Oh, surely it can't be as bad as that," protested Hamilton.
The objection only increased the "crusader's" vehemence.
"There don't any children have to work anywhere as they do here," he
fairly shouted, "here where they rob the cradle for workers, where the
little voices become sad and bitter 'most as soon as they can lisp,
where the brightness o' childhood fades out before its time, an' where
its only world is the mill, the shop, an' the fact'ry. Their tiny bones
unset, they make them stand in one position all day long until you hear
the children moanin' hour after hour, moanin' and no one hears, or
hearin', cares.
"They send missionaries to China," cried the lad further, "but there's
no child labor there; they try to reform the 'unspeakable Turk' but
there's no atrocity upon the children there; they call the heathen lost,
though in the worst an' wildes' tribes the children have a home an'
lovin', if savage care; Russia cries shame on what goes on in our
fact'ries here, an' even an Indian chief that they were showin' the
sights of our great cities to, when asked what had surprised him most,
answered, 'Little--children--workin'.'"
"You mean it is peculiar to America? That there is really more of it
here than in Europe?" asked Hamilton incredulously.
"More? There's none there like there is here. An' it's gettin' worse all
the time, worse this year than last year, worse last year than ten years
ago. 'Child-labor,' somebody says, 'has about it no halo of antiquity.
It is a thing of yesterday, a sudden toadstool in the infernal garden.'
It is all our own," he laughed harshly, "let us be proud of it."
"How many children did you say?" asked Hamilton tersely, staggered and
shocked by this statement of the facts of the case.
"Enough to sink the land in shame," the speaker declared. "There were a
trifle over a hundred thousand children between the ages of six and
fourteen workin' in the fact'ries of America last year. The figures
showed that over half of 'em were workin' more'n eight hours a day, that
a large percentage were workin' twelve to sixteen hours, an' twenty-two
thousand of 'em are at night work."
As he said the last words, the "crusader" hurried away in response to a
call from one of the men. He resumed his carrying in of the red-hot
bottles from the benches where the men had been molding them, to the
annealing oven, and for a time Hamilton watched him. The work was a
fearful strain. Sitting where he was, Hamilton could see all the way to
the annealing oven. Counting the number of steps the "crusader" had to
take, Hamilton found the distance to be about one hundred feet, and
watching another boy, who was working regularly, not intermittently as
was the city lad's new acquaintance, he found that seventy-two trips an
hour were made, making the distance covered in eight hours nearly
twenty-two miles.
The red-hot bottles were carried in asbestos shovels, and these had to
be kept fairly straight, imposing a terrific strain upon the back. In
addition to this, the boys were compelled to face the furnace each time
they came back, passing from the heat of the melting oven, in front of a
draughty open door, to the heat of the annealing oven.
In order to keep up with the work, the boys had to run, for it could not
be done at a walk, and thus were alternately greatly overheated and
chilled with icy draughts.
Seeing that the "crusader" would be busy for a while, but wanting to
take the matter up with him further, Hamilton strolled over to where the
glass-blowers were working. This particular factory was turning out
cheap glass bottles, and there was little of the fascination that exists
in factories where high-grade glass is made into many curious shapes and
blown with great skill into marvelous thinness. In the middle of the
room was a large round furnace containing a number of small doors not
quite four feet from the ground, and a glass-blower was stationed before
each of these. With long iron blowpipes these men, by giving the
blowpipe a little twirl as they thrust it into the semi-molten metal,
drew out on the end of it a small mass of glass, of about the
consistency of nearly melted sealing wax, and holding this mass on the
end of the blowpipe by keeping it in motion, they blew it into balls and
rolled the ball of soft, red-hot glass on their rolling boards. Then
they lifted the blowpipe and blew again, sharp and hard, forcing the
soft glass to its proper form. The now cooling glass was broken from the
end of the blowpipe with a sharp, snapping sound, and the blowpipe was
plunged in the furnace again for another bottle. The whole had taken
but a few seconds.
"Why do they have so many boys around these places?" queried Hamilton of
the workman he had been watching.
"Have to, they say," the glass-blower replied, "cheap bottles mean cheap
labor. No one ever expects to pay anything for a bottle--that is thrown
in with everything liquid you buy. The manufacturer's got to make his
little profit somewhere an' in a cheap bottle he makes it by employin'
young boys cheap an' workin' 'em till they drop."
"Is it done this way everywhere?"
The workman shook his head.
"No need to do it even here," he said. "It takes money, though, to put
in an endless belt to carry the bottles to the annealin' oven. The big
fact'ries mostly have 'em, but there are plenty o' places like this in
small towns where everythin' is done on a cheap scale, an' a boy's labor
is about the cheapes' thing in the United States--unless it's a girl's."
