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 Child labor, a menace to industry, educat 
 
 3 1924 019 901 531 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924019901531 
 
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 A MENACE TO INDUSTRY, EDUCATION AND GOOD CITIZENSHIP 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Child Labor in the Southern Cotton Mills i 
 
 A. J. McKelway, D.D., Assistant Secretary of the National Child 
 Committee. 
 
 Child Labor at the National Capital 12 
 
 Hon. Charles P. Neill, U. S. Commissioner of Labor, Washing- 
 ton, D. C. 
 
 Past and Present Arguments Against Child Labor 23 
 
 John Graham Brooks, President of the American Social Science 
 Association, the National Consumers' League, Cambridge, Mass. 
 
 The Physical and Physiological Effects of Child Labor 27 
 
 George M. Kober, M.D., Chairman of District of Columbia Citizens' 
 Child Labor Committee. 
 
 The Federal Government and the Working Children 31 
 
 Florence Kelley, Secretary of the National Consumers' League. 
 
 Child Labor in the Coal Mines 35 
 
 Owen R. Lovejoy, Assistant Secretary of the National Child Labor 
 Committee. 
 
 Child Labor in the Glass Industry 4 2 
 
 Owen R. Lovejoy. 
 
 The Child Labor Problem — A Study in Degeneracy 54 
 
 A. J. McKelway, D.D. 
 
 The Operation of the Illinois Child Labor Law 69 
 
 Jane Addams, Hull House, Chicago, 111. 
 
 Child Labor a National Problem 73 
 
 Samuel McCune Lindsay, Ph.D., Secretary of the National Child 
 Labor Committee. 
 
 Organized Labor's Attitude Toward Child Labor 79 
 
 Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor. 
 
 Overwork, Idleness or Industrial Education 84 
 
 William Noyes, M.A., Teachers' College, Columbia University, New 
 York. 
 
 Parental Responsibility for Child Labor 96 
 
 Graham Taylor, D.D., Warden of Chicago Commons. 
 
 The Operation of the Wisconsin Child Labor Law 99 
 
 Edward W. Frost, Esq., Milwaukee, Wis., Chairman Wisconsin 
 Child Labor Committee. 
 
/3 +~»s? 
 
 PAGE 
 
 A Business Man's View of Child Labor 103 
 
 S. W. Woodward, of the firm of Woodward & Lathrop, Washing- 
 ton, D. C. 
 
 The Essentials of a Child Labor Law for the District of Columbia 106 
 Henry J. Harris, Ph.D., United States Bureau of Labor, and Secre- 
 tary of District of Columbia Citizens' Child Labor Committee. 
 
 Proceedings of the Second Annual Meeting : < 
 
 Program and Resume of the Meeting 113 
 
 Address of Welcome, First Session Washington Meeting. 
 
 Hon. Henry B. F. Macfarland, Commissioner of the District 
 of Columbia 116 
 
 Introductory Addresses at the three Sessions of the Wash- 
 ington Meeting. 
 Felix Adler, Ph.D., Chairman of the National Committee...... 117 
 
 Reports from State Committees 
 
 Robert Hunter, Chairman, New York Child Labor Committee. . 122 
 
 Lillian D. Wald, member of New York Child Labor Committee. 125 
 
 Laura N. Piatt, member of Pennsylvania Child Labor Committee 127 
 
 Howard W. Brown, Esq., member of Legislative Committee of 
 the Massachusetts Consumers' League 132 
 
 H. H Jacobs, Secretary, Wisconsin Child Labor Committee.... 132 
 Prof. Arthur O. Lovejoy, Secretary Missouri Child Labor 
 Committee 133 
 
 A. J. McKelway, for the Southern States 136 
 
 List of Local Child Labor Committees in the United States. . . . 138 
 
 Copyright, 1906, by the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 The papers in this volume are reprinted from The Annals of the 
 American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. XXVII, No. 2, March, 
 1906, in which they were originally published as the Proceedings of the 
 Second Annual Meeting of the National Child Labor Committee. 
 
CHILD LABOR IN THE SOUTHERN COTTON MILLS 
 
 By A. J. McKelway, D.D., 
 Assistant Secretary of the National Child Labor Committee. 
 
 One day last week the train from Memphis, Tennessee, to 
 Spartanburg, South Carolina, through the far famed Land of the 
 Sky, carried a company of fifty people bound for the South Carolina 
 cotton mills. Among those on board who expressed themselves on 
 the subject of these emigrants from Tennessee, were the agent in 
 charge of the emigrants, the conductor of the train, a business man 
 from West Tennessee, a missionary school teacher, a minister of 
 the gospel; while a secretary of the Child Labor Committee took 
 notes of what was said and reserved expression of opinion until 
 now. It might be said that the business and professional life of the 
 South was fairly well represented. 
 
 The minister happened to be a valued member of our North 
 Carolina Child Labor Committee, and, of course, deplored the 
 breaking up of these mountain homes, be they ever so humble, and 
 recognized that the Church had little chance to influence the child 
 when the mill had once claimed him. The school teacher, who had 
 given her life with self-sacrificing zeal to educating the children 
 of the mountaineers, felt that the child was equally beyond the 
 reach of the school when the mill had made the demand for his 
 labor. She was intimately acquainted with the life of the people, 
 knew the bitterness of their poverty in some instances, but she felt 
 that it was nothing short of a calamity for the children to be 
 removed from their mountain farms to the cotton mills. The 
 business man declaimed in two languages, English and the profane, 
 against the scarcity of labor on the farms of West Tennessee on 
 account of this steady draining of the tenant population from the 
 farms to the mills, and he felt the unfair competition that came 
 from the employment of children at man's work and woman's work 
 in the mill, of course the business of the towns suffering from the 
 
2 Child Labor in the Southern Cotton Mills 
 
 non-productivity of the farms, through the scarcity of labor. But 
 the conductor of the train was the most vehement in his denuncia- 
 tion of the mills themselves for the employment of children. He 
 had seen these people leaving their native hills in the full tide of 
 vigorous manhood and womanhood, with rosy-cheeked children. 
 And he had seen some of them return, broken in health and spirits, 
 the fair pictures that had been painted for them by the agent blotted 
 out in the tears of disappointment. If he had thought of the 
 economic view of the question as concerning his own occupation, he 
 would have known that the children who went into the cotton mills 
 in tender years would never be fit in manhood for work on the 
 railroad, with its demand for intelligent and alert workmen. But 
 the point is that the people of the South are talking about this evil 
 of child labor in the cotton mills, and that public sentiment is turning 
 against the industry itself, with indiscriminate condemnation for 
 the permission of such a system. 
 
 The agent of the cotton mills was the only one who regarded 
 his work of inducing these people to leave their homes as a bene- 
 faction and himself as the advance agent of civilization. He said 
 that he had found the worst conditions on the Pigeon River, in 
 East Tennessee, among the Great Smoky Mountains. He had found 
 fifteen living in one hut, who were glad enough to leave it for the 
 mills; that there was no work for the women and children to do 
 except in corn-planting or potato-digging time, while all could work 
 in the mill, wet weather or dry, hot or cold; that he had thirty- 
 two people on board for whom he had to pay half or full fare, 
 besides the children; that he had made seven "shipments" from 
 Newport, Tenn., averaging fifteen to the shipment ; that seven more 
 shipments had gone from Cleveland; that he must have shipped 
 five hundred emigrants in all; that he represented an immigration 
 association which had other agents out beside himself, and here he 
 showed me one of the contracts to be signed by the emigrant, 
 representing the cotton mill community as a sort of earthly paradise, 
 with its free schools, free libraries, amusement halls and secret 
 order rooms, indicating that the twelve-hour day of the cotton mills 
 left considerable time for leisure and culture; that the family was 
 a great deal better off in the mill, where the whole family could 
 make $3.75 a day, than on the farm, where the father had been 
 able to make but seventy-five cents a day; that the law did not 
 
Child Labor in the Southern Cotton Mills 3 
 
 allow a child under twelve to work unless it was a "widder lady's" 
 child, who is worked as young as he is able to work — presumably 
 as the penalty for partial orphanage ; that the parent was supposed 
 to know how old his child was, and his word was taken as to the 
 child's age, though, of course, there were a-plenty of children of 
 six and eight and ten years in the mills, because their parents lied 
 about their ages. 
 
 And then we undertook a little personal investigation of the 
 children themselves. Little Harrison Swan was "going on ten" 
 and was going to work in the Four Mills, at Greenville, S. C, and 
 I doubt not is at work there now. Charley Matthews and a lit- 
 tle comrade of about his size were each "about nine," and both 
 were bound for the mills. And it made one's heart bleed to see the 
 number of children younger still, and the babies at the breast, soon 
 to be cast into the brazen arms of our modern Moloch. For, as 
 our chairman said in an address last year, these people are of the 
 purest American stock on this continent. North Carolina has a law 
 requiring a cotton mill agent to take out a license that costs him a 
 hundred dollars. And yet, from the little village of Clyde, on the 
 Western North Carolina Railway, there went last year to the South 
 Carolina cotton mills fifteen hundred men, women and children of 
 this pure Anglo-Saxon stock, whose fathers fought at King's 
 Mountain and New Orleans against the British, who fought on 
 both sides in the Civil War, for the right as it was given each to 
 see the right; who were the first to volunteer in the war with 
 Spain, but to whom the nation will turn in the hour of her need in 
 vain, as England looked to Manchester and Leeds and Sheffield in 
 vain for men to conquer a handful of South African farmers, when 
 the strength and vigor of her soldiers had been sapped by premature 
 and long continued labor in the mills. 
 
 So it is that Tennessee, which has but thirty cotton mills of 
 her own, is affected by the cotton mill industry of South Carolina, 
 which stands next to Massachusetts in the number of spindles. The 
 problem of child labor is one that affects the South as a whole and 
 touches it at a point which it has hitherto most jealously guarded, 
 the preservation of the vigor of its Anglo-Saxon stock. Nay, we 
 make bold to say that child labor in the South is more a national 
 question than child labor in New England or Pennsylvania. For 
 in the North and East it is chiefly the children of the foreigners 
 
4 Child Labor in the Southern Cotton Mills 
 
 that need protection. No child of American stock has been found 
 in the sweatshops of New York City. But in the South, it is the 
 breed of American that is threatened with degeneration. 
 
 To those unacquainted with actual conditions, the subject 
 assigned me might be supposed to have an unjustly discriminating 
 title. Why consider the cotton mills as the only industry cursed 
 with child labor? It is true that there are several hundred thou- 
 sand children of the South reported in the census as engaged in 
 "gainful occupations." But the large majority of these are at work 
 on the farms, under the eye of their parents, and would not be 
 counted ordinarily except for the peculiarities of the tenant system 
 in the South. This work is not only harmless, but helpful, save 
 where it interferes with attendance at school. It is true also that 
 there are some very young children employed in the tobacco factories 
 of Virginia and North Carolina, in the cigar factories of Florida, 
 in the woolen mills of Kentucky and Tennessee, in the coal mines 
 of West Virginia and Alabama. But the evil here is slight in com- 
 parison with the child slavery of the cotton mills. Nor is this 
 characteristic of the cotton mills peculiar to the South. The first 
 recorded protest against this curse was the opinion of the medical 
 men of Manchester, England, written by Dr. Thomas Percival, 
 upon the occasion of a fever epidemic. They said: "We are 
 decided in our opinion that the disorder has been supported, diffused 
 and aggravated by the injury done to young persons through con- 
 finement and too long continued labor, to which evil the cotton 
 mills have given occasion." That was in 1784. In the year 1796 
 the Manchester Board of Health, organized by Dr. Percival, says 
 that they "have had their attention particularly directed to the large 
 cotton factories established in the town and neighborhood of Man- 
 chester * * * that the children and others who work in large 
 cotton factories are peculiarly disposed to be affected by the con- 
 tagion of fever, and that when such infection is received it is rapidly 
 propagated. * * * The untimely labor of the night and the 
 protracted labor of the day, with respect to children, not only tends 
 to diminish future expectations as to the general 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." 
 
Child Labor in the Southern Cotton Mills 5 
 
 In 1802 began the hundred year war in England, with the first of 
 the factory acts, for the protection of the children, and England is 
 just waking to the fact that protective and effective legislation came 
 too late. That which the Manchester physicians of the eighteenth 
 century had foretold was evident to all the world at the beginning 
 of the twentieth century. Says one of the important magazine 
 articles of the year : "In a day it seemed that the nation awoke to 
 the fact that its physical vigor was sapped. It had no material for 
 soldiers. The percentage of rejections at the enlistment stations 
 appalled every reflective mind. The standards were lowered, the 
 tests were conveniently made easy. Regiments were patched 
 together of boys and anemic youths. They were food for the 
 hospitals, not for powder. Once in South Africa, enteric swept 
 them off like flies. They were only the shells of men. * * * 
 Men gathered from the dispatches that, as a matter of fact, the 
 war was fought on the British side by the Colonials, Irish and 
 Scotch." And now hear the testimony from Manchester after a 
 hundred years: "The president of a Manchester improvement 
 association testified that there were large districts in Manchester 
 in which there were "no well grown children or men or women, 
 except those who have been born in the country. 1 " Every one 
 knows the importance of Manchester as a cotton manufacturing 
 center. Lord Shaftesbury claimed that the evil "spread from the 
 cotton mills" into other industries. 
 
 When New England took up the manufacture of cotton on a 
 large scale the same conditions, perhaps not quite so bad, were ob- 
 served. As late as 1885 in Massachusetts, children as young as ten 
 years of age were allowed to work eight hours a day in the 
 cotton mills. And we have the reason set forth by President Roose- 
 velt why the New England regiments, recruited from the factory 
 districts, were unable to meet the rural regiments from the South in 
 battle. It is a self-evident truth that men who fail in the test of 
 battle are not able to win the more enduring victories of peace. 
 To-day the American workman is hardly to be found in the cotton 
 mills of New England. The wages are below the American 
 standard, and the mills are filled with French Canadians, Greeks 
 and Portuguese. For it is a sort of retributory law of economics 
 1 John Dennie, Jr., Everybody's Magazine, March, 1905. Article, "Hooligan." 
 
6 Child Labor in the Southern Cotton Mills 
 
 that when the parent puts his child to work in competition with 
 himself, the wage scale falls to the child standard, and the whole 
 family can make only so much as the father of the family can in 
 those occupations where there is no demand for the labor of 
 children. 
 
