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American Charities

Creator: Amos G. Warner (author)
Date: 1908
Publisher: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, New York
Source: Straight Ahead Pictures Collection

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In order to ascertain more in detail the family relationships and social conditions, 23,657 child breadwinners between 10 and 14 engaged as cotton-mill operatives, messenger boys, coal-mine workers, dressmakers, etc., tobacco and silk mill operatives, and glass-workers were classified by the census bureau. The results show that these children belonged as a class to large families of six to eight persons, that as a whole they were far more illiterate than non-working children, and that two-thirds of them belonged to families in which there were two, three, and even more older breadwinners. The variations range from 188 families with no older breadwinner, in which the child was apparently the sole dependence, to 264 families having no dependent members, in which all the older members were wage-earners, and in which the labor of children ought to be entirely unnecessary.

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Beyond these figures there are no authoritative American studies as there are in England, France, and Germany, showing the physical deterioration in those who are early put to work at tasks which are too heavy for them or which, by their nature, prevent normal development. Mr. Frederick Hoffmann, the statistician, has contended that there is a tendency in the discussion of child labor, as in all social agitation, to overlook the necessity for a basis of facts and to exaggerate exceptional instances of abuse. On this ground he argues that no legislation on radical lines should be made until it has been ascertained whether children employed at different trades are really physically injured, stunted in their growth, or hindered in their development. (120)


(120) "The Social and Medical Aspects of Child Labor," N. C. C., 1903. For the historical arguments in favor of child labor, see Annals, vol. xxvii., No. 2, pp. 313-320; pp. 281 ff.

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Dr. Felix Adler, on the other hand, declares that it is a "sheer humiliation" to have to prove by argument that a child of ten or twelve years is stunted and crippled by laboring ten hours a day. (121) It would seem that the facts of English experience during the whole of the nineteenth century should be sufficient to prove the contention of reformers that child labor is an inevitable cause of degeneration. As early as 1796 the Manchester Board of Health embodied among their resolutions the following statement of facts: --


(121) Address, National Child Labor Committee, Second Annual Convention, December, 1905.

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"The large factories are generally injurious to the constitution of those employed in them, from the close confinement which is enjoined, from the debilitating effects of hot or impure air, and from the want of the active exercises which nature points out as essential in childhood and youth to invigorate the system, and to fit our species for the employments and duties of manhood. The untimely labor of the night and the protracted labor of the day, with respect to children, not only tend to diminish future expectations as to the sum of life and industry, by impairing the strength and destroying the vital stamina of the rising generation, but it too often gives encouragement to idleness, extravagance, and profligacy in the parents, who, contrary to the order of nature, subsist by the oppression of their offspring." (122)


(122) Reprinted in Annals, vol. xxvii., p. 316; see Hutcheson and Harrison, "History of Factory Legislation."

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English philanthropists continued to prophesy the penalty that must follow belated and imperfect legislation for the protection of factory children. At the end of a century, the physical degeneration of the English population was revealed by the enlistments for the Boer War and the masses of degenerate unemployables. (123)


(123) McKelway, Am. Assoc. Adv. of Sci., 1906; reprinted Annals, vol. xxvii., pp. 312 ff.; Lindsay, Annals, pp. 331-336; Dennis, Everybody's Magazine, February, 1905.

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In the United States, there has been recently accumulating a quantity of descriptive literature on this subject. Dr. Daniel, from personal observation, thus describes the evils of certain tenement sweat-shops: --

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"The finishers are made up of the old and the young, the sick and the well. As soon as a little child can be of the least possible help, it must add to the family income by taking a share in the family toil. A child three years old can straighten out tobacco leaves or stick the rims which form the stamens of artificial flowers through the petals. He can put the covers on paper boxes at four years. He can do some of the pasting of paper boxes, although as a rule this requires a child of six to eight years. But from four to six years he can sew on buttons and pull basting threads. A girl from eight to twelve can finish trousers as well as her mother. After she is twelve, if of good size, she can earn more money in a factory. The boys do practically the same work as the girls, except that they leave the home work earlier, and enter street work, as pedlers, bootblacks, and newsboys. I have seen but two children under three years of age working in tenements, one a boy two and one-half years old, who assisted the mother, and four other children under twelve years, in making artificial flowers. The other, an extraordinary case of a child of one and one-half years, who assisted at a kind of passementerie.

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