Seeing that the glass-blower was being delayed in his task, Hamilton
sauntered away, and went back to the place where the "crusader" worked.
The latter broke out again as soon as he saw the boy coming.
"I've been talkin' to you about children workin'," he said, "but you
haven't thought of babies bein' made to work?"
"Babies!"
"Of four an' five years old."
"But they couldn't do any real work!" exclaimed Hamilton.
"Do you know what one factory owner in the South said, not knowin' he
was talkin' to a member o' the child-labor commission? He said 'A kid
three year old can soon learn to straighten out tobacco leaves for
wrappers, and a little worker of four is good help in stripping.'"
"In a cigar factory?"
"Of course,--an' the children find it so hard to keep up that they are
taught to chew snuff--as a stimulant--before they are six year old. Jane
Addams, writin' o' the torture chambers they call cotton mills in parts
o' the South, said she saw on the night shift, with her teeth all
blackened and decayed from excessive snuff chewin', a little girl o'
five year old, busily and clumsily tyin' threads in coarse muslin, an'
answerin' a question she said she had been there every night throughout
the hot summer excep' two, when 'her legs and back wouldn't let her get
up.' An' what do you suppose the fact'ry owner did--send a physician?
No, he docked her the two days' wages for the time she'd been away ill,
an' another day's fine as a punishment."
"That's brutal!" cried Hamilton. "Didn't the parents protest?"
"The parents? That's where the mill-owners have their strongest help.
They threaten to discharge the parents if the children don't work an'
work hard, and they force the father or mother into whippin' the child
to compel it to stay at the loom. The whole country went to war once
over the question of a negro havin' to work under compulsion,--or at
least, that had quite a bit to do with the war,--but you can enslave
white children, you can starve 'em, you can shut 'em up in rooms without
air, you can surround 'em with dangerous machinery, you can force 'em to
be whipped, you can snatch 'em from their cradles in their homes, you
can snap your fingers at the schools, an' you can fill churchyards with
a worse Massacre o' the Innocents than history ever tells about, an' the
men and women of America don't care."
[Illustration: "I 'AIN'T SEEN DAYLIGHT FOR TWO YEARS." Trapper boy
working a twelve-hour day below ground, often too tired to go up in the
cage at the end of the day and sleeping on the ground beside the track.
(_Courtesy of the Ridgway Co._)]
"Oh, yes, they do," again protested Hamilton. "It must be that they
don't know."
"How can they help but know? There are a few that have heard what Spargo
calls 'The Bitter Cry of the Children,' but those few are very few, an'
the misery an' shame goes on, gettin' worse with ev'ry year."
"What's going to be done?"
"The children will have to rescue the children," the boy cried. "If
men's hearts are cold and women's hearts are asleep, at least the boys
can hear. There's no power like a boy's, an' a boy will do anythin'
that's big and brave and worth the doin'. In a year from now I'm goin'
to start a crusade, like the Children's Crusade in hist'ry, an' march to
every mill an' fact'ry in the United States where a child is workin',
and make the owner sign a paper pledgin' himself not to employ a child
again. Give me an army of American boys an' I'll sweep the country like
a flight o' locusts."
"But who would join?"
"Every boy worth his salt. S'pose I came to you an' said 'In that mill
at the end o' your street, little children are bein' slaved and driven
to death because no one has the nerve to say what they think. We'll
rescue those children. Join us, we're five hundred strong!' Would you go
along?"
"Guess I'd have to join," the boy agreed, "but you'd get into all sorts
of trouble."
"Can I get into a worse trouble than any o' those babies have?" the
other asked indignantly. "What right have I to go on, even as I do,
knowin' how they are sufferin'. I don't care about trouble, I've had
nothin' else all my life. But if by gettin' into trouble myself, I could
get even one hollow-eyed shadow of a child to run about and play like
other folks, I'd be willin' to take anythin' that come after. I don't
see that carryin' bottles is goin' to help the world much, but if I can
carry hope an' health to some little boy or girl, I'm goin' to do it.
How, I don't know. But I ain't goin' to die without bein' able to
remember some poor child that's better off because lived."
"What can I do to help?" asked Hamilton eagerly and aggressively, as
though he expected instant marching orders to some distant factory.
"You can do somethin',--every boy can do somethin'. If nothin' else, you
can help to wake a sleepin' an' selfish nation. If the cryin' o' the
children has ever rung in your ears, it'll never stop till you're doin'
somethin' to help. Do you think I could dream every day, as I do, o'
that 'spectral army of pygmy people sucked in from the hills to dance
beside the crazing wheel' and not do somethin'?"
"But--"
"Could I hear trampin' round me day an' night, the laggin' step of a
'gaunt goblin army that outwatches the sun by day an' the stars by
night, an' work an' sleep in peace? An' there's one thing more to say,
an' then I must go,--that there's a stain o' shame 'pon the honor of
America that'll never be wiped away until child labor is put down!"
