[_Mr. Hine’s photographs and the equally vivid impressions he sets
down in the text, tell a story of child labor along the South Atlantic
and the Gulf. In an especial sense these are conditions which public
opinion can bring to the door of the Democratic Party to remedy. For
in these states that party is dominant, as it is in the nation._
_First lies the channel of state action, which has thus far been
laggard, and has been obstructed by the child employing interests of
the South. At the present time, a child labor bill which would reach
this shore work, is pending in Florida. In Mississippi shucking is
prohibited but there is no enforcing agency and the work is going on
as before._
_If the channel of state action fails, child labor reformers point to
such national legislation as would prohibit interstate commerce in
canned oysters and shrimps which are so humanly costly. The recent
decision of the United Stores Supreme Court in the white slave case
would seem to indicate that legislation could be drafted which would
hold in the courts, and several bills along the lines of the much
controverted Beveridge bill of 1907 are now before Congress._
_It is for the Democratic Party in state and nation to proceed through
one channel or the other._—Ed.]
When we speak of child labor in oyster canning, we refer to the cooked
or “cove” oysters, not to the raw ones. Children are not used in opening
raw oysters for the sole reason that their fingers are not strong
enough. Occasionally one finds young boys at work on the boats dredging
for the oysters, but not many children work on the boats, for that is a
man’s job.
The two chief sections engaged in the work of canning oysters and
shrimps are the Gulf Coast, from New Orleans eastward to Florida, and
the Atlantic Coast of Maryland, the Carolinas, and Georgia. Maryland was
the pioneer state, but it has already been outstripped by Mississippi,
and several other states follow close in amount of annual output.
[Illustration:
A TYPICAL OYSTER AND SHRIMP CANNERY
]
[Illustration:
WORKING UNDER THE WATCHFUL EYE OF THE BOSS
]
Every year about October, hundreds of Polish and Bohemian people (some
authorities say thousands) are herded together by various bosses or
“padrones” in Baltimore and other centers of the South shipped over to
the coasts by train and by boat and set up in shacks provided by the
canning companies. We are told by one of the canners, “We give these
people all the modern conveniences.” The modern conveniences appear to
be summed up in artesian wells. If there were no cold or wet weather in
these parts, if waste and sewage were carried off, and if there were no
crowding, these temporary quarters would be endurable; but in cold, or
hot, or wet weather they are positively dangerous, especially to
children. One row of dilapidated shacks that I found in South Carolina
housed fifty workers in a single room house. One room sheltered eight
persons, and the shacks were located on an old shell pile within a few
rods of the factory, a few feet from the tidal marsh where odors,
mosquitoes, and sand flies made life intolerable, especially in hot
weather.
There is a prevailing impression that in the matter of child labor the
emphasis on the labor must be very slight, but let me tell you right
here that these processes involve work, hard work, deadening in its
monotony, exhausting physically, irregular, the workers’ only joy the
closing hour. We might even say of these children that they are
condemned to work.
[Illustration:
RAMSHACKLE SHEDS HOUSING NEARLY FIFTY WORKERS PORT ROYAL, S. C.
]
[Illustration:
THREE-YEAR-OLD ALMA WHOSE MOTHER IS “LEARNIN’ HER THE TRADE”
]
Come out with me to one of these canneries at three o’clock some
morning. Here is the crude shed-like building, with a long dock at which
the oyster boats unload their cargoes. Near the dock is the ever present
shell pile, a monument of mute testimony to the patient toil of little
fingers. It is cold, damp, dark. The whistle blew some time ago, and the
young workers slipped into their meager garments, snatched a bite to eat
and hurried to the shucking shed. The padrone told me “Ef dey don’t git
up, I go and _git ’em up_.” See those little ones over there stumbling
through the dark over the shell piles, munching a piece of bread, and
rubbing their heavy eyes. Boys and girls, six seven and eight years of
age, take their places with the adults and work all day.
The cars are ready for them with their loads of dirty, rough clusters of
shells, and as these shells accumulate under foot in irregular piles,
they soon make the mere matter of standing one of physical strain.