 Before the invention of the cotton gin had turned the South 
 from its manufacturing industry to the raising of cotton for the 
 world's supply, with the consequent growth of African slavery 
 from a patriarchal to a commercial institution, the South was 
 producing a larger quantity and a greater variety of manufactured 
 goods than New England. In 1900 the value of her manufactured 
 products again surpassed that of her agricultural. In the two 
 decades from 1880 to 1900 there was an enormous expansion of 
 the cotton milling industry, in response to the almost passionate 
 demand at the South for her restoration to the position of a manu- 
 facturing people. Edward Everett Hale has satirized the average 
 Southern village as a place where no one was competent to mend 
 a broken pail. Henry Grady drew a picture of the equipment of a 
 funeral which he attended in Georgia, the coffin manufactured here 
 and the hearse yonder, the dead man's clothes woven in Philadel- 
 phia and his shoes coming from Massachusetts, ending with the 
 classic remark that all which Georgia could furnish for the funeral 
 was the "corpse and the hole in the ground." But the cotton 
 exposition at Atlanta in 1886 gave a tremendous impetus to cotton 
 manufacturing, as well as to the diversification of our industries. 
 The climax of enthusiasm at that exposition was reached when the 
 Governor of Georgia appeared one evening arrayed in a suit of 
 clothes whose manufacture had been followed with interest by the 
 spectators, who had seen the cotton for the clothes picked frdm the 
 stalks in the field on the morning of that day. In 1880 there were 
 667,000 spindles in the South. In 1900 there were over seven 
 millions. Now there are 9,205,000. And the industry is still 
 going forward by leaps and bounds. In 1904 there were twice as 
 many cotton manufacturing establishments of all kinds as in 1900. 
 In six years the number of spindles in the two Carolinas has doubled. 
 In 1905 it was found that the South had actually manufactured one 
 thousand more bales of cotton during the year than the North and 
 East. North Carolina stands first of the states in the number of 
 mills, though South Carolina is first among Southern states in the 
 
Child Labor in the Southern Cotton Mills 7 
 
 number of spindles. Old factories are being enlarged and new 
 ones built, and the very latest principles of construction are used 
 and the newest models of machinery. 
 
 This industry is centered in the four cotton producing states 
 of the South, Alabama, Georgia and the two Carolinas. These 
 mills are mainly located in the Piedmont section of these four states. 
 Alabama has sixty-five cotton manufacturing establishments of all 
 kinds, Georgia 169, South Carolina 163 and North Carolina 315. 
 But these figures from the last Blue Book are probably already 
 antiquated. The South still sends to foreign countries 65 per cent. 
 of the cotton she produces. But it is now manufacturing into yarn 
 and cloth a little more than half of the remaining 35 per cent. It 
 would seem only a question of time when the cotton mill in the 
 cotton field, other conditions being equal, must successfully com- 
 pete with the cotton mill in Philadelphia or New England, the two 
 other cotton manufacturing centers of the United States, and with 
 the cotton mills of Old England as well. It is estimated that within 
 sixty milles of Charlotte, N. C, there is enough water power to 
 drive two-thirds of the spindles of England; that is, a million 
 horse-power. In Alabama it is possible from a cotton factory to 
 fire a rifle bullet into a coal mine and then throw a stone into a 
 cotton field. The New England companies that own mills in both 
 New England and the South find their dividends twice or thrice 
 as great from their Southern mills. And it may be added here 
 that they are conspicuous opponents of any legislation in the South 
 that would diminish the labor of children, and that their represen- 
 tatives throng the halls of legislation for the repeal of such inade- 
 quate laws as we have and for the blocking of all humane legislation. 
 
 It is difficult for any one not reared in the South to understand 
 the interest and pride that this expansion of the cotton mill industry 
 has caused among us. The farmer has attributed to this increase 
 of spindles and to the local demand for spot cotton the advance in 
 the price of the staple that is at the foundation of Southern pros- 
 perity. The railroads are dependent in large measure for the increase 
 in tonnage upon the output of the cotton mills, and there has been in 
 several states a hard and fast alliance between the railroads and 
 the cotton mills in opposition to any legislation directed against 
 child labor. It may, perhaps, not be out of place to mention the 
 obvious fact that successful competition with New England in its 
 
8 Child Labor in the Southern Cotton Mills 
 
 chosen field of manufacture has added some zest and spice to the 
 building up of this industry and to the favor with which the people 
 have hitherto regarded it. 
 
 There are now employed in Southern cotton mills, according 
 to the "Blue Book" of 1904-5, which is already a year old, 238,881 
 operatives. Counting the new mills that have gone into operation 
 since, there must be a quarter of a million people thus employed. 
 Of these, a former president of the Cotton Manufacturers' Associa- 
 tion estimates that only 30 per cent, are adults, though by adults 
 he means those over twenty-one. The president of the American 
 Cotton Manufacturing Association, Mr. R. M. Miller, of Charlotte, 
 N. C, in an interview deprecating the raising of the age limit in 
 North Carolina from twelve to fourteen for girls and for illiterate 
 boys, claimed that 75 per cent, of the spinners of North Carolina 
 were fourteen or under. The average for children under sixteen 
 employed in Southern mills, as given by the census of 1900, was 
 25 per cent. On that basis there must be 60,000 children, from six 
 to sixteen, now working in the mills of the Southern States, and my 
 own opinion is that there are 60,000 under fourteen years of age. 
 And just now the mills are running night and day, and even the 
 rule of sixty-six hours a week makes the working day for these little 
 ones for five days of the week twelve hours. 
 
 But while there are natural advantages for the manufacture of 
 cotton near the fields where it is produced, it is a fact easily proved 
 that the child labor system of the South is an advantage to Northern 
 mills. The employment of children is an economic error in that it 
 tends to lower the standard of efficiency in industry and to use up 
 the labor supply in exactly the same way that the putting of colts 
 to the plough would do in agricultural communities. In the Georgia 
 Legislature last summer a noted cotton manufacturer, a member of 
 the Georgia Senate, in an eloquent plea against the child labor 
 system, challenged his associates in that business who were also 
 members of the Senate, to disprove his statement: that the same 
 quality of cotton goods manufactured in the South was sold at a 
 price from two to four cents a pound lower than these goods 
 manufactured in the North. The New England mills that are 
 prospering the most have thrown their old machinery upon the 
 scrap pile and have ceased competition with the South by manu- 
 facturing the finer goods, in which there is the greater margin of 
 
Child Labor in the Southern Cotton Mills 9 
 
 profit. Mills for the manufacture of these finer goods are now 
 being erected in the South, but the demand goes up from them 
 for a better class of labor, and it is another economic truth that the 
 child laborer does not ordinarily develop into a skilled laborer. A" 
 Georgia cotton mill imported skilled laborers for the manufacture 
 of fine goods. The goods were sold at Philadelphia and New 
 England prices. Once some tags containing the name and location 
 of this mill were slipped into the bales of finished cloth by the 
 workmen. The mill management immediately received a letter from 
 the commission merchant urging that this should never be done 
 again; that he had concealed the fact that this particular mill was 
 located in the South, and thereby had been able to get Northern 
 prices for the goods. What a short-sighted policy it is, for the 
 profit of the moment, to be wasting the opportunity for building 
 up at the South an industry that shall be distinguished from the 
 same industry in both New England and Old England, by being 
 free at once from the long hours and the low wages and the infant 
 labor that have been the curse of the cotton mill for a hundred 
 years, and are chiefly now the curse of the Southern cotton mills. 
 
 And, as was shown in the introduction to this address, the people 
 of the South are beginning to feel that the present methods of this 
 industry are exacting too great a price for its prosperity. Physicians, 
 individually and in their state conventions, are following the example 
 of their predecessors in Manchester a century ago, and are protesting 
 against the depreciation of the human stock by this cruel system; 
 against the very presence in a cotton mill, with its flying lint, of 
 young children with their more delicate lungs ; are pointing out 
 the frequent cases of throat and lung diseases they are treating in 
 their hospitals among their little patients from the mills; and 
 especially are protesting against the physical injury to young girls, 
 at the critical period of their lives, and the necessary injury to the 
 future race that is involved. The farmer is beginning to protest 
 against the unfair competition between the mill and the farm in 
 the labor market, the tenant being persuaded to leave the farm for 
 the factory by the inducement that he can put his young children 
 to work at profitable wages, reversing both the law of nature and 
 the law of Scripture, that the parent should lay up for the child 
 and not the child for the parent. The educational leaders are 
 making bitter protest against the increase of illiteracy in the factory 
 
xo Child Labor in the Southern Cotton Mills 
 
 districts, and we do not need any increase of illiteracy in the South. 
 The Southern pulpit, with united voice, is crying aloud and sparing 
 not, inveighing against man's inhumanity to children. The politician 
 is beginning to feel this wave of public indignation against the evil. 
 The Southern press, religious and secular, great dailies and country 
 weeklies, with the exception of the mercenary few, are pointing 
 out the inevitable tendency of child labor in the mills, the fact that 
 the very supremacy of the white race is involved, since the negro 
 is not employed in the cotton mills and his children are freed from 
 that slavery. Southern patriots everywhere are proclaiming that 
 the child should be put above the dividend, that the place for the 
 child is not the mill, but the school. Even the stockholders of 
 the mills are beginning to feel that their profits are of the nature 
 of blood-money and are too dearly won at the price of the lives 
 and the health of the little children. And there are many humane 
 mill owners who, despite the feeling that they should stand together 
 against restrictive legislation, in spite of the false fear that the 
 child labor opponents are labor agitators, are unwilling to play the 
 role of the infamous Herods who "sought the young child's life." 
 In the three States of North Carolina, South Carolina and Alabama, 
 where a twelve-year limit has been established by law, many are 
 trying honestly to observe that law, even with no provision for law 
 enforcement and no system of factory inspection or even of birth 
 registration ; and I am persuaded that in Georgia, unique among the 
 manufacturing States of Europe or America in having no child labor 
 law, many manufacturers, because they are honorable men, resent 
 the reproach that has been brought upon them as a class by the 
 wholesale violation of their own agreement not to employ young 
 children, which is a matter of common knowledge. One of them 
 proclaimed in the Georgia Legislature that the reason he had refused 
 to join the Georgia Industrial Association was that he was unwilling 
 to contribute, as a member of the association, to a legislative fund 
 for preventing a child labor law. In spite of the ineffectiveness of 
 present laws and the violation of solemn agreements and the utter 
 absence of protective legislation in some of the states, I make bold 
 to say, because I know my people and love my people, that the 
 South is too kind-hearted to allow this sacrifice of the children. 
 They know that "to be a man too soon is to be a small man." They 
 believe, with John Ruskin, that "it is a shame for a nation to make 
 
Child Labor in the Southern Cotton Mills 1 1 
 
 its young girls weary." And it is a Southern state, Louisiana, that 
 is unique in making a difference of two years in the age limit for 
 employment between the boys and girls, and in favor of the girls. 
 
 The child is the saviour of the race. What we do for the 
 child, for his protection, for his education, for his training for the 
 duties of manhood, for securing the rights and prolonging the 
 period of childhood, is the measure of what we shall accomplish 
 for the race that is to be. The ancient Hebrew prophet drew a 
 picture of the golden age of the world, that with the Hebrew and 
 the Christian is still in the future, a picture that has never been 
 surpassed in literature. And the central figure on the canvas is 
 that of the little child. The sucking child shall play on the hole of 
 the asp. And when the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard 
 shall lie down with the kid, the lion shall eat straw like the ox, the 
 cow and the bear shall feed — a little child shall lead them. And 
 so it must be with this civilization of ours, if it is to endure. 
 
 Forces of leonine violence, forces of serpentine cunning, forces 
 of wolfish greed, as well as the forces of peaceful industry and 
 domestic labor, must consent to be led in peaceful procession, while 
 walking before them, drawing their might with his innocence, and 
 his helplessness and his promise, is the figure of the little child. 
 God speed the day! God hasten the coming of the age when the 
 child shall not be driven but shall lead, when the child shall not be 
 the prey of the giant forces that are now contending for the mastery, 
 but shall quell and tame their violence and inaugurate the reign of 
 universal brotherhood. 
 
CHILD LABOR AT THE NATIONAL CAPITAL 
 
 By Hon. Charles P. Neill, Ph.D., 
 Commissioner of Labor, Washington, D. C. 
 
 Ever since I was requested by the National Child Labor Com- 
 mittee to discuss the topic: Child Labor at the National Capital, 
 I have been condoled with by numerous friends. There seems to 
 be a feeling everywhere in Washington that we have no child labor 
 here, and that to be asked to discuss such a topic is like being asked 
 to write a chapter on snakes in Ireland. But Washington from time 
 to time awakens to the fact that it has an imperfection or two which 
 it had previously overlooked. We have in some respects a model city, 
 and are proud — warrantably proud, I believe — of the reputation of 
 being probably the best governed city in the United States. In all 
 that makes for material beauty and honest administration there is 
 room for little but praise of the nation's capital. But there are phases 
 of our city life, phases of what we might call its sociological or its 
 moral side in which we are remarkable chiefly for the absence of 
 any preventive legislation and remarkable, I might say, for our com- 
 plete ignorance of the sores that disfigure what is otherwise an 
 unusually clean and healthful civic society. When some years ago 
 an awakening and a developing of social conscience in our large 
 centers of population led to the study of those festering spots we 
 call slums and to efforts for their eradication, Washington looked 
 on with interest, with approving interest, wished the work God 
 speed — and complacently thanked the Lord that it was not as other 
 cities. It came to many of us, therefore, with a peculiar shock 
 when some of those who had led the movement against the slums 
 of London and New York came to Washington, and turning aside 
 from the broad avenues and park-bedotted sections of the city, 
 went nosing into crooked alleys and dirty by-ways, and then 
 
Child Labor at the National Capital 13 
 
 emerged to tell us that scattered here and there through the city 
 were plague spots in which the living conditions of human beings 
 were as deplorable and as fearful as almost anything that could be 
 found in the worst parts of New York or London. The differences 
 were in degree and not in kind. We had not as much of it as 
 those larger centers of population, but what we had was as bad — 
 and what is more, with us there is far less excuse for the existence 
 of such conditions. 
 
 I believe that the case is pretty nearly parallel in the matter of 
 child labor. Here, too, we fancy we are innocent of all guilt. But 
 our complacency on this score is due largely to a disordered mental 
 perspective. The pallid, overworked, stunted child of the mill, 
 the factory, or the mine has been held up so often as an example 
 of the evil of child labor that anything short of this pitiful, this 
 shocking little human figure fails to draw our particular attention. 
 We have here no yawning mills, or factories, or mines, in and out 
 of which emerges a daily procession of those little victims to whose 
 rescue this National Committee has dedicated its unremitting efforts. 
 
 Washington is pre-eminently a residence and not an industrial 
 center, and the opportunity to make use of child labor is conse- 
 quently limited, but in so far as there have been openings we have 
 let pass no chance for sinning against our children. We have risen, 
 or perhaps I had better say, we have stooped to the complete meas- 
 ure of our opportunity. We cannot vie with the States or cities 
 that number their working children by the tens of thousands, but 
 in the restricted area of Washington, with its comparatively small 
 population, we have them by the dozens and by the hundreds, and 
 what is more, we have here forms of child labor that are — or ought 
 to be — shocking beyond expression to any right-thinking man or 
 woman, — and these we have tolerated without having written one 
 word of protest in our laws. So far as I have been informed, we 
 have no law or regulation of any kind in the nation's capital impos- 
 ing restrictions of any sort upon the employment of children. 
 
 It would at any time be a matter of some difficulty to secure 
 complete data concerning the employment of children here. I 
 would have been glad to present here the results of a compre- 
 hensive investigation into child labor in the District of Columbia, 
 but when the matter was brought to my attention the meeting 
 
14 Child Labor at the National Capital 
 
 of this committee at Washington had been well advertised, and 
 it would have been extremely difficult, in the absence of any law 
 on the subject, and the consequent absence of records, to have 
 made successfully a complete investigation of this topic. The 
 very coming of the committee had directed attention to the subject, 
 with the natural result that inquiries would have been everywhere 
 met with suspicion, and the facts could not easily have been drawn 
 out. But the briefest and most casual investigation of the subject 
 has brought to light enough to make Washington heartily ashamed 
 of itself, and to demand that the moral sense of the community 
 shall express itself and be written into law. 
 
 The census of 1900 shows over 2000 children under 15 years 
 of age engaged in gainful occupations in the District of Columbia. 
 The percentage of children under 15 at work in 1900 was nearly 
 double the percentage at work in 1880. And judging by the hasty 
 survey we have made during the last few weeks there is every 
 reason to believe that the evil is still rapidly spreading. 
 
 The only effort that has been made to cope with the evil is a 
 weak one, and represents the application of the poultice rather 
 than of the knife. We have realized the injury done the child 
 and the injury done to the community by allowing educational 
 opportunities to be withdrawn from children at too early an age, 
 but we have not taken a determined stand and prohibited child labor 
 and demanded that the child should be sent regularly to school. We 
 have merely temporized with the evil by starting night schools for 
 those unfortunate little fellows who are compelled to work during 
 the study and the play hours of normal child life. At the open- 
 ing of the night schools this year 655 children 15 years and under 
 had enrolled themselves for study. All of these are children who 
 labor during the hours of daylight, and the extent of the relief we 
 offer them is to permit them to devote to study whatever of energy 
 and strength may be left after a day's work is ended. It may be — 
 I do not know — but it may be that the records of the children in 
 the night schools in many cases compare favorably with the records 
 of the children in the day school ; but I do not believe that anyone 
 would call for figures to justify the statement that any child who 
 is working six, eight, or ten hours a day is fit to devote several 
 hours more in the evening to mental work. By dint of pluck and 
 
Child Labor at the National Capital 15 
 
 energy such a child may succeed well in his study for a while, but 
 in the long- run, in the great majority of cases, the result cannot 
 fail to be harmful, both mentally and physically. 
 
 We have found cases in the past few weeks of children twelve 
 years old attending night school after working from 7.30 in the 
 morning to 5.30 in the evening. And this was work in laundries 
 and in small factories in which this entire period was devoted, 
 except for the lunch hour, to continuous work. 
 
 Is it surprising then when the principal of a night school tells 
 us that night after night before the school session is half over little 
 fellows ask to be excused on the ground that they are too tired 
 to remain longer awake. Nor is it any wonder either that these 
 little fellows whom we permit to work nine or ten hours and to 
 whom we then — in our generosity — offer school facilities, if they 
 will do what is equivalent to adding two or three more hours to 
 their day's work — is it any wonder, I say, that they finally spurn 
 this generous treatment and cease to avail themselves of all that 
 we are offering them. 
 
 The records of the present year show very clearly that the 
 children do not avail themselves very long of the opportunities 
 offered by the night school. Of the 655 children now attending 
 these schools practically eighty per cent, have only been out of the 
 day school one year or less. In other words, of the entire attend- 
 ance less than one-fifth have been attending these schools for two 
 years or over. These figures show conclusively that the children 
 do not continue at night school after they have begun to work, 
 and that practically the begining of their working life is the ending 
 of their school life. 
 
 I said that we had found 12-year-old boys in this district work- 
 ing from 7.30 in the morning until 6 in the evening, but cases have 
 also been found of 12-year-old boys who have worked from 7.30 
 in the morning till 5.30 in the evening and have returned in the 
 night to work from 7.30 till 10, making a thirteen-hour day for a 
 12-year-old-child. I do not know how many of these cases there 
 are for, as I have said, our investigation was a very limited and 
 superficial one. But even if the number should not prove large, 
 we have no occasion to take credit to ourselves for the fact. A 
 community which will permit a single case of this kind to exist, 
 a community that has not written one line into its law to prevent 
 
1 6 Child Labor at the National Capital 
 
 the existence and the growth of such conditons, has little tight 
 to point the finger of shame at those other communities where 
 mills destroy the children by the thousands. The difference in their 
 respective sinning is only in degree. 
 
 Right now there are small factories in the District where 12 and 
 13-year-old boys are working from 7.30 o'clock in the morning till 
 5 in the evening, nine hours a day, and then returning to work 
 again from 6 until 9 o'clock at night. 
 
 Dwarfed and stunted children are sad enough spectacles, but 
 a moral wreck is sadder, infinitely sadder, than any type of physical 
 deformity. There are in the District of Columbia half a dozen 
 forms of child labor which necessarily and inevitably will turn out 
 each year a goodly proportion of moral wrecks. 
 
 Hardly any one would argue that the lobby of a hotel with 
 the ribald jest and the obscene yarn which pass current there 
 when men of a certain type are passing the early or the later hours 
 of the evening is any fit place for a young boy, but the hotels of 
 this city employ children twelve, thirteen and fourteen years of age 
 in occupations which from the viewpoint of moral insurance can 
 only be classed as extra hazardous. 
 
 At 11 o'clock at night I have seen a twelve-year-old boy, em- 
 ployed around the lobby of a hotel, sitting just behind a pair of 
 red-faced men, drinking in eagerly the dirty stories which they 
 were exchanging with one another. The opportunity doubtless pre- 
 sents itself night after night, and the little boy doubtless too avails 
 himself of it. Again, the little page boys of the hotel who go 
 through the various parts of the hotel calling telephone messages 
 and telegrams are sent night after night into rathskellers and cafes 
 in which men and women of at least questionable reputation are 
 giving object lessons of a sort which every intelligent parent 
 would spend every effort to hide from thirteen-year-old children. 
 In the various theaters, too, will be found little boys dressed up as 
 pages who carry water around to the patrons of the theater. I think 
 we would all agree that a theater, even of the best type, is hardly 
 the place for the budding nature of a boy to develop into fullness. 
 
 In looking up instances of child labor here, I visited what I 
 thought was probably the worst theater in the city. It is not so 
 bad perhaps as the kind some other cities might boast of, but it is 
 fair to describe it as the kind of a place where the lecherous and 
 
Child Labor at the National Capital 1 7 
 
 the sodden seek their evening's entertainment. The candy seller 
 here was a boy who might have been fourteen. I found him eagerly 
 taking in the performance, and somewhat shocked at the thought 
 that a boy of his age should spend night after night in such sur- 
 roundings, I made inquiry of an attendant who knew him as to 
 the boy's family circumstances. His father was living — but was in 
 the penitentiary. Criminologists may differ as to the relative im- 
 portance of heredity and environment in shaping the lives of men; 
 but here was a case of a child cursed with whatever burden heredity 
 might have, and whom the community had also allowed to seek an 
 environment that would co-operate with hereditary traits to work 
 for his moral destruction. It does not require the gift of prophecy 
 to suggest that at a later day this community will complete its out- 
 rage on that child by sending him successively to the reform school 
 and later to the penitentiary. 
 
 I think it is generally admitted by all those who have given any 
 study to the question of child labor that what we term the street 
 trades are particularly dangerous to the morals of children, and in 
 these trades the Capital City can furnish some excellent examples 
 of what ought not to be tolerated. 
 
 Although the street trades in Washington engage only one- 
 fourth of the total number of children engaged in all occupations, 
 yet of the number of children under fifteen who have gone to the 
 reform school, or who have been turned over by the courts to the 
 care of probation officers, over two-thirds have come from the 
 ranks of the children engaged in the street trades. These figures 
 are not surprising to any one who has made the least study of 
 child labor, for it is found true everywhere that the street trades 
 serve as a preparatory school for crime. 
 
 At nearly every corner of the busy part of the city there are 
 literally dozens of boys of all ages selling the morning and the 
 evening papers. There are frequently anywhere from six to ten 
 doing the work that a single one could properly do. Their work 
 lacks all the disciplinary value that comes from a steady employ- 
 ment and fixed earnings. Success does not come to a boy from 
 strict attention to business and from the possession of the character- 
 istics of reliability and steadiness. It comes from the skill with 
 which he can outwit his rival and the quickness with which he 
 turns a penny — honestly or dishonestly. 
 
18 Child Labor at the National Capital 
 
 Anyone who will notice carefully the boys from whom he 
 buys his papers from day to day will observe how often the boy 
 is without change for the five cents we offer him for his paper. 
 Unwilling to wait, we tell him to keep the change. If there ever 
 was a mistaken charity, this is one, for the boy learns quickly 
 that more money is to be made in illegitimate than in legitimate 
 ways. Had he made the change his profit on the sale of his paper 
 would have been half a penny; his failure to have the change has 
 given him four cents extra. Speaking in the language of trade, 
 his profit increased 800 per cent. Before long the little boy inten- 
 tionally delays making the change and goes through various skil- 
 ful devices to try your patience — or to give you plenty of time in 
 which to let your generosity develop to the point of letting him keep 
 the change. If the street car is going by, and you show an inclina- 
 tion to make that car, the boy sees his chance and delays his change. 
 This of course is not true of every boy, for there are many little 
 fellows who will follow you to the car and run along beside it to 
 give you the last penny; but the temptation is there, and dozens 
 and dozens of the little fellows fall before it. Again, no one can 
 walk the streets of this city after dark without meeting little boys, 
 sometimes as young as seven and eight years of age, who come 
 up and beg you, "Please, mister, buy my last paper; it is only a 
 penny!" I have seen boys repeat this several times in succession, 
 drawing a fresh paper out from under their jacket as soon as the 
 purchaser of the last one had disappeared. At the junction of two 
 of our principal streets, almost any night at 8, 9 and even 10 o'clock, 
 a little boy who says he is only six years old can be found begging 
 you to buy his "last paper." 
 
 Unless the child is cast in the mold of heroic virtue, the news- 
 boy trade is a training in either knavery or mendicancy. Nowhere 
 else are the wits so sharpened to look for the unfair advantage, 
 nowhere else is the unfortunate lesson so early learned that dis- 
 honesty and trickery are more profitable than honesty, and that 
 sympathy coins more pennies than does industry. 
 
 But bad as the newsboy's training is, demoralizing as it is, 
 there is another service in the District which surpasses even this 
 in its opportunities for moral injury. The newsboys' service is 
 demoralizing, but the messenger service is debauching. 
 
 There are messenger boys here of ten and eleven years old, 
 
Child Labor at the National Capital 19 
 
 and thesq little fellows may be seen at all hours of the day and 
 night in all kinds of weather, working manfully at their tasks. 
 Their hours of work run on an average from seven to nine hours 
 a day. Some of the boys start at 7 o'clock in the morning and work 
 until 4 in the afternoon. Others come on at 8 or 9 and work cor- 
 respondingly later hours in the afternoon. Other boys begin as 
 late as 4 or 5 o'clock in the afternoon and work until midnight. 
 Others begin at midnight and work until 8 in the morning. The 
 dangers of this service are hard to overestimate. Boys are sent 
 at all hours of the day and night indiscriminately into all sorts of 
 places, and after the boy has added to his own experiences the 
 experiences he secures through the exchange of confidences with 
 his little fellow-workers his education has proceeded very far in 
 those lines in which we strive the hardest to limit knowledge 
 amongst children. 
 
 Washington, like every other city, has a section which is 
 without the law ; it is fenced off, as it were, and into it is crowded 
 all that is pathetic, all that is tragic, all that is foul in the life of 
 woman. The name of this section of our cities is not referred to, 
 nor its character discussed before any general audience. It can 
 truly be described as a place which is unspeakable, yet in that 
 district in Washington practically every disreputable house has its 
 call box, and any creature, however foul, has but to press a but- 
 ton and a moment later a boy is sent from a messenger office to 
 place himself at her service for any errand of sin that she may wish. 
 No discrimination seems to be exercised even as to the age of the 
 children that are sent to answer these calls. By the common testi- 
 mony of nearly every police officer in that precinct boys as young 
 as ten and eleven years can be seen answering calls to these houses 
 day after day and night after night. And, saddest of all, this 
 service appeals strongly to the children. The prurient curiosity of 
 the developing boy would itself incline him to like these calls, but 
 they quickly learn also that women who live in these sections are 
 more generous with their earnings in the way of tips than are the 
 people in the more respectable sections of the city. Frequently 
 two or three little boys will be seen trailing after one another in 
 answer to a single call — each hoping that the generosity of the 
 woman will extend beyond the boy who carries her message to his 
 companions who wear the uniform. One little boy who was ques- 
 
20 Child Labor at the National Capital 
 
 tioned in this investigation had been very fortunate on that par- 
 ticular day. He had had several calls in that section and had 
 made $1.50 in tips. He did not realize, and perhaps the "widowed 
 mother" to whose support he was contributing did not realize, the 
 real source of his earnings. This money did not represent legiti- 
 mate salary paid him for honest services rendered, but it represented 
 such a division of the earnings of shame as an abandoned woman 
 chose of her own free will to bestow upon the child. 
 
 It is bad enough to send boys of any age into such a service 
 as I am describing, but it is unspeakably shocking to find that no 
 discrimination whatever seems to be exercised in regard to the ages 
 of the children who are sent to houses of prostitution in answer to 
 calls. It may be a ten-year-old boy or it may be a seventeen-year-old 
 boy — chance alone seems to determine. 
 
 It can be said that all the boys who go into the messenger 
 service do not go to the bad, but it can be said with equal truth that 
 it ruins children by the dozens, and that if any boy does come out 
 of this service without having suffered moral shipwreck he can 
 thank the mercy of God for it, and not the protecting arm of the 
 community that stands idly by and makes no attempt to save him 
 from temptation. 
 
 In conclusion I would like to suggest a reflection or two for 
 this or any other body of men and women that considers the ques- 
 tion of child labor. Let us ask ourselves, Whose is the responsi- 
 bility? For whom do these children work? Let us cast off for a 
 moment the scandalous aspects of the messenger service which I 
 have just been discussing and consider only forms of labor in 
 legitimate lines. The truth is these child victims are working for 
 us. They are working for me, and they are working for you. We 
 enjoy cheaper products because the rights of children are outraged 
 in order to furnish cheap labor. We cannot turn around and 
 lay the blame entirely on the greed of the employer. Wherever 
 shameful conditions of child labor exist it is due just as much to a 
 lack of conscience in the community at large as it is to any greed 
 on the part of particular employers. 
 
 After all has been said, and the case weighed, no valid excuse 
 can be allowed for child labor. The arguments in favor of it 
 reduce themselves to two. The first is that the child's family needs 
 his earnings. But even this is not true in the majority of cases. 
 
Child Labor at the National Capital ai 
 
 Investigations everywhere confirm the fact that in the larger num- 
 ber of instances of child labor the families could have gotten on 
 without it; and even if misfortune and want have reached the 
 point which seemed to demand the labor of the little children of 
 a family, it is mistaken policy to permit this method of relief. The 
 community that has no other form of relief to offer the widow 
 deprived of her natural bread-winner than to snatch her children 
 from her and place upon their shoulders burdens that belong to men 
 is a community that is not very far advanced in either Christian 
 charity or economic intelligence. 
 