Thoughtful and subdued in spirit, Hamilton strolled back to the night
superintendent's office, where he found the figures done at last and the
completed schedule awaiting him. He gratefully accepted the offer of a
cup of coffee, from some which had just been sent in, and sat down
beside the desk.
"I've been talking with the 'crusader,'" he remarked.
The night superintendent looked up interestedly.
"What do you think of him?" he asked, a little sharply, Hamilton
thought.
"I think there's no question about his being sincere," the boy answered,
"but I can hardly believe that the figures he gives and the facts he
talks about are true."
"They're true enough, I'm sorry to say," said the older man, sighing,
"but the 'crusader' usually isn't fair to the South. He blames the South
for the cotton mill horrors, when, as a matter of fact, a very large
proportion of the mills in which the worst conditions were found are
owned by New England capitalists. I'm a New Englander by birth myself,
'naughty-two' at Yale, but I'm able to see the mistakes of the North
just the same."
"I've always been taught that the North was more or less mixed up in
it," answered Hamilton. "It was shown to me a long time ago that the
slavery in the South wasn't started by the plantation owners. There were
no Southern vessels in the slave trade, they were all New England
skippers and New England bottoms. The shame of the slave traffic belongs
originally to the North."
"And now a large share of the child labor, too," the other agreed. "But
you've got to remember that it was the easy shiftlessness of the South
that made such conditions possible. I guess the blame is about even."
"But is nothing being done on this child-labor business?" asked
Hamilton. "I tried to find that out from the 'crusader' but he didn't
answer."
"Yes," said the superintendent heartily, "a great deal is being done.
The Bureau of the Census has been of immense service, and other bureaus
of the Department of Commerce and Labor are working on it, largely
through information gathered for them by the census. Then there have
been thorough Congressional investigations, and the States are being
checked up hard to insure that factory inspection shall be real, not
nominal. Don't let the 'crusader' persuade you that everybody is asleep
and that nothing is being done; the government is doing a good deal,
although the country as a whole is unaware of it."
"Yet it is increasing?"
"In spite of all that is done to prevent it, it is increasing," the
other said quietly, "that is the sad part. If it could be thought of as
a passing thing, it would be bad enough, but to know that every month
hundreds of children die from enforced labor and that greater numbers
fill their places, is a sad reflection on the industrial life of
to-day."
"Well, as the South progresses, that will probably take care of itself,
won't it?" queried the boy.
The superintendent looked at him curiously.
"I think you told me last evening that you were a New York boy," he
said.
"Yes, Mr. Wharton," answered Hamilton.
"I suppose you consider New York a fairly progressive city?"
"Greatest on earth!" affirmed the boy in true Gotham style.
"Yet that same progressive city," the older man declared, "is the
headquarters of several forms of industry in which large percentages of
the workers are children under fourteen years of age."
"What kinds of business can those be?" asked Hamilton in surprise.
"Making ostrich plumes and artificial flowers. It's not factory labor,
of course, but that doesn't alter the point that at least half the
output of artificial flowers is made by the cramped fingers of children,
generally after school and far into the night. They are not officially
reported, of course, but less than twenty per cent is done by men. The
disgraceful fact that the New York schools are so crowded that many of
them can only give 'half-time' to the children and consequently teach
them in two sections is a great help to the sweat-shop managers. But
every city has its own share of this child labor in the homes, although
in some of the smaller places, civic associations and municipalities
have taken the matter in hand with considerable success. Even that is
but a drop in the ocean."
"Your 'crusader' will have to lead his crusade then, it seems," the boy
suggested.
"Poor lad!" sighed the superintendent.
"Why?" asked Hamilton.
"He will never lead that crusade," the older man replied pensively.
"Why not?"
The man tapped his chest significantly.
"He is incurably ill," he said, "partly glass-blowers' disease from
breathing the particles of glass dust. Men don't mind it so much, but it
is fatal to children when the lungs are not yet strong. We keep the
'crusader' here in order to help him as much as we can, although he
gives a lot of trouble in the works with his revolutionary theories. I
haven't the heart to send him away; he couldn't get other work, and
being all alone in the world, he might starve."
"You mean--"
"That he will not live six months. That army of boys of which he speaks
so often will never go on the march, the banners he has designed for it
will wave over no other battalions than those he has seen in dreams, and
the drums will sound the final 'taps' for him before they roll for the
advance. And in that sleep, the cries of the children shall all be happy
ones."
[Illustration: EIGHT YEARS OLD AND "TIRED OF WORKING." Boy in Southern
cotton mill who has been employed "two summers and a winter before
that."]