Notice the uncertain footing, and the dilapidated foot-wear of that
little girl, and opposite is one with cloth fingers to protect herself
from the jagged shells—they call them “finger-stalls.” Their fingers are
often sore in spite of this precaution.
When they are picking shrimps, their fingers and even their shoes are
attacked by a corrosive substance in the shrimp that is strong enough to
eat the tin cans into which they are put. The day’s work on shrimp is
much shorter than on oysters as the fingers of the worker give out in
spite of the fact that they are compelled to harden them in an alum
solution at the end of the day. Moreover, the shrimp are packed in ice,
and a few hours handling of these icy things is dangerous for any child.
Then, too, the mornings, and many of the days, are cold, foggy and damp.
The workers are thinly clad, but, like the fabled ostrich, cover their
heads and imagine they are warm. If a child is sick, it gets a vacation,
and wanders around to kill time.
The youngest of all shift for themselves at a very early age. One father
told me that they brought their baby, two months old, down to the
shucking shed at four o’clock every morning and kept it there all day.
Another told me that they locked a baby of six months in the shack when
they went away in the morning, and left it until noon, then left it
alone again all the afternoon. A baby carriage with its occupant half
smothered under piles of blankets is a common sight. Snuggled up against
a steam box you find many a youngster asleep on a cold morning. As soon
as they can toddle, they hang around the older members of the family,
something of a nuisance, of course, and very early they learn to amuse
themselves. For hours at a time, they play with the dirty shells,
imitating the work of the grown-ups. They toddle around the shed, and
out on to the docks at the risk of their lives.
A little older and they learn to “tend the baby.” As a substitute for
real recreation, this baby tending is pathetic.
Mary said, “I shucks six pots if I don’t got the baby; two pots if I got
him.”
As soon as they can handle the oysters and shrimps, they are “allowed to
help.”
The mother often says, “Sure. I’m learnin’ her de trade,” and you see
many youngsters beginning to help at a very early age. Standing on a box
in order to reach the table, little Olga, five years old, was picking
shrimps for her mother at the cannery I visited. Later in the day, I
found her at home worn out with the work she had been doing, but the
mother complained that Olga was “ugly.” Little sympathy they get when
they most need it! Four-year-old Mary was working irregularly through
the day shucking about two pots of oysters. The mother is the fastest
shucker in the place, and the boss said,
“Mary will work _steady_ next year.” The most excitement that many of
them get from one month to another is that of being dressed up in their
Sunday best to spend the day seeing the sights of the settlement.
Now we all know that the amount of work these little ones can do is not
much, and yet I have been surprised and horrified at the number of hours
a day a six or a seven year old will stay at work, and this with the
willing and eager consent of the parents. “Freckled Bill,” a bright lad
of five years, told me that he worked, and his mother added
reproachfully,
“He kin make fifteen cents any day he wants to work, but he won’t do it
steady.”
Annie, seven years old, is a steady worker. The mother said, for her
benefit, of course, “She kin beat me shuckin’, an’ she’s mighty good at
housework too, but I mustn’t praise her too much right before her.”
This is only one of the means used to keep the children at work. Another
method is to tell the neighbors that Annie can shuck eight pots a day.
Then some other child beats the record, and so the interest is kept up,
and incidentally the work is done and the family income enlarged. Can we
call that motherhood? Compared with real maternity, it is a distorted
perversion, a travesty. The baby at Ellis Island little dreams what is
in store for him.
Hundreds of these children from four to twelve years of age are
regularly employed, often as helpers, for the greater part of the six
months if it is a good season. At three and four years of age they play
around and help a little, “learnin’ de trade.” At five and six years of
age they work more regularly, and at seven and eight years, they put in
long hours every working day. This is the regular program for these
children day after day, week after week for the six months of their
alleged—“outing down South.”
I remarked to one of the village people, “It’s a wonder that these
youngsters live through it all.”
“Yes,” she replied, “and when they _don’t_ live through it, there is a
corner over in a little cemetery waiting for them, and _many of them go
there_.”
You see, “They’re only Hickeys.”
I suppose the cemetery is one of the “conveniences” that the company
does not boast about.
[Illustration: