THE NATION’S CHILDREN
Few people have any idea of the extent of tenement-house manufactures.
There are at present over thirteen thousand houses in Greater New York
alone licensed for this purpose, and each license may cover from one to
forty families. These figures give no complete idea of the work done
in tenements. Much of it is carried on in unlicensed houses, and work
not yet listed as forbidden is carried home. To supervise this immense
field eight inspectors only were assigned in 1913. Changing fashions in
dress and the character of certain of the seasonal trades make it very
difficult for the Department of Labor to adjust the license list. This
explains, to some extent, the lack of knowledge concerning home work on
the part of officials, even when the Department of Labor is efficiently
administered. Nevertheless, home work has greatly decreased.
Twenty years ago, when we went from house to house caring for the sick,
manufacturing was carried on in the tenements on a scale that does not
exist to-day. With no little consternation we saw toys and infants’
clothing, and sometimes food itself, made under conditions that would not
have been tolerated in factories, even at that time. And the connection
of remote communities and individuals with the East Side of New York was
impressed upon us when we saw a roomful of children’s clothing shipped
to the Southern trade from a tenement where there were sixteen cases of
measles. One of our patients, in an advanced stage of tuberculosis, until
our appearance on the scene, sat coughing in her bed, making cigarettes
and moistening the paper with her lips. In another tenement in a nearby
street we found children ill with scarlet fever. The parents worked as
finishers of women’s cloaks of good quality, evidently meant to be worn
by the well-to-do. The garments covered the little patients, and the bed
on which they lay was practically used as a work-table. The possibility
of infection is perhaps the most obvious disadvantage of home work,
and great changes have been wrought since the days when we first knew
the sweatshop; but we are here discussing only its connection with the
children.
[Illustration]
When work is carried on in the home all the members of the family can
be and are utilized without regard to age or the restrictions of the
factory laws. One Thanksgiving Day I carried an offering from prosperous
children of my acquaintance to a little child on Water Street whose
absence from the kindergarten had been reported on account of illness. He
had chicken-pox, and I found him, with flushed face, sitting on a little
stool, working on knee pants with other members of the family. They
interrupted their industry long enough to drag the concertina from under
the bed and to join in singing Italian songs for my entertainment, but
the father shrugged his shoulders in dissent from my protest against the
continuance of the work.
Examination of the school attendance of children who do home work bears
testimony to its relation to truancy. Josephine, eleven years of age,
stays out of school to work on finishing; Francesca, aged twelve, to
sew buttons on coats; Santa, nine years old, to pick out nut meats;
Catherine, eight years old, sews on tags; Tiffy, another eight-year-old,
helps her mother finish; Giuseppe, aged ten, is a deft worker on
artificial flowers.
It is painful to recall the R⸺ family, who lived in a basement, all of
the children engaged in making paper bags which the mother sold to the
small dealers. Something, we know not what, impelled one of the five
children to come for help to the nurse in the First Aid Room at the
settlement. His head showed evidence of neglect, and when our nurse
inquired of him how it had escaped the school medical inspection, the
fact was disclosed that he had never been in school. Immediate inquiry
on our part revealed the basement sweatshop and the fact that none of
the children, all of whom had been born in America, had ever been to
school. When the mother was questioned, she answered that she did not
like to ask for more aid than she was already receiving from the relief
society, and when we reproved the other children in the tenement for
not having drawn our attention to their little neighbors, they answered
that they themselves had not known of the existence of the R⸺ children
because “they never came out to play.” The stupidity of the mother and
the circumstances of the family have continually tested the endurance of
their well-meaning friends; nevertheless, at this writing the eldest boy
is in high school and supporting himself by work outside school hours at
a subway news-stand.
What I have written thus far has been in large measure confined to the
lower East Side of New York; but it may not be amiss to remind the reader
that through the nursing service and other organized work our contact
with the tenement home workers extends over the two boroughs of Manhattan
and the Bronx. The settlement has never made a scientific study of work
done in the homes, but our information regarding it is continuous and
current. This cumulative knowledge is probably the more valuable because
it is obtained incidentally and naturally, and not as the result of
a special investigation, which, however fair and impartial, must be
somewhat affected by the consciousness of its purpose.
In 1899 a law was passed in New York State licensing individual workers
in the tenements for certain trades. In 1904 this law was superseded,
primarily at the instigation of the settlement, by one licensing the
entire tenement house, thus making the owner of the house responsible.
In 1913 a law recommended by the New York State Factory Investigating
Commission was passed by the legislature; this law brought under its
jurisdiction all articles manufactured in the tenements, prohibited
entirely the home manufacture of food articles, dolls or dolls’ clothing,
children’s or infants’ wearing apparel, and forbade the employment of
children under fourteen on any articles made in tenements.
All our experience points to the conclusion that it is impossible to
control manufacture in the tenements. Restrictive legislation (such
as the law forbidding the employment of children under fourteen) is
practically impossible of enforcement, for it is a delusion to suppose
that any human agency can find out what manufactures are going on
in tenement-house homes. The inspectors become known in the various
neighborhoods; and at their approach the word is passed along, and
garments on which women are working may be hidden, or the work taken
from children’s hands. The more painstaking and conscientious the
attempts at enforcement, the more secretive the workers become, and one
is forced to the conclusion that the only practical remedy is to prohibit
this parasitic form of industry outright. More of the men in these
families would go to work if it were not so easy to employ the women
and children; and many of the women would be able to work regular hours
in establishments suitably constructed for manufacturing purposes and
under state inspection and supervision. During the period of transition,
suffering will doubtless come to some families whose poor living has been
maintained by this form of industry, and relief measures must carry them
over the time of adjustment. Most families working at home are already
receiving aid from societies, which thus indirectly help to support the
parasitic trade.
* * * * *
In 1913, 41,507 children of Greater New York secured working papers. But
the record for 1914 shows a decrease of about 10,000 in the applications
for papers, and consequently so many more children in school, because of
the amended statute which raised the minimum educational requirement. A
public sentiment which keeps boys and girls longer in school emphasizes
the need of more educational facilities adapted to industrial pursuits.
The children least promising in book studies may often become adepts in
manual work, and respond readily to instruction that calls for exercise
of the motor energies. The armies of children who go to work immature,
unprepared, uneducated in essentials, with no more than a superficial
precocity, are likely to be thrown upon the scrap-heap of the unskilled
early in life, and yet many of these have potentialities of skill and
efficiency.
[Illustration]
It is not surprising that with increasing knowledge of the children’s
condition plans for their guidance, training, and reasonable employment
should have made advance in the last decade. The settlement is now
interested in promoting an inquiry for New York City that should lead to
the establishment of a juvenile bureau intended to combine vocational
guidance and industrial supervision,—a bureau associated with an
educational system and dissociated from the free employment exchanges
which as yet do not inquire into the character of employment offered.
One outcome of this inquiry has been the formation of a society of
employers designed to bring about scientific consideration of the present
misemployment of children and adults, underemployment, and other wastes
of industry.
We believe that continuation schools are necessary for all boys and girls
engaged in shop or factory work, and that expert vocational guidance and
educational direction should be offered those who leave school to become
wage-earners. It is inevitable that to people at all socially minded
close contact with many children should exercise the humanities. The
stress that we lay on the enforcement of these protective measures comes
from a conviction that the children of the poor, more than all others,
need to be prepared for the responsibilities of life that so soon come
upon them.
The great majority of the boys and girls accept passively the conditions
of the trade or occupation into which chance and their necessities have
forced them. The desire for something different seldom becomes articulate
or strong enough to impel them to overcome the almost insuperable
barriers. Occasionally, however, the spirit of revolt asserts itself.
“I work in a sweatshop,” said a young girl who brought her drawings
to me for criticism, “and it harasses my body and my soul. Perhaps I
could earn enough to live on by doing these, and my brother bids me to
display them”; and she added, “I could live on three dollars a week if
I were happy.” The drawings were promising, and the temperamental young
creature, in answer to my questioning, admitted that she had illustrated
_David Copperfield_ for pastime and had “given David a weak chin.”
The difficulty of proper placement in industry experienced by the
ordinary boy and girl is intensified in the case of the colored
juveniles. It is now nine years since a woman called at the Henry Street
house and almost challenged me to face their problem. She was what is
termed a “race woman,” and desired to work for her own people. It was
not difficult to provide an opening for her. The devoted daughter of
a man who had felt friendship for the colored people made it possible
for us to establish a branch of the settlement on the west side of the
city in that section known as San Juan Hill. At “Lincoln House,” with
the co-operation of representatives of the race and their friends, a
programme of social and educational work adapted to the needs of the
neighborhood is carried on. To find admirably trained and efficient
colored nurses was a comparatively simple matter; and the response of the
colored people themselves in this respect was immediately encouraging.
Necessity for patient adherence to the principle of giving opportunity
to the most needy children, that they may be better equipped for the
future, is emphasized in the case of the colored children in school
and when seeking work; but difficulties, mountainous in proportion and
testing the most buoyant optimism, loom up when social barriers and
racial characteristics enter into individual adjustments. The restricted
number of occupations open to them discourages ambition and in time
reacts unfavorably upon character and ability; and thus we complete the
vicious circle of diminishing opportunities and lessening vigor and
skill. Colored women are often conspicuously good and tender mothers, and
when I have watched large groups of them assembled in their clubrooms,
exhibiting their babies with justifiable pride, I have felt a wave of
unhappiness because of the consciousness of the enormous handicap with
which these little ones must face the future.
[Illustration: USES OF THE BACK YARD IN ONE OF THE BRANCHES OF THE HENRY
STREET SETTLEMENT]
A distinguished musician told me not long ago that he gave specially of
his time and talent to the colored people of New York because of a debt
he owed to a gifted colored neighbor. When he was a boy, his attempts to
play the violin attracted the man’s attention; the latter offered his
services as instructor when he learned that the boy could not afford to
take lessons. The colored man had great talent and had studied with the
best masters in Europe, but when he returned to America he was unable to
obtain engagements or procure pupils, and in order to earn his living was
obliged to learn to play the guitar. Discouraging as was his experience,
there is, I believe, relatively freer opportunity for the exceptionally
gifted of the colored race in the arts and professions than for the
ordinary young men and women who seek vocational careers.
* * * * *
Experience in Henry Street, and a conviction that intelligent interest
in the welfare of children was becoming universal, gradually focused my
mind on the necessity for a Federal Children’s Bureau. Every day brought
to the settlement, by mail and personal call,—as it must have brought
to other people and agencies known to be interested in children,—the
most varied inquiries, appeals for help and guidance, reflecting every
social aspect of the question. One well-known judge of a children’s
court was obliged to employ a clerical staff at his own expense to reply
to such inquiries. Those that came to us we answered as best we might
out of our own experience or from fragmentary and incomplete data.
Even the available information on this important subject was nowhere
assembled in complete and practical form. The birth rate, preventable
blindness, congenital and preventable disease, infant mortality, physical
degeneracy, orphanage, desertion, juvenile delinquency, dangerous
occupations and accidents, crimes against children, are questions
of enormous national importance concerning some of which reliable
information was wholly lacking.
[Illustration]
Toward the close of President Roosevelt’s administration a colleague and
I called upon him to present my plea for the creation of this bureau. On
that day the Secretary of Agriculture had gone South to ascertain what
danger to the community lurked in the appearance of the boll weevil. This
gave point to our argument that nothing that might have happened to the
children of the nation could have called forth governmental inquiry.
The Federal Children’s Bureau was conceived in the interest of all
children; but it was fitting that the National Committee on which I
serve, dedicated to working children, should have become sponsor for the
necessary propaganda for its creation.
It soon became evident that the suggestion was timely. Sympathy and
support came from every part of the country, from Maine to California,
and from every section of society. The national sense of humor was
aroused by the grim fact that whereas the Federal Government concerned
itself with the conservation of material wealth, mines and forests,
hogs and lobsters, and had long since established bureaus to supply
information concerning them, citizens who desired instruction and
guidance for the conservation and protection of the children of the
nation had no responsible governmental body to which to appeal.
[Illustration]
Though the suggestion was approved by President Roosevelt and widely
supported by press and people, it was not until the close of President
Taft’s administration that the Federal Children’s Bureau became a fact,
and the child with all its needs was brought into the sphere of federal
care and solicitude. The appointment of Miss Julia Lathrop, a woman of
conspicuous personal fitness and adequate training, to be its first chief
was a guarantee of the auspicious beginning of its work. In the brief
time of its service it has had continuous evidence that the people of
these United States intelligently avail themselves of the opportunity
for acquiring better understanding of the great responsibility that is
placed upon each generation.
[Illustration]
The Federal Children’s Bureau would not fulfill the purpose of its
originators if its service were limited to the study and record of the
pathological conditions surrounding children. Its greatest work for the
nation should be, and doubtless will be, to create standards for the
states and municipalities which may turn to it for expert advice and
guidance. With the living issues involved it is not likely to become
mechanical.
The Children’s Bureau is a symbol of the most hopeful aspect of America.
Founded in love for children and confidence in the future, its existence
is enormously significant. The first time I visited Washington after the
establishment of the Bureau I felt a thrill of the new and the hopeful,
and I contrasted its bare office with the splendid monuments that had
been erected and dedicated to the past. Some day, I thought, a lover of
his country, understanding that the children of to-day are our future,
will build a temple to them in the seat of the Federal Government. This
building will be more beautiful than those inspired by the army and
navy, by the exploits of science or commemoration of the dead. As my
imagination soared I fairly visualized the Children’s Bureau developed,
expanded, drawing from all corners of the land eager parents and teachers
to learn not only the theory of child culture, but to see demonstrations
of the best methods in playgrounds, clinics, classes, clubs, buildings,
and equipment. The vision became associated with a memory of the first
time I saw the Lucca della Robbias on the outer wall of the Florentine
asylum and felt the inspiration of linking a great artist with a little
waif. But those lovely sculptured babes are swathed. Some day, when
the beautiful building of the Federal Children’s Bureau is pointed out
in Washington, I have it in my heart to believe that the genius who
decorates in paint or plastic art will convey the new conception of the
child,—free of motion, uplooking, the ward of the nation.