 A broader ground is sometimes taken, and it is urged that cer- 
 tain forms of industry cannot be carried on without child labor. 
 Now, if there is any one proposition in economics that all are 
 agreed upon it is that any individual or any community will pay 
 for any service or for any commodity just the value that the service 
 or the commodity represents. If any individual or any com- 
 munity, therefore, will not pay enough for a service to justify the 
 employment of men instead of children, then it goes without saying 
 that the service is not of much importance to such individual or 
 such community, that they will suffer little loss if deprived of it. 
 
 There is one further consideration that it seems to me is par- 
 ticularly pertinent in connection with the annual meeting of the 
 National Child Labor Committee. There are communities, I believe, 
 in which the activities of the Committee are resented on the ground 
 that the community insists on its rights to manage its own affairs 
 without what it is pleased to term outside interference. In the last 
 analysis this usually means that the community insists on its right 
 to debauch its humanity and to demoralize its coming citizens 
 without protest from other human beings that chance to live beyond 
 the bounds of an arbitrary political division. But Washington can 
 make no such claim. We are not responsible for our home govern- 
 ment. The President of the United States and the National Congress 
 represent the real government of our city. The citizens of the 
 country at large select our chief officer and our lawmakers for us, 
 and if they fail to make laws that measure up to what the Child Labor 
 Committee feels are necessary it is perfectly within the sphere of its 
 rights to enter its protest and to make its suggestions. 
 
 Washington, as the nation's capital, and, governed as it is by 
 the selected and collective intelligence of the country at large, 
 
22 Child Labor at the National Capital 
 
 should be a model in everything that pertains to civic advance" 
 ment. It should have a model child labor law, and the mere fact 
 that our children are being sacrificed only by dozens instead of 
 by hundreds and by thousands, as they are in other places, is a 
 poor plea to enter in justification of the absence of any child labor 
 legislation in the District of Columbia. In Washington there is 
 little excuse for child labor; here it has not yet secured the foot- 
 hold that it has in other places ; here it has not yet arrayed behind 
 it interests that do not wish to be disturbed, and for these very 
 reasons we should now draft and place upon our statute books a 
 model child labor law that would serve as a guide and an encourage- 
 ment to other and less fortunate communities which are beginning 
 their struggle against an already intrenched evil, 
 
PAST AND PRESENT ARGUMENTS AGAINST 
 CHILD LABOR. 1 
 
 By John Graham Brooks, 
 President of the American Social Science Association, the National Con- 
 sumers' League, etc., Cambridge, Mass. 
 
 I suppose it has happened to almost all of us having looked 
 even superficially at a subject like that of the evils of child labor 
 to feel that the arguments that are really strongest in his mind 
 are not of much practical value, certainly for any propaganda or 
 definite legislative proposal. 
 
 I am going to try to bring out one point which I hope at any 
 rate will be of some value, but first I shall note two of these stronger 
 arguments that would probably weigh lightly before any legis- 
 lative committee. 
 
 I imagine that the future, more mature and wiser than we 
 are, will look back at us precisely as we look back upon those who 
 first put childhood to such cruel uses in English mills in the last 
 century. Relatively to our own time and light, we are perhaps 
 even more blameworthy. To think that we should keep a child 
 under school instruction just up to the point, certainly the most 
 delicately important one educationally in his life, when the sex 
 consciousness begins to appear; the very period when ordered 
 discipline is necessary, of the highest sort, and the noblest appeals 
 to the imagination. Just at that point we stop his schooling and 
 throw him out into the great rough and tumble of modern industry. 
 A wiser future will mark that down against us as a crime. I 
 am not going to argue this, but it would weigh more than any 
 practical issue that I could present. Again, the condition of mod- 
 ern industry, the pace that it takes, the routine character of it 
 and the almost pitiless requirements are all against the child's 
 one resource of learning the art of fellowship through play. The 
 play instinct is crippled in mill and factory and mine. For this, 
 
 l Address given in the Symposium on the Evils of Child Labor, at the Second 
 Session of the Annual Meeting, Washington, December 8, 1905. 
 
24 Post ond Present Arguments Against Child Labor 
 
 too, the world of the future will criticise us where we employ child 
 labor, as we criticise those against whom Shaftesbury made his 
 great fight. 
 
 Mr. Carnegie is reported to have said the other day that the 
 slave had a cash value of $1,000, but that our healthy immigrants 
 were worth four times that man for man. Yet these are mostly 
 uninstructed. If Mr. Carnegie's estimate is even approximately 
 true, how much more should we get if our children were kept out 
 of industry and put where they belong, at school, until their 
 faculties were really strong and disciplined and they were matured 
 for the life struggle. What an infinite treasure of labor force 
 would be added to us if we were to do that. And that touches 
 only the economic side of the argument. I have often said if I had 
 some sort of magic power to do one single thing to help in the 
 struggle, it would be this: I would keep under the best system 
 of education every mother's son, every child, until it was seventeen 
 years of age. It would relieve that kind of competition for all 
 those that are least able to bear it at the bottom of this social or 
 industrial scale, aside from fitting and strengthening the child and 
 society generally. Nor should we neglect the plainest lesson in 
 this long history, which is that since 1802 when the English legis- 
 lature began to take the child out of the industries, when they were 
 working at six, seven, eight years of age interminable hours, there 
 has not been one single step taken to release the child from the 
 burdens of industry that has not enriched the child life, the life 
 of the family and that of society at large. 
 
 And that brings me to my one point. I cannot state it better 
 than to recall what I heard in a country district from a splendid 
 old farmer of my acquaintance whom I have seen two or three 
 times in a sort of rage because his children insisted upon buying 
 underclothes for winter weather. He said, "I didn't have any 
 underclothing, and I got on, didn't I?" I have also seen him in a 
 rage because his children wanted to go to a dentist. He said, "I 
 never went to a dentist. I never had a dentist's bill to pay, and I 
 got on well enough." The strict counterpart of this argument I 
 have heard again and again in the South, and I have heard it here 
 in the North in defence of child labor, "I went to work when I was 
 seven or eight years old, and my brother went to work and my father 
 went to work, and every one I knew went to work, and we have 
 
Past and Present Arguments Against Child Labor 25 
 
 got on, haven't we?" This is but another way of saying with the 
 old farmer, "My children don't need flannels or a dentist any more 
 than I did." It fails to take account of every change in the standard 
 of refinement in our modern life. Let me illustrate: The most 
 eminent German, in my opinion, that has ever come to this country 
 told me the way he was admitted to the legal bar. He came here 
 as a forty-eighter, and after studying Blackstone and all the other 
 books very carefully he went down to a mid-western state to see 
 the judge who had charge of the examinations. The judge instantly 
 fell in love with him, as a great many other people have. He said, 
 "Where did you come from?" "I came from Germany, from the 
 revolutionary fury of '48." The judge was exceedingly interested 
 and asked him all sorts of questions, and could not leave him alone 
 on account of his fascination for the history of this young German. 
 And as an hour passed away, the judge said, "Let us take a drink," 
 and they went downstairs and took a drink. When they came 
 back this young man was very restless that his examination hadn't 
 begun. His story went on, and finally they had another drink. The 
 young man finally said, "I must have my examination. I have to 
 go back by horseback, and it is a long ride." And he said the old 
 judge took out his watch and exclaimed, "God bless you, young 
 man, you have been a member of this bar for two hours and fifty 
 minutes." 
 
 There are two whiskies and an admission to the bar. What 
 happens to-day in my own community? In the first place, the 
 boy has to have a college education or he cannot take the first 
 step to get into the law school. He has to reach a certain standard, 
 and he has to enter on a course of study that is very much more 
 difficult than any work in college. And every one has to use all 
 his energy, and after three years they are not admitted to the 
 bar, but they first get a chance to be examined. Here you have it; 
 from two whiskies up to this raised standard of three strenuous 
 years of study. 
 
 It matters not whether it is a doctor, a lawyer or a car- 
 penter or a machinist. Almost in every important work of life the 
 standard requires new efficiency and new training and an altogether 
 altered quality of work and efficiency. 
 
 Those who oppose the new child legislation are falling back 
 on the two whiskies argument: "Oh, I got along pretty well and 
 
26 Past and Present Arguments Against Child Labor 
 
 I went to work very early," forgetting those profound changes that 
 have taken place in all industries and in every bit of work in which 
 the standard has been greatly raised. It is difficult to exaggerate 
 the difference in the standard of requirements for the ordinary 
 child of to-day if he is to get out of it anything like the advantage 
 that is really his. He has a right to the standard which the new 
 age sets, or he is handicapped and defrauded. 
 
 As with all the professions so with all the trades, we are 
 cruel to the child beyond any power I have to describe it, unless 
 we recognize this difference in the standard of requirements. It has 
 been always considered that there is no better test of civilization than 
 the way women are treated in society, but there is a better test, and 
 that is the way we treat the child. By as much as the child is 
 deprived of education that will enable him to take up the new 
 pace that industry sets, and then to mature his strength and 
 faculties so he may do his work to his own advantage and to the 
 advantage of society generally, by just so far as we deprive the 
 boy of the chance of lengthening school life, we are not only 
 inflicting rank injustice upon him, we are unjust to the future of 
 the family and to the community. Even the thing called civilization 
 is to that extent defeated and discredited. 
 
THE PHYSICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF 
 
 CHILD LABOR 1 
 
 By George M. Kober, M.D., 
 Chairman of District of Columbia Child Labor Committee. 
 
 As chairman of the local committee I desire to express our 
 deep appreciation of the efforts of the National Child Labor Com- 
 mittee to secure a model child labor law for the District of Columbia. 
 I deem it a special privilege to preside over one of the sessions of its 
 meeting when the subject for discussion is "New Legislation, with 
 special reference to the needs of the District of Columbia." 
 
 Child labor as a menace to industry, education, good citizen- 
 ship and to the health of the children has been forcefully presented 
 in most effective and instructive addresses, and will doubtless be 
 again emphasized. There is one phase of the question which strongly 
 appeals to me, and that is the effect of premature and involuntary 
 labor upon the health and the physical welfare of the child. 
 
 Physiologists have long since demonstrated that the muscles 
 of the average child attain only at the age of thirteen a certain 
 amount of strength and capacity for work. Up to this time the 
 muscular fibers contain a large per cent, of water, and in conse- 
 quence are very tender and immature. As a consequence of this 
 imperfect muscular development it is not surprising that we should 
 find such a large percentage of children engaged in workshops, fac- 
 tories, or even at the writing desk or the merchant counter, develop 
 lateral curvature of the spine and other muscular deformities, not 
 to mention their general weakness and predisposition to rickets, tu- 
 berculosis and other pulmonary diseases ; all of the bad effects are, 
 of course, very much intensified by unsanitary environments, espe- 
 cially when these occupations are attended by the inhalation of dust, 
 impure air and injurious gases. 
 
 1 Introductory address, as presiding officer -\t the Third Session of the Annual Meeting 
 "Washington, D. C., December 9th, 1005. 
 
28 The Physical and Physiological Effects of Child Labor 
 
 Child labor differs in degree, but never in kind. The ordinary 
 messenger or newsboy perhaps does not sacrifice his health, but 
 his morals and his education must inevitably suffer. And so we 
 see different gradations until some of the most atrocious forms of 
 child labor are encountered. 
 
 Dr. Daniels, in speaking of her personal observation in New 
 York, tells us that a child of three can straighten out the leaves 
 of tobacco and can stick together the material which forms the 
 stems of artificial flowers. At four he can put the cover on paper 
 boxes; between four and six he can sew on buttons and pull bast- 
 ing threads. A girl between the age of eight and twelve can 
 finish trousers as well as her mother. After she is twelve years, if 
 of good size, she can earn more money in the work shops, because 
 she will be accepted if her size justifies the evasion of the law. The 
 boys practically perform the same labor as the girls, except that 
 they leave home earlier and engage in street work as peddlers, news- 
 boys or bootblacks. Dr. Daniels has actually seen two children 
 under three years of age working in the tenements of New York, 
 one a boy two and a half years of age assisting the mother, and 
 four other children under the age of twelve, in making artificial 
 flowers. These children earned from fifty cents to a dollar and a 
 half a week, obviously at the expense of health and education, rights 
 which neither the parents nor the community nor the State have 
 a right to withhold. A feeling seems to exist in Washington that 
 there is no special need for the enactment of a law to prevent 
 or regulate child labor, but the same class of people told us years 
 ago that we had no slums, and hence there was no occasion for 
 the betterment of the housing conditions, when, as a matter of fact, 
 investigations have shown conclusively that in many respects we 
 are as badly, if not worse, off than the cities of New York and Chi- 
 cago. Those who are familiar with the subject know that there is 
 a local situation which demands immediate legislation. But whether 
 the number is large or small it matters little, and it is clearly the 
 duty of every community to resort to preventive measures against 
 this hydra-headed evil. 
 
 You will say, what is the use of enacting child labor laws 
 when such atrocious instances are possible in the city of New York, 
 where child labor laws exist. I grant that just such evils will be wit- 
 nessed in New York or any other American city so long as public 
 
The Physical and Physiological Effects of Child Labor 29 
 
 opinion and the conscience of the American people is not sufficiently 
 aroused to demand the enforcement of the law. 
 
 It has been estimated that there are in this city between fifteen 
 hundred and two thousand children under the age of fourteen 
 engaged in wage-earning occupations. And we feel that the enact- 
 ment of a suitable law would guard these children and afford them 
 a better opportunity of becoming useful citizens, and the con- 
 sumer of goods would at least have the satisfaction of knowing that 
 they are not stained with the sweat and blood of helpless children. 
 
 How many more of the six thousand children between the ages 
 of eight and twelve who are not now at school are engaged in wage- 
 earning occupations we do not know. But whether they are at work 
 because of the necessities of their parents or because of their own 
 disinclination to study, the law should intervene and establish an 
 effective remedy. 
 
 It has been urged, and no doubt in many instances quite cor- 
 rectly, that child labor is encouraged by the greed of the employ- 
 ers, but I am in a position to know that the business men of this 
 city would hail with delight the enactment of a child labor law. 
 As it is now, it is not always an easy matter to refuse to lend a 
 helping hand in apparently deserving and pathetic cases. 
 
 It is indeed deplorable, as pointed out by Dr. Adler, that so 
 little has been accomplished in the way of educating the public to 
 sound and full appreciation of the evil consequences of child labor, 
 and it is especially humiliating to know that the District of Colum- 
 bia, the seat of the national government, is the only community with 
 the exception of Georgia, Idaho, Nevada and the Indian Territory, 
 which is at present without legislation of some kind on the subject 
 of child labor. 
 
 The merits of the proposed bill will be pointed out to you 
 by subsequent speakers. We know that the commissioners are 
 deeply interested in this vitally important question, and we con- 
 fidently look to Congress for relief, and to you for your hearty 
 sympathy and support. 
 
 I have already referred to the fact that a determined effort 
 will be made to secure the enactment of a child labor law at the 
 present session of Congress. The reason the law was not enacted 
 last year was on account of the shortness of the session and the 
 lateness with which the bill was introduced. There was very lit- 
 
30 The Physical and Physiological Effects of Child Labor 
 
 tie opposition,— although there is always some opposition to move- 
 ments of this character, — yet I think there is every reason to hope 
 for the speedy enactment of this law. The bill which has been 
 presented in Congress this session is not exactly a model child labor 
 law, but the commissioners thought it best to introduce it in the 
 present form, and will welcome any amendments that are deemed 
 desirable or necessary in the light of subsequent discussion. 
 
THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND THE WORKING 
 
 CHILDREN 1 
 
 By Florence Kelley, 
 Secretary of the National Consumers' League. 
 
 Never again can the problem of the working children in this 
 Republic be regarded as merely a local one, when the textile indus- 
 try stretches from Texas, Alabama and Georgia northward through 
 all the Atlantic States to Pennsylvania, New York and New Eng- 
 land; when the glass industry, to-night, while we are gathered 
 here, is employing little boys in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, 
 Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, and Mis- 
 souri ; and in only two of those states — Ohio and Illinois — is there 
 even a pretence that it is illegal to have children working all 
 night. Surely the American people can never again honestly regard 
 these industries, and the conditions attending labor in them, as 
 matters of merely local moment. It is only necessary to state the 
 situation to make clear how fatuous is the attempt to deal with the 
 textile industries through the legislatures of a dozen different 
 states ; and with the glass industries through the legislatures of 
 a second dozen states. 
 
 These industries never consider themselves as local ones when 
 they come to Congress and ask the nation to protect their interests- 
 Then they appear as a unit, having identical reasons for their 
 action, identical arguments in their own behalf. 
 
 When it is a question of the nation checking, even indirectly, 
 their cruel robbery of the cradle, they urge that it is with West 
 Virginia or with New Jersey that the friends of the children should 
 deal, the state legislatures having been hitherto, on the whole, satis- 
 factory to the employers. 
 
 •Address in the Symposium on the Evils of Child Labor, at the Second Ses- 
 sion of the Annual Meeting, Washington, December 8, 1905. 
 
32 The Federal Government and the Working Children 
 
 Never again can it be a matter of merely local concern what 
 hours the children are working. They will be the republic when 
 we are dead, and we cannot leave it to the local legislators, here 
 and there, to decide unobserved what sort of citizens shall be pro- 
 duced in this or that State, whether they shall be strong in body, 
 mind and character, or whether they shall grow up enfeebled by 
 overwork in early childhood. 
 
 In the past this great Republic has cared so little about its 
 children that, though the census of 1900 reported half a million of 
 them between the ages of ten and fourteen years who could neither 
 read nor write — native children, not immigrants (the little black 
 children in the cotton fields picking cotton, and the little white 
 children in the cotton mills, spinning and helping to weave it) — when 
 the census showed, five years ago, half a million of these children, 
 what attention was given to the facts? 
 
 They were concealed in two obscure pages of the census of 
 1900, until, within a month, in November, 1905, there has come, 
 five years belated, a bulletin giving particulars. The children who 
 were ten years old in 1900 are fifteen years old now, and the 
 children who were thirteen years old are many of them married 
 now. And now we get those belated tidings ! 
 
 As to the cotton crop, we Americans are so very eager! We 
 have even been willing to corrupt the men who knew anything 
 about it if they would but give us tidings a few hours ahead of the 
 legal moment of publication. But for information about the chil- 
 dren who work up the cotton crop, we can wait until they are 
 grown up and married! We Americans care so little about the 
 working children, who are citizens in the bud, who will be the 
 Republic when we are dead ! 
 
 For more than a generation we have had a so-called Depart- 
 ment of Education. It has published information so inconclusive 
 and so belated that it is the laughing stock of Europeans inter- 
 ested in our educational institutions; so belated, moreover, that it 
 is worthless for our own uses in obtaining improved legislation in 
 this country. 
 
 Meanwhile it is left to a feeble volunteer society to collect a 
 few hundred dollars, here and there, and publish in January, every 
 year, the new statutes which have taken effect in the twelve months 
 next preceding. Why does not the Department of Education do 
 
The Federal Government and the Working Children 33 
 
 this? Why has not the Department of Labor always done this? 
 Why have they not made it a joint undertaking? What are these 
 departments for, if they are not to furnish to the people informa- 
 tion concerning the working children at a time when it can be used ? 
 
 So far as I have been able to learn by studying the reports 
 of these two departments, the hieroglyphics on the pyramid of 
 Cheops are not more remote from the life of to-day than their 
 statistics are remote from the life of the working children of 
 Georgia and Pennsylvania. 
 
 It is time to recognize that the children who will be the 
 Republic have rights now. It is important that the American 
 people should know under what conditions they are living, and 
 working, and becoming invalids or criminals, thousands of them 
 dying in childhood and early youth. Surely it is more important 
 to know these things, that we may act upon the knowledge, than 
 to be informed with furious haste by the associated press whenever 
 another great department hopes that it has found some new variety 
 of insect which may destroy the boll-weevil. Surely it is more 
 important that the American people should know what is really 
 happening to its young children in industry than that we should 
 learn at brief intervals how the young lobsters are faring on the 
 coast of Maine and the young trout in the remote streams of 
 Northern Wisconsin. 
 
 At last, there is a proposal that we should rise from our low 
 position among the nations when we are ranked according to our 
 care of our children. We are not, when graded according to our 
 care and education of our working children, in the same class of 
 enlightened and humane nations as England, France, Germany, 
 Holland, Switzerland and Scandinavia. Rather, we rank with 
 Russia, in the matter of our half million illiterate native children in 
 this century, as we ranked with Russia in the matter of slavery and 
 serfdom in the last century. Measured by our cruel neglect of our 
 working children, it is undeniably with Russia that we stand to-day. 
 
 Those nations which have cared effectively for their working 
 children have done so through their central governments, not, as 
 we have vainly attempted, through fifty-two legislatures. It is 
 now proposed that we should limp haltingly after those nations, 
 though Congress may be by no means ready to legislate in a unified 
 
34 The Federal Government and the Working Children- 
 
 way for the children as it does, for instance, for the textile industry, 
 the glass industry and the interests of agriculture. 
 
 It is proposed that there should be devoted to the children one 
 bureau of our government, by means of which the people should 
 be able to obtain, from month to month, recent trustworthy infor- 
 mation concerning everything that enters into the lives of the 
 children ; everything that makes for or against their vital efficiency, 
 their educational opportunity, their future industrial and civic value. 
 
 A bill will be presented to Congress, with the hope that there 
 may be established a bureau of research and publicity in the interests 
 of all the children in the Republic. 
 
CHILD LABOR IN THE COAL MINES 1 
 
 By Owen R. Lovejoy, 
 Assistant Secretary of the National Child Labor Committee. 
 
 The first field investigation conducted by the National Child 
 Labor Committee was among the anthracite mines of Pennsyl- 
 vania. Facts revealed in the hearings before the commission ap- 
 pointed by President Roosevelt to seek a settlement of the great 
 strike of 1902 led the committee to believe that conditions existed 
 there which would serve not only to illustrate prominent evils of 
 premature child labor in other sections of our country, but also that, 
 once known, would arouse public opinion to give such expression 
 in legislative action as would bring about a higher plane of life in 
 the anthracite region itself. The committee believed a proper edu- 
 cational preparation for American life was possible for the children 
 of the mining district, and this without bringing undue hardship 
 upon the families, and without in any way hampering the legitimate 
 processes of the coal industry. 
 
 This investigation, carried on extensively and at different sea- 
 sons during the past eighteen months, has demonstrated the wisdom 
 of the committee's action. In every part of the region visited child 
 labor was found to exist. No colliery has been visited in which 
 children have not been found employed at ages prohibited by the law 
 of the State. Various estimates have been given of the number of 
 boys under fourteen and under sixteen years employed in and 
 about the hard coal mines of Pennsylvania. The figures have ranged 
 from 6,000 to 12,000 under fourteen years. All of these estimates 
 are generalizations, based upon specific data which may, and may 
 not, be sufficient. Our own estimates are based on the study of a 
 number of boroughs believed to be typical of the region, and have 
 been gathered in co-operation with school officials, mine officers, 
 
 1 Address at the Philadelphia session and at the Second Session of the Second 
 Annual Meeting of the National Child Labor Committee, Washington, D. C, Decem- 
 ber 8, 1905. 
 
36 Child Labor in the Coal Mines 
 
 and other citizens interested in the moral aspects of our work. 
 Without entering upon a detailed discussion of the statistics collected, 
 it may be stated that we have estimated not less than 9,000 or 10,000 
 boys under fourteen years of age in the mines and breakers of the 
 region, while the percentage in one borough investigated, if car- 
 ried through the entire region, would give a total of 12,800. By the 
 laws of the State no child under fourteen years of age may be em- 
 ployed at any labor about a coal mine. 
 
 Let us not be misunderstood. It is not claimed that there is 
 open and rebellious violation of the laws by the mining companies 
 in the employment of little children. Through defects in the law, 
 sought to be remedied by legislation last year, it was possible for 
 any child of any age, through the perjury of the parent and the 
 pathetic greed of the notary public who would record any kind of 
 falsehood for a fee of twenty-five cents, to secure a certificate al- 
 leging him to be fourteen years of age. With this official docu- 
 ment a boy might go to the outside foreman at a mine and secure 
 employment if the mine were in need of boys. It is obvious to a 
 man of average discernment that a boy of nine or ten years is not 
 fourteen, and one breaker boss smiled significantly as he said to 
 me last May, "It's queer how all these little fellows who have come 
 to us this spring are just fourteen and were all born on the first of 
 May." At this mine twenty boys were found in a single group, only 
 three of whom were fourteen years old, while a picture was taken of 
 five of the boys, three of whom were nine and two were ten years old. 
 At another mine the following memorandum is found in my field 
 notes : "Here twenty-two boys were interviewed at the noon inter- 
 val, all of whom admitted they were under fourteen except one 
 Scotch boy (whose age, by the school record, was found to be ten) 
 and one Irish boy of fifteen, who has been out of school and at 
 work for more than six years. Of the others, one was nine (eight 
 by the school record), three were ten, two were eleven, six were 
 twelve, and three were thirteen (although the school record showed 
 one of the thirteen-year-old boys to be eleven.)" 
 
 But while these men are certain that they are employing boys 
 younger than the prescribed age, they are not guilty of violation of 
 law, since every boy has come with an official document, issued by 
 authority of this great State, declaring him to be of the legal age 
 for employment. It may be asked whether these men are not hard 
 
Child Labor in the Coal Mines 37 
 
 and unfeeling to commit this moral offence, even though shielded by 
 a defective law. The answer is that many of them received their 
 education in the coal breaker in days when school privileges were 
 less available than now. Many frankly affirm their belief that these 
 early years in the coal breaker are better for the boys than the same 
 number of years spent in school. Furthermore, there are many boys 
 so near the legal age as to render detection of fraud by the employer 
 impossible — and if these certificates are accepted by him in one case, 
 he cannot refuse to accept them in all cases. And whether these 
 mine officials approve or disapprove the system, they are employed 
 by the mining company to produce the maximum output at the mini- 
 mum cost. Their business is not child protection but coal mining, 
 and no commonwealth should place upon men who are directly inter- 
 ested in the evasion of a law, the burden of its enforcement. 
 
 By the child labor law which went into effect May 1, 1905, the 
 chief defects in former laws were removed, documentary evidence 
 of age being required and certain educational standards prescribed. 
 Unfortunately, by the declared unconstitutionality of one section of 
 the law, the whole has been regarded in many sections as inoperative, 
 and extensive investigations in many boroughs, subsequent to May 
 1st, failed to show any important improvement as a result of the law. 
 
 The work of the small boys at the hard coal mines is principally 
 in the breakers. Pictures of little children toiling under heavy bur- 
 dens and in noisome channels in coal mines are of the past — thanks 
 to an awakened humanity and improved machinery. The chief 
 duties of the few small boys who work inside the hard coal mines 
 to-day are as mule drivers, spraggers, and gate-tenders. Probably 
 a larger percentage of boys are employed inside the mines in the 
 Wyoming Valley than in other parts of the region, because the 
 gaseous condition of the mines in that region requires many doors 
 to regulate the air currents. 
 
 In the coal breaker the principal employment of the boys is in 
 picking slate from the coal. Seated on a board laid across the 
 chute in which the coal comes pouring down from the heavy 
 cylinders where it was dumped by the mine cars to be broken into 
 sizes, the little boy regulates the flow of coal by the position of his 
 feet in the chute and picks out the slate and rock as the coal runs 
 past. In the breakers where the coal is cleaned dry, the cloud of 
 dust is so dense that light cannot penetrate, and even on bright days 
 
38 Child Labor in the Coal Mines 
 
 the breaker boys are compelled to wear mine lamps in their little 
 caps to enable them to see the coal at their own feet. On sultry 
 days the dust cloud is often seen hanging like a heavy pall above 
 the great coal breaker for an hour after the work of the day is done. 
 
 Many coal breakers in the anthracite region no longer clean 
 the coal dry, but have introduced cleaning machinery, and the wet 
 process which greatly improves the conditions of labor for the 
 breaker boys. That all coal breakers might introduce these im- 
 provements is generally conceded by coal operators. The improve- 
 ments have been made, however, only in portions of the coal region 
 in which the coal is so dirty as to render dry-cleaning impossible — 
 not from consideration for the comfort of the laborers. The machin- 
 ery for wet cleaning is expensive and it is doubtful whether any 
 coal mining company will voluntarily introduce the improvements 
 unless compelled by the quality of the coal. 
 
 While the labor of young boys is most convenient in this depart- 
 ment of the process of preparing coal for market, there is nothing in 
 the nature of the work itself which makes it impossible for a larger 
 boy or a man. It is only because of the economy in wages that 
 child labor is so greatly preferred to the work of men, although 
 the young boy appears to endure the labor of sitting bent over a coal 
 chute all day with less fatigue, and can work at a speed alleged to 
 be greater than that of the man. 
 
 Much has been said of the extreme danger to boys working in 
 the coal mines and breakers. Probably there has been an exag- 
 gerated idea of the dangers. Every reasonable precaution appears 
 to have been taken by most mining companies against danger and 
 loss of life. It is true we occasionally hear of a little boy in the 
 mine run over by a coal car, or kicked to death by a mule, or 
 fatally injured by a piece of falling slate. And in the coal breakers 
 little boys are sometimes ground in the large crushers that break 
 the coal, caught in the wheels or other machinery, or buried in a 
 stream of coal — the death suffered recently by the little boy in 
 Pittston. But few of these accidents occur in the regular routine of 
 the boys' duties. Few, probably, which with forethought and ma- 
 ture judgment — two of the qualities so rare in a small boy — might 
 not have been avoided. 
 
 I believe that general statistics will bear out the statement that 
 
Child Labor in the Coal Mines 39 
 
 boys working in the coal breakers suffer no more frequently from 
 injury, as compared with the men injured there, than is the case in 
 other industries. A recent study of the reports of factory inspectors 
 in several of our industrial States, shows a remarkable uniformity 
 in the precentage of accidents. We find in the textile mills, foun- 
 dries, steel and iron mills, glass houses and machine shops employ- 
 ing children that, in proportion to the number of children employed, 
 accidents to children under sixteen years of age are from 250 to 
 300 per cent, more frequent than to adults. These unfeeling figures 
 present a terrible arraignment of our industrial system. All our 
 boasted protection of home and childhood stands ashamed before 
 the bare fact that, in working out our industrial purposes in Amer- 
 ica, we subject our little children to a danger nearly three times as 
 great as that incurred by men, instead of throwing about the weak 
 and defenseless those special safeguards invoked by their helpless- 
 ness — a humane principle recognized as fundamental by nearly 
 every savage tribe in the history of human evolution. 
 
 The menace to morals is not less than that to health. The life 
 of the little boy in the coal breaker is exposed to all the rough 
 usage and hardening surroundings which characterize a form of 
 labor requiring a maximum of manual and a minimum of mental 
 exertion. To sit all day over a dusty coal chute, fixing the mind 
 solely on the distinction between a piece of coal and a piece of rock 
 or slate, and in the close company of a group of boys free from 
 the restraints of home or school, is a kind of preparation for a nine- 
 year-old boy from which, it is true, many have emerged to noble 
 and educated manhood, but from which I venture every right-think- 
 ing father and mother who reads these words would make all pos- 
 sible sacrifice to shield their own boys. It is unnecessary here to 
 enter upon a discussion of the evils of profanity, obscenity, gambling 
 and various forms of physical intemperance. It is enough to say 
 that the lives of many of the small boys in the coal region are 
 already so tainted by vicious habits that an almost insuperable 
 obstacle to a maturity of virtue and intelligence is presented. 
 
 Efforts to restrict such labor of children is opposed, how- 
 ever, on the ground that child labor in the coal region is not the 
 labor of the "American child," but rather the labor of the little 
 ignorant Slav or other foreigner, who is "much better off working 
 
40 Child Labor in the Coal Mines 
 
 there than he could possibly be in the country of his nativity — or 
 even in the public school which he cannot appreciate." The reply 
 is that the children who work in the coal mines of this State are 
 not foreigners. They are Americans! They are the children of 
 parents who have been drawn to us from other countries and who 
 are called "foreigners." But the Slavs who migrate to the coal 
 regions are principally young, enterprising people, whose children 
 are born after they are settled here and call this country "home." 
 
 In one borough the school enrollment shows these remarkable 
 facts: that of the 3,288 children enrolled only 101 (3 per cent.) are 
 foreign-born Slavs, while 3,187 are American-born. But 3,165 (41 
 per cent.) are the children of foreign-born Slavs, and live in homes 
 essentially foreign and un-American. This is typical of many parts 
 of the coal region. Our problem, therefore, is not the problem of 
 the foreign child in an American country, as is often supposed, but 
 the problem of the American child in a foreign country. As Amer- 
 ican citizens we must demand that the highest protection and the 
 best opportunities of our country shall be given these children 
 already handicapped by the uninspiring influences of home. 
 
 The attitude of the mother of one eleven-year-old girl, who 
 was an unwilling truant from school, is significant. She defended 
 herself by saying: "Sadie, no need no more school. She got more 
 school as me already." The duty of the State is clear. The Slav 
 child is the helpless victim of the frugality, ignorance, and indus- 
 trial instincts of his parents. He is taken from school at the 
 earliest available age to eke out the family income by a kind of 
 labor that develops brawn but atrophies brain, and the father and 
 mother are blandly unconscious that they are hanging about the 
 neck of their own child a millstone of ignorance and industrial in- 
 efficiency which will drag ever heavier, as the awakening forces 
 of our American civilization accelerate the tide of social progress. 
 
 It is not true, as often claimed by those who exploit these chil- 
 dren, that the Slav child is stolid, unpromising and unfit for any 
 other kind of life than a life of drudgery in a state of ignorance. 
 One interesting school in the anthracite region is attended by pupils 
 who are, in almost equal numbers, children of Slav and of American 
 parents, although the Slav children drop out rapidly after the early 
 grades. The high school of the borough presents this remarkable 
 
Child Labor in the Coal Mines 41 
 
 appeal for the education of the Slav child, that although but eleven 
 pf the ninety-nine pupils enrolled in the four high school classes last 
 year were Slavs, the honors for scholarship in both the first and 
 second year classes were held by young Lithuanians, while the vale- 
 dictorian of Class 1905 was a young Jewess born in Russia. A new 
 social standard must be caused to prevail in this region. The Slav 
 must be looked upon as something better than a beast of burden, 
 and must be forced to higher levels. Alert and industrious, he will 
 need no further urging, given one generation of compulsory oppor- 
 tunity. His children must be safeguarded by law and institutions 
 against a standard of thought and living which are the racial inheri- 
 tance of centuries, and made to feel that the highest gifts in the 
 power of our democracy are his birthright. 
 
 Our interest in this problem is not principally for the well- 
 being of a specific child here and there who is in danger of evil, or 
 accident, or intellectual dwarfing. These individual sufferers from 
 bad conditions may be left, it is assumed, to the kindly care of such 
 reformatory and corrective agencies as are found in nearly every 
 community. Our interest centers in establishing social conditions 
 in these communities that shall prevent such waste of health and 
 character as menaces public progress. The institutions of our demo- 
 cratic civilization are involved. The coal deposits of that small 
 region are rich beyond present computation, but the human life of 
 the region is more valuable. We find good coal so great a con- 
 venience that it is regarded as almost indispensable, and those who 
 are devout do not cease to offer up morning and evening prayers 
 to those who own the coal to supply it at a reasonable price. But 
 coal is not essential to us. There are substitutes, even though ex- 
 pensive and inconvenient. There is no substitute for manhood. No 
 fuel will keep the fires burning on the nation's altars save virtue, 
 intelligence, and industrial efficiency. 
 
 And were it necessary to employ these little boys of nine and 
 ten years in order to produce coal at a reasonable price — which no 
 intelligent person believes — better mortgage the factory and the 
 farm and the store and the church and the home to pay the coal bill 
 than put a mortgage on the efficiency of the coming generations 
 which may require centuries to lift. 
 
CHILD LABOR IN THE GLASS INDUSTRY 
 
 By Owen R. Lovejoy, 
 Assistant Secretary of the National Child Labor Committee. 
 
 The glass industry is at once the oldest and the youngest among 
 American manufacturing enterprises. As early as 1609 a glass- 
 house was established in Jamestown, Va., which manufactured the 
 first goods exported from this country. The enterprise was unsuc- 
 cessful, however, and until the middle of last century glass-making 
 failed to gain a hopeful footing among us. Indeed the year 1865 — 
 forty years ago — when Boston was first able to manufacture flint 
 glass equal to the best made in England, may be regarded as the 
 beginning of successful glass manufacture in America. Its present 
 honorable position among domestic manufactures has been attained 
 mainly in the last twenty-five years, while the last decade of the 
 nineteenth century witnessed more radical changes in the industry, 
 both at home and abroad, than had occurred in the preceding three 
 hundred years. 
 
 From the installation of the continuous tank in place of the pot 
 system of heating the glass for manipulation, introduced here first 
 at Jeannette, Pa., in 1888, invention and improvement have crowded 
 upon each other in rapid succession until to-day the window glass 
 blowing machine is a proven success, the plate glass industry is 
 revolutionized by labor and fuel-saving devices, the machine for 
 blowing chimneys and wide-mouth bottles is driving the hand blow- 
 ers to the wall by cheaper and better production, while within the 
 present year machine blowers for small-necked ware have disproven 
 the last contention of the opponents of mechanical progress and 
 bid fair in the near future to monopolize this branch of the art. 
 
 In the decade 1890- 1900 the capital invested in the industry 
 increased 52.4 per cent to a total of over $61,000,000, the increase 
 being due largely to the tank system and other forms of more ex- 
 pensive machinery, and to the greater expense in packages for ship- 
 ping purposes. The largest single item of the $16,631,000 total ex- 
 
Child Labor in the Glass Industry 43 
 
 pense in the manufacture of 1900 was $4,000,000 for packages, metal 
 caps and rubber stoppers, an amount equal to 28 per cent, of the total 
 cost. The production in 1900 was 45 per cent, greater than in 1890, 
 although the average working season, "fire," in 1900 was but six 
 months, as against ten months in 1890, and furthermore, owing to 
 labor and trade difficulties, the possible output in 1900 was reduced 
 by the idleness of 15 per cent, of the factories, representing a capital 
 of $3,500,000. A study of the trade journals and a field investiga- 
 tion of the industry lead to the belief that the growth, both in num- 
 ber and size of plants, is more rapid since 1900 than before. 
 
 No modern industry, with the possible exception of silk-throwing 
 and cotton manufacture, makes a stronger demand for child labor 
 than the manufacture of glass. At the side of the blower and gath- 
 erer, in the blistering heat of the furnace, stands the little "cracker- 
 off" boy who breaks the cooling waxlike glass from the end of the 
 blowpipe after the chimney or bottle has been left in the mold; sit- 
 ting at the feet of the blower is the "holding-mold" boy who opens 
 and shuts the molds; then the "sticker-up" or "warming-in" boy 
 takes the ware from the mold and holds it to the "glory-hole," re- 
 heating the mouth that it may be shaped by the gaffer, or finisher; 
 from the finisher the "carry-in" boy takes the ware to the lehr, where 
 it is properly tempered and made ready for packing. The other 
 forms of child labor in some factories — etching, polishing, tying, 
 packing, are unimportant as compared with those mentioned. 
 
 The employment of children at night is possibly the crowning 
 offense of the glass industry, as viewed by those who oppose injurious 
 child labor. The introduction of the tank system, making profitable 
 the continuous operation of the plant, marks a decided step in the 
 progress of the industry, but it has largely increased the demand for 
 boys at night work until probably 60 per cent, of the 7,500 boys em- 
 ployed in glass-houses work at night every other week. The evil 
 of night labor is intensified by the abnormal temperature of the 
 factory: and this from both the physical and the moral standpoints. 
 The boy is in close contact with men who labor at a kind of work 
 requiring quickness, precision, nervous strain, and who in the excite- 
 ment of the moment are often forgetful of the moralities of con- 
 duct so essential to the formation of a boy's character. One hesi- 
 tates to state what might be construed as a criticism of any group 
 
44 Child Labor in the Glass Industry 
 
 of America's working people by whose energy and intelligence the 
 foundations of our national prosperity have been laid. Yet it is a 
 common observation that the character of men is often greatly af- 
 fected by the nature of their employment: profanity and intemper- 
 ance being peculiarly prevalent in industries demanding unusual 
 risks to life or limb, or requiring labor in an abnormal atmosphere. 
 It is believed that a better spirit is developing among glass-house 
 operatives, partly due no doubt to the educational value of the 
 trade union movement. Yet much remains to be desired. Many 
 glass factories are sorely crippled following every pay day or holi- 
 day, owing to the intemperance of some of the men and their inca- 
 pacity for careful work. The introduction of such devices as reduce 
 the exposure of the men to excessive heat will do more than any 
 form of temperance agitation to lessen the abnormal craving for 
 stimulant which their overtaxed bodies now express. 
 
 The work in a glass-house is usually by the piece, and during 
 the rush hours of a "turn," when all is excitement and hurry, the 
 visitor will shudder to hear a burly man curse his little helper in 
 language bound to leave its dark impress on his plastic mind and 
 color his imagination with stains that cannot be effaced. It is sig- 
 nificant that in many glass-houses one hardly finds the child of a 
 glass-blower. One worker who has spent his life in the glass-house 
 when asked the reason replied: "I would rather send my boys 
 straight to hell than send them by way of the glass-house." A 
 young friend, whose character and family are well known, said 
 recently that of the 175 boys with whom he worked in an Indiana 
 factory two years ago there were only ten at the end of the fire who 
 were not confirmed drinkers of intoxicants. And the proprietor of 
 a successful Ohio house said last summer, in reply to an appeal 
 for the education of the boys: "You can't do anything for them. 
 The little devils are vicious from their birth." A somewhat intimate 
 acquaintance with the glass-house boys of this and other communi- 
 ties left no doubt as to the viciousness of many, though the date of 
 its genesis was not established. One inclines, however, to the opin- 
 ion of a discerning school principal in a thriving glass town in 
 ^ Pennsylvania, who says : "My observation is that when a boy leaves 
 school and goes into the factory at twelve or thirteen, by the time he 
 is fifteen or sixteen he is too foul-mouthed to associate with decent 
 
Child Labor in the Glass Industry 45 
 
 people." The injurious moral effects of the industry on little 
 boys are further proven by the statement of another leading Ohio 
 glass manufacturer who urged the advantage of securing boys from 
 eleven to thirteen years of age by saying: "When a boy gets to be 
 sixteen or seventeen years old he becomes lazy and heady and will 
 not work as he used to." When asked whether the factory life itself 
 had anything to do with this state of moral fatigue, he replied 
 that there was no way of comparing because "a boy rarely ever goes 
 into the glass-house after he reaches sixteen or seventeen years." 
 
 The menace to the physical well-being of the child is not less. 
 Irregular hours of labor and rest are undermining to the mature 
 constitution. How much more to the undeveloped, rapidly growing 
 boy. And when this irregular employment is pursued in an exces- 
 sive heat which first stimulates and then stupefies, sending the boy 
 home at 2.30 or 4.30 in the morning through the raw, damp night, 
 the evil is intensified. Many mothers corroborate the criticism of 
 one expressed in these words: "When Charley works on the night 
 shift he hasn't any appetite," although there are manufacturers who 
 contend that the boys get more rest and are better in health when 
 on the night shift than when on the day. 
 
 The National Child Labor Committee proposes legislation which 
 shall forbid the employment of any boy under fourteen years of age 
 in a glass-house, and restrict night employment to those over sixteen. 
 Two objections are advanced, by some representatives of the indus- 
 try, to such legislation. The first objection is that glass cannot be 
 manufactured without the aid of small boys. It is contended that 
 the efficiency of the "shop" (the group working at a single fur- 
 nace) depends on the presence of the boys; that they are used for 
 forms of work which men either will not or cannot do, because 
 they labor at wages adequate for boy's work, but too small to induce 
 men to work. One manufacturer a year ago contended that several 
 of the best houses in Pennsylvania would be compelled to close if 
 the age limit for children were raised from thirteen to fourteen 
 years. 
 
 It is interesting to see that this despairing prophecy has not 
 been fulfilled, but that, on the other hand, the industry has sub- 
 stantially increased in Pennsylvania since the enactment of that law, 
 and, so far as discovered, no inconvenience of importance has any- 
 
46 Child Labor in the Glass Industry 
 
 where been suffered. A study of the industry in recent years will 
 prove the groundlessness of such fears, and will demonstrate that 
 the manufacture of glass is so firmly established in America that 
 no restrictive legislation contemplated by any intelligent body of 
 citizens for child protection could materially check its growth. 
 
 That glass manufacture does not depend on child labor is shown 
 by the fact that during the decade 1890-1900, while the number of 
 factories increased 20 per cent., the capital invested 52 per cent., 
 the number of employees 17 per cent., and the output 45 per cent., 
 the number of children employed increased but 2.5 per cent. In the 
 pressed and blown glass branch of the industry, in which children 
 are employed — practically none being engaged in the building or 
 pressed glass industry — the increase is no less striking. In the num- 
 ber of factories the increase was 19 per cent., in capital invested 54 
 per cent., in number of wage-earners 24 per cent., in children 5.6 
 per cent. 
 
 The location of the glass industry is even more interesting than 
 these general statistics. The manufacture of fruit-jars, bottles of 
 all kinds, and lamp chimneys has moved steadily westward during the 
 past fifteen years from Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia and 
 New Jersey, where child labor laws were lax and restriction of 
 night labor almost unknown, into Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, States 
 in which laws have been enacted increasingly restrictive, and in 
 two of which night work under sixteen years of age is prohibited. 
 In the census of 1880 Indiana did not report the manufacture of fruit 
 jars; in 1890 it manufactured 31 per cent, of the total output, and 
 in 1900 the percentage had increased to 70. In 1880 Pennsylvania 
 manufactured nearly two-thirds of all our lamp chimneys. In 1890 
 Ohio stood first, manufacturing twice as many as Pennsylvania, 
 and in 1900 Indiana had attained first place, manufacturing 45 per 
 cent, of the total, followed by Pennsylvania with 26 per cent., and 
 Ohio with 21 per cent. This does not mean that the manufacture 
 has declined in these eastern States, but only that the growth in 
 other States has far outstripped them. One of the largest and pos- 
 sibly the most successful among the bottle manufacturing houses is 
 now located in Ohio, and a leading official of the plant explained the 
 entire absence of boys on the night shift by the statement that "the 
 reason shops find it necessary to hire boy labor for night work is 
 
Child Labor in the Glass Industry 47 
 
 because they do not want to hire men." When asked whether the 
 demand for cheap labor was essential, he replied: "They can all 
 afford to employ men and boys over sixteen. It is simply greed." 
 An outsider would hesitate to make so sweeping a charge, but the 
 statement of one in the business may be quoted without offense. 
 
 The decade 1890- 1900 shows both Indiana and Illinois leading 
 Pennsylvania in the manufacture of glass bottles, though the lat- 
 ter State permitted child labor at ages and hours forbidden in both 
 the others. 
 
 The position of the glass industry in the world markets is no 
 less encouraging to the cause we represent. Between the years 1890- 
 1900 French mirror glass imports decreased 95 per cent., imported 
 polished plate of all kinds decreased 79.8 per cent., fluted rolled and 
 rough plate imports decreased 90 per cent., being nearly equalled 
 in the latter year by the exports of a single American skylight fac- 
 tory, while the imports of all bottles, jars, carboys, etc., the branch 
 of the trade especially employing children, decreased 49 per cent. In 
 the same period the exports of "all other glass" except window glass 
 increased 117.4 per cent. 
 
 The location of a glass-house is determined chiefly by cheapness 
 of fuel, the largest single item of expense in manufacturing. The 
 utilization of natural gas has caused it to follow closely the opening 
 up of the natural gas belt, in the Pittsburgh district, along the Ohio 
 River, through Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Kansas, which reports 
 no glass-houses in the census of 1900, to-day has not less than 
 twenty in successful operation. The industry in the future will 
 probably be less nomadic than formerly, owing to the greater ex- 
 pense of construction and to the recently proven success and econ- 
 omy of gas produced from crude oil — one firm recently reporting 
 the operation of a plant by the use of crude oil gas, produced at the 
 rate of 6,000 cubic feet of gas per barrel of oil, and at a cost of 7 
 cents per thousand feet. 
 
 The second consideration in determining location is market. 
 Freight rates on glass are unusually high, and often the discrimina- 
 tion against those shipping between certain points is almost oppres- 
 sive. The annual consumption of glass fruit jars is not less than 
 700,000 gross, while one lamp chimney factory manufactures thirty 
 tons of glass a day at one of its plants and forty tons at another. 
 
48 Child Labor in the Glass Industry 
 
 The superintendent of a large tumbler house in Pennsylvania affirms 
 that the freight rate from his city to St. Louis is greater than the 
 rate charged from Germany to St. Louis on the same class of ware. 
 It is evident that the industry is far more sensitive to these market 
 and freight conditions than almost any other extensive industry in 
 the country, and the rapid increase in the use of bottles, table-ware, 
 lamp chimneys and fruit jars throughout the West has combined 
 with the oil and gas fields in winning the industry to the Western 
 States. 
 
 The principal ingredients in the manufacture of glass have 
 greatly decreased in cost within recent years, the total cost of soda- 
 ash having fallen 27 per cent, during the decade 1890-1900, although 
 the total consumption increased 63 per cent. Sand is found in so 
 many sections of the country as to be in reach of all States manu- 
 facturing glass, while salt-cake, lime and limestone, nitrate of soda, 
 arsenic and other ingredients do not enter into the question of loca- 
 tion. 
 
 The third influence is the cost and availability of labor. As 
 the silk industry is rushing into the mining region where girl labor 
 is to be had in plenty and at small cost, so the glass industry tends 
 to follow those heavier industries in which boys are not available, 
 and to bid for the child life of those industrial communities. It is 
 not denied that labor legislation restricting the employment of 
 children has a certain influence at this point. It is only claimed 
 that the other items of cost are of so much greater importance that 
 a successful glass-house is not materially affected by such legisla- 
 tion as has been proposed by this committee. 
 
 Indeed, it is gratifying to learn from several of the most suc- 
 cessful manufacturers that their desire to employ children in the 
 industry is more from consideration for the boys and their needy 
 families than because of the needs of the industry. And we may 
 here appropriately introduce the second general objection to child 
 labor legislation. It is well expressed in the words of an influential 
 editor who said: "The objection to child labor legislation is more 
 on account of the little fellows who would be deprived of the work 
 than on account of the industry." The refuge of those compelled 
 to acknowledge that the industry can grow and thrive without the 
 labor of little children, but who still defend the custom, is in the 
 
Child Labor in the Glass Industry 49 
 
 plea either that the children are better off in the factory than on 
 the street ; that they belong to the class had in mind by a prominent 
 citizen who recently said: "If you educate all the people, who will 
 do the dirty work, the hard manual labor ?" or that the poor widow 
 with the large family will be thrown upon public charity if the 
 boy is taken from the factory. 
 
 To the first form of the objection it is only necessary to answer 
 that the truth of the statement depends upon the nature of the factory 
 and the condition of the street, and that the spirit of America has 
 in mind educational provision for all children, who should be pro- 
 tected from both factory and street. If any child is reduced to either 
 of these alternatives then a radical defect is to be unearthed in the 
 life of that community and correction of the mal-condition should 
 begin without delay. 
 
 To the second form of the objection the only answer in harmony 
 with the ethics of democracy is that the division of society into two 
 classes, one of which shall be educated and enjoy life, and the 
 other be kept in ignorance and confined to "dirty work" and denied 
 education for fear of arousing discontent, has been the curse of 
 former civilizations — cursing both the servants and the served — 
 and has no place in a society that lives by the participation of its citi- 
 zens in its civic and political affairs. 
 
 The third form of the objection must be considered more seri- 
 ously. No doubt many families are, in certain periods, kept from 
 dire want through the meagre earnings of little children. No doubt 
 also that if society is to compel the education of the children and 
 their exclusion from injurious labor — both in the interest of the 
 public welfare — society must also take the necessary steps to execute 
 these laws without imposing undue hardship on those persons in 
 greatest need of sympathy and social equity. It is impossible in 
 this place to enter upon a defense of the position that every widow 
 who seeks to rear and educate a family of children should be 
 regarded as so clearly a contributor to the public wealth that her 
 honorable maintenance shall be guaranteed as a matter of justice, 
 not of charity. We must here confine ourselves to the discussion 
 of the place of the child in the problem and the necessity of his 
 elimination as a factor in domestic support. 
 
 It is granted that the wages of a small boy in a glass-house 
 
50 Child Labor in the Glass Industry 
 
 will bring a pittance into the family treasury : it does not follow that 
 the general condition of poverty in the community is therefore at 
 all relieved. A stogie roller may earn $5 or $6 a week, or an expert 
 who can roll 2500 a day may earn $12 a week in a tenement where 
 vice and fever propagate together: it does not follow that stogie 
 rolling is a blessing to the poor. On the other hand the average 
 stogie roller grows poorer every year, and the influx of poverty, 
 drawn by this and other forms of industry which bring quick re- 
 turns without investment of capital or skill, fills the regions promot- 
 ing them with an ever-increasing number of hungry mouths to the 
 bewilderment, almost the despair, of philanthropic agencies. Great 
 industries bring in their train the small merchant and the peddler, 
 the cheap garment worker, and the stogie roller, who live often in 
 abject poverty and work in cramped tenements of unventilated filth. 
 
 But it is interesting to note that only those industries that can 
 profitably employ the ignorant, the weak, the children of the poor, 
 are to any degree concerned in the protection of the poor widow 
 and her offspring. The building trades have cost the lives of many 
 toilers and left many poor widows and defenseless children, but 
 one does not hear the boss carpenter or the employer of structural 
 iron workers defending the employment of children on the basis 
 of philanthropy. Neither the steel mills, the lumber camps, the 
 manufactories of locomotives, or the great railroads seem sensi- 
 tive — as industries — to the cry of the children in need of work. Only 
 where the little child can be worked at a profit are men found 
 solicitous for the welfare of the children who will be idle unless 
 employed by them. 
 
 We have too long permitted the employer of children to feel 
 that he holds a special guardianship over the widows of the com- 
 monwealth. We do not question his motives, for he sees the problem 
 in the concrete rather than in its broad implications, and the customs 
 of his industry have inevitably forced him to face conditions in the 
 community which have brought him to his viewpoint. But it is 
 the duty of the public to learn, and then to teach, that the cotton 
 manufacturer, the silk manufacturer, the cigar manufacturer, the 
 proprietor of a newspaper or telegraph office, the manufacturer of 
 glass or the president of a coal mining company is no more respon- 
 sible to relieve the poverty of the community through the employ* 
 
Child Labor in the Glass Industry 51 
 
 ment of its little children than is the railroad manager, the building 
 contractor, the steel manufacturer, the employer of 'longshoremen, 
 the lumber dealer or the manufacturer of locomotives. Let each 
 industry stand on its economic basis and let us remember that pov- 
 erty is never eliminated by being congested, and that poor widow- 
 hood is not permanently relieved by such industries as bid for 
 cheap labor and thus beckon the inefficient and needy to hover about 
 them. 
 
 We contend then that the glass industry is not compelled to 
 employ little children, either for the benefit of the children nor from 
 necessities of the industry. The editor of the National Glass Budget, 
 in the issue of November 25, 1905, echoes the sentiment of many 
 prominent manufacturers in asserting that the introduction of mod- 
 ern machinery and automatic devices has "changed modern factory 
 requirements to such an extent that it can truthfully be said that, as 
 a rule, the glass factory of to-day which still requires the work of 
 the small boy is operated in the crudest, most primitive, most ex- 
 pensive and antiquated manner." The auditor of one of the largest 
 glass manufacturing concerns in America, a company which does 
 not employ any child labor, said recently: "Flint glass manufacture 
 has followed at the tail end of the procession. When you consider 
 the ease with which steel and iron are handled in the great factories, 
 and then watch the little boys carrying hot glass in the bottle houses, 
 it looks extremely crude. There is a whole lot of this work which 
 could be as well done by machinery." One of the owners of 
 an extensive lamp chimney factory, operated now almost entirely 
 by blowing machinery, estimates that they employ about one-half 
 the number of boys formerly employed for the same amount of 
 work ; that whereas they formerly employed boys of twelve or four- 
 teen years who earned $6 a week, they can now employ young men 
 over sixteen years old whose earnings are from $14 to $20 a week. 
 When asked if the net cost was not greater now than formerly his 
 answer was, "We can now afford to pay men's wages for boy's 
 work." 
 
 It is not, of course, suggested that child labor is no longer 
 profitable in the making of glass. Many factories would be tem- 
 porarily inconvenienced by being compelled to employ older boys for 
 the work now done at trifling cost by young children. It is only con- 
 
52 Child Labor in the Glass Industry 
 
 tended that the industry, as such, will not be injuriously affected by 
 such restrictive legislation, but on the other hand will be stimulated 
 to greater economies and improvements than will be utilized while 
 human life can be purchased at so slight a cost. But even were the 
 industry itself imperilled, society cannot be interested in the main- 
 tenance of industries which must exist at the sacrifice of child life. 
 One enterprising employer, when objecting to the enforcement of 
 child labor laws, complained that such legislation would ultimately 
 force them to install machinery that would do away with the neces- 
 sity for small boys. 
 
 That any inconvenience to the industry from such legislation 
 as we urge might be avoided by a more equitable distribution of 
 wages has frequently been pointed out to both employers and em- 
 ployees in the course of this investigation. Few skilled trades pay 
 better wages than glass blowing, and while the hand work is to-day 
 made precarious by the rapid introduction of machinery, and many 
 glass blowers see their trade vanishing, it is also true that the work- 
 ers on the new machines are paid wages that are large as compared 
 with wages in other forms of manual labor. When one suggests 
 that glass blowers and finishers might be willing to have their wages 
 slightly reduced with the understanding that the difference shall 
 be made up to older helpers taking the places of the small boys, 
 the suggestion is always laughed out of court — whether made to 
 proprietor or workmen. To watch men working for $4 to $10 a 
 day, aided by little boys who earn from 65 cents to $1.10 a day for 
 "boys' work," although working the same number of hours and 
 subjected to the same intense heat, whether in union or non-union 
 shops, forces the doubt whether labor is always entirely serious in 
 its protest against the employment of little children. It is not to be 
 understood that such a policy of wage reduction for skilled labor is 
 here advocated. It is probable that, under present industrial condi- 
 tions in which labor stands always offering itself for sale in the 
 open market, wages are rarely if ever higher than the service war- 
 rants. It is only suggested that, with child labor in the glass indus- 
 try standing a confessed menace to society — a fact well known by 
 employer and employee alike — and with a disparity in wages between 
 the skilled man and the boy which appears unjustified by the amount 
 of service rendered, some amicable adjustment should be reached 
 
Child Labor in the Glass Industry 53 
 
 between the rival forces that would put an end to the sacrifice of 
 the child in the interest of either party. The responsibility will 
 be revealed by proper legislation. If only the greed of the manu- 
 facturer deters him from paying wages adequate to reward men 
 and larger boys, self-interest will force him to this when little chil- 
 dren can no longer be employed. But if the total amount paid in 
 wages is all that the industry warrants, and the wages of skilled 
 workers are out of all proportion to those paid the children, then 
 the genuineness of labor's protest will be put to the test. We do not 
 here profess to know whether the sacrifice should be made by the 
 employer or the employee. Regardless of the effect on prices, or 
 wages, or the fortunes of particular plants, or the struggle between 
 the hand-working and the machine operating factories, or the 
 strife which exists to-day between the union and the open shops — 
 the public is interested only to see that glass — that most wonderful 
 and beautiful of our manufactured products, the symbol and con- 
 veyer of light, the highest instrument in the hands of sanitary 
 science and the healing art — shall be made without bearing beneath 
 its polished surface the lives of little children who have been burned 
 into its glittering substance. 
 
THE CHILD LABOR PROBLEM— A STUDY IN 
 DEGENERACY 1 
 
 By A. J. McKelway, 
 Assistant Secretary, National Child Labor Committee. 
 
 It is my purpose to draw a parallel, not to make a prophecy. 
 The parallel, however, is so striking, the conditions of the child labor 
 problem in England at the beginning of the nineteenth century and 
 in some of our American States at the beginning of the twentieth so 
 like, that the foreseeing of the same result is inevitable, even while 
 we pray, Utinam vates falsus sim. May this association, with its 
 scientific study of the problem and its fearless setting forth of truth 
 discovered, be one of the forces in our American life that shall work 
 a timely change in those conditions here. Certainly there is no 
 more pressing subject of consideration for patriot or philanthropist 
 than the welfare of the coming race. As President Roosevelt said 
 to our committee only last month, political questions like the tariff 
 or the currency are insignificant, in comparison with a social problem 
 like this. The life is more than meat and the body than raiment. 
 Certainly there could befall a people no greater catastrophe than 
 race degeneracy. It is sufficient to say here that this catastrophe is 
 not only threatening but already impending. 
 
 In drawing the parallel between conditions in England and 
 America, I shall confine my attention mainly to the Southern States, 
 and for these reasons : As a Southern man I am more familiar with 
 Southern conditions by personal investigation; the field of work 
 assigned me is the South; in the manufacturing States of the 
 North and East the legislative problem has been largely solved, and 
 there remains only the problem of the adequate enforcement of 
 the law; the industry which was chiefly cursed by child labor in 
 England is the characteristic and commanding industry of the South, 
 the manufacture of cotton; and the northern problem differs from 
 the southern in being chiefly a foreign problem. It is the children 
 of the French Canadian and the Portuguese and the Greek that 
 
 iPaper Read before the American Association for the Advancement of Science, New 
 Orleans, January i, 1906, 
 
The Child Labor Problem — a Study in Degeneracy 55 
 
 demand protection in New England, the children of the Italian and 
 the Slav in Pennsylvania. No child of American parentage has 
 yet been found at work in the sweatshops of New York city. 
 Where there is opportunity for making manhood wages, the typical 
 American sends his child to the school and not to the mill. But 
 while it is a grievous thing to consider that the good fortune of the 
 immigrant's family is offset by the misfortune of the child, who is 
 kept from too early toil by the humane laws of the Old World States, 
 while child labor in the North and East prevents that transformation 
 into American citizens that is effected by the American public 
 schools, yet in the South it is especially an American problem, for 
 it is concerned with the depreciation of the purest American stock 
 on the continent. And this gives us another point of comparison 
 between England and the South, namely the similarity of the racial 
 stock. The little children who were fed into the capacious maw of 
 the Manchester cotton mills were English. The little child slaves of 
 our southern cotton mills to-day are of the same breed. And with- 
 out going into the sphere of rhetoric, it may be said that at this hour 
 of the world's history it is still the dominant race, the race of vic- 
 torious achievement in war and in peace, unconquerable save when 
 pitted against itself, as at Kings Mountain or New Orleans or Gettys- 
 burg. It is a race whose integrity must be preserved as the only safe- 
 guard of the national greatness. And it is because I plead to-day 
 for the children of those who met the British at Kings Mountain, 
 who followed Andrew Jackson to New Orleans, who fought on both 
 sides at Chicamauga, that I am in such deadly earnest. We must 
 save these children for their country. We must protect them from 
 the consequences of untimely toil, the sapping of physical vitality, 
 the marring of the mind and the spoiling of the spirit that come with 
 the denial of the rights of childhood. We must train these children 
 and those that are to come after them for their country's service. 
 So only shall we win the enduring victories of peace and 
 "So shall we bide sure-guarded, 
 When the restless lightnings wake, 
 In the womb of the blotting war-cloud, 
 And the pallid nations shake." 
 We have a hundred years of legislative history in England as 
 our warning that we must hasten to protect our children here. 
 
56 The Child Labor Problem — a Study in Degeneracy 
 
 Hutchins & Harrison have recently published a "History of Factory 
 Legislation," to which I am largely indebted in the preparation of 
 this paper. The first of the Factory acts in England was passed 
 in 1802. But that followed a period of ineffective protest against 
 the evil. The attitude of the eighteenth century towards the employ- 
 ment of children was one of self-laudation, that for the first time in 
 the history of the world the child was no longer an encumbrance 
 but an asset. Defoe and other writers were filled with enthusiasm 
 that children of tenderest years could be profitably employed and a 
 district in which "scarce anything of five years old" but could earn 
 its living was regarded as an ideal state of society. And yet in 
 the twentieth century children of four and five years have been 
 found at work in New York city in the artificial flower trade in 
 the home that poverty had turned into a workshop. In an account 
 of the workhouses of England, written in 1732, the writer considered 
 the picking of oakum as an ideally healthful pursuit for children. 
 "They that pick oakum," he says, "are continually refreshed by the 
 balsamic odour of it; the spinners and knitters, with an exercise so 
 moderate that it fits any age or sex, at the same time that it qualifies 
 those that are young for most handicrafts." Children were set to 
 work in the spinning rooms soon after they were five years old. But 
 this is also a pleasing modern sentiment. The cotton mill, with its 
 twelve-hour day, or its twelve-hour night, the room filled with flying 
 lint, trying to adult lungs, is held up as a sort of paradise for chil- 
 dren and ignorant parents are to-day enticed from the farms with 
 the idea that the children that are too young for farm work can be 
 employed at the light and even delightful labor of the mills, wet 
 weather and dry, hot weather and cold. Constant employment was 
 once regarded as the wisest philanthropy, on the naive theory that 
 "being constantly employed at least twelve hours a day ... we 
 hope the rising generation will be so habituated to constant employ- 
 ment that it would at length prove agreeable and entertaining to 
 them." Though the mercenary was also then a little mixed with the 
 philanthropic by the well-founded belief that "from children thus 
 trained up to constant labour we may venture to hope the lowering 
 of the price." That is from an Essay on Trade published in 1770. 
 
 It should be said, however, that the children here spoken of were 
 pauper children, which were already a "problem." The sturdy 
 
The Child Labor Problem — a Study in Degeneracy 57 
 
 farmers of England had not as yet learned to sentence their own 
 flesh and blood to hard labor from early childhood. But a commit- 
 tee from the House of Commons in 1767 collected such appalling 
 figures of mortality among the parish children that an appropriation 
 was made for their care, though they were still apprenticed as soon 
 as possible. In 1784 came the memorable protest of the Manchester 
 physicians, with Dr. Percival as spokesman. They had investigated 
 a fever epidemic at the Radcliffe cotton works, and while they pro- 
 fessed ignorance of its cause, they said: "But though this point 
 remains doubtful, we are decided in our opinion that the disorder 
 has been supported, diffused and aggravated by the ready communi- 
 cation of contagion . . . and by the injury done to young per- 
 sons through confinement and too long-continued labor, to which 
 several evils the cotton mills have given occasion. We earnestly 
 recommend a longer recess at noon and a more early dismission from 
 it in the evening, to all those who work in the cotton mills ; but we 
 deem this indulgence essential to the present health and future 
 capacity for labor for those who are under the age of fourteen; 
 for the active recreations of childhood and youth are necessary to 
 the growth and right conformation of the human body. And we 
 cannot excuse ourselves on the present occasion from suggesting 
 . . . . this further very important consideration, that the rising 
 generation should not be debarred from all opportunities of instruc- 
 tion at the only season in life at which they can be properly im- 
 proved." Thereupon the Manchester magistrates refused to allow 
 "indentures of parish apprentices whereby they shall be bound to 
 owners of cotton mills and other works in which children are obliged 
 to work in the night or more than ten hours a day." 
 
 And yet we here in free America of the twentieth century 
 allow by law children of twelve years to work twelve hours a day 
 for five days in the week, sixty-six hours being the full week's work, 
 and Georgia, one of the chief manufacturing States of the South, 
 has no legal protection of the children from night work, or from 
 being employed at, the earliest age when their little hands could be 
 of use. Only last month a child of seven years and nine months 
 had its fingers cut off in a Georgia mill. 
 
 These same Manchester physicians, now constituted into a Board 
 of Health, in 1796 passed the following resolutions, among others : 
 
58 The Child Labor Problem — a Study in Degeneracy 
 
 "The lar^ 2 factories are generally injurious to the constitution of 
 those employed in them, from the close confinement which is en- 
 joined, 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 for the duties of manhood. The untimely 
 labor of the night and the protracted labour of the day, with respect 
 to children, not only tend to diminish future expectations as to the 
 general 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. 
 
 "From the excellent regulations that subsist in several cotton 
 factories, it appears that many of these evils may be in a considerable 
 degree obviated ; we are therefore warranted by experience, and are 
 assured we shall have the support of the liberal proprietors of these 
 factories, in proposing an application for parliamentary aid to estab- 
 lish a general system of laws for the wise, humane and equal govern- 
 ment of all such works." 
 
 In 1 80 1 a man named Jouvaux was sentenced to twelve months 
 of hard labor himself as a punishment for overworking his young 
 apprentices, and Judge Grose went on to say, in the opinion deliv- 
 ered, "If the manufacturers insist that without these children they 
 could not advantageously follow their trade, he should say that trade 
 must not, for the sake of filthy lucre, be followed, but at once, for 
 the sake of society, be abandoned." It is still the pauper children 
 that are the object of concern. In the following year, 1802, the 
 first factory act was passed, limiting working hours to twelve a 
 day, forbidding night work, providing for the instruction of the 
 apprentices in reading, writing and arithmetic, and providing for 
 systematic factory inspection. It is a disagreeable fact to state, 
 but it must be confessed that this first attempt at remedial legislation 
 for the protection of working children, more than a hundred years 
 ago, is to-day ahead of the laws of the manufacturing States of the 
 South in the matter of night work, of requiring educational facili- 
 ties and in providing for factory inspection. The bill passed almost 
 without opposition, but an amendment extending its provisions to all 
 
The Child Labor Problem — a Study in Degeneracy 59 
 
 manufactories and the persons employed in them was defeated, the 
 distinction being drawn between apprentice labor and free labor. 
 
 It may be interjected here that there is still a sentiment against 
 any interference by the State in behalf of the toiling children who are 
 not fortunate enough to be paupers. But the act was ineffective, and 
 soon the parish apprentice question became unimportant. The in- 
 vention of the cotton gin in America and the application of steam 
 power to machinery ushered in an era of immense development in 
 manufacturing comparable only to the expansion of the manufac- 
 turing industries of the South in the last two decades. And now 
 the manufacturer becomes an important personage, with whose 
 business Parliaments and courts are reluctant to interfere. The his- 
 tory of English legislation for the first half of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury is a dreary round of slow and ineffective experiment, with 
 swift and effective evasion of the laws. Spencer Walpole says that 
 it took twenty-five years of legislation to restrict a child of nine 
 years to a sixty-nine hour week. It only took twenty years' experi- 
 ence with the cotton mills on a large scale in three or four Southern 
 States to enact an age limit of twelve and a sixty-six hour week. 
 Yet that limit is lowered to ten by the exceptions made in some 
 States, so that we are not much farther along than the English act 
 of 1819 that made a nine-year age limit and forbade any child under 
 sixteen to work more than twelve hours a day. Robert Owen's long 
 fight for legislation deserves to be remembered and the objections 
 made show that errors are as old as their corresponding truths. He 
 was asked if there would not be danger of the children's acquiring 
 vicious habits for want of regular occupation. He replied that 
 "their habits have been good in proportion to the extent of their 
 instruction." We are familiar with the modern proposition that 
 the cotton mill is a reformatory and that our boasted civilization is 
 after all so rotten as to require the sentencing of a ten-year-old child 
 to hard labor in the mill to keep it out of mischief. Yet the statistics 
 taken in Pennsylvania show that the army of tramps and criminals 
 is being recruited constantly and mainly from the ranks of the chil- 
 dren whose lives have been embittered by too early toil. 
 
 Owen says: "The first plea of the objectors to my bill was that 
 masters ought not to be interfered with by the legislature in any 
 way in the management of their business. The next attempt was 
 
60 The Child Labor Problem — a Study in Degeneracy 
 
 to prove that it was not injurious to employ these young children 
 fourteen or fifteen hours a day, in over-heated, close rooms, filled 
 often with the fine flying fiber of the material used, particularly in 
 cotton and flax spinning mills. Sir Robert Peel most unwisely con- 
 sented to a committee being appointed to investigate this question, 
 and this committee was continued for two sessions of Parliament 
 before these wise and honest men, legislating for the nation, could 
 decide that "such practices were detrimental to the health of these 
 infants." Owen was himself a manufacturer, as was Sir Robert 
 Peel, but his bill was amended in such important particulars as 
 the requiring documentary proof of age. The testimony regarding 
 the necessity for this bill is interesting. Owen said that children were 
 employed commonly at five or six. Thomas Wilkinson thought that 
 half the employees were under sixteen. The United States census 
 for 1900 gives only twenty-five per cent, of the operatives in South- 
 ern cotton mills as under sixteen, though the percentage has proba- 
 bly increased since. In 1835, in England, it was found that 26 per 
 cent, were still under eighteen. George Gould called attention to the 
 low rate of wages for the adult laborer from the competition of the 
 child laborer. And two of the doctors called before the committee 
 gave evidence that they had been suborned to testify as to the innoc- 
 uousness of working young children under nine fifteen hours a 
 day. But only last year, in North Carolina, the testimony of two 
 doctors was introduced to show that there was no need, from a 
 hygienic point of view, for a law forbidding young girls under 
 fourteen to stand at their work for twelve hours a day or for boys 
 or girls under fourteen to work a twelve-hour night. There is noth- 
 ing new under the sun and there is nothing true but heaven. There 
 was another assumption that prevailed then, and continues even in 
 democratic America, that the manual working people are a lower 
 class, an order apart, to whom the ordinary rules even of humanity 
 cannot apply. And then there was the argument that was dubbed 
 "Manchesterism," a favorite principle of the politcal economists of 
 that day, who were all against what we might call social legislation. 
 It was that things were not so bad after all, and that the tendency 
 was to right themselves through the ordinary laws of the business 
 world. 
 
 The act of 1825 forbade children under sixteen working more 
 
The Child Labor Problem — a Study in Degeneracy 61 
 
 than twelve hours a day, and the act of 1831 extended this to chil- 
 dren under eighteen. There was great difficulty in obtaining proof 
 of the violations of the law, and factory operatives were blacklisted 
 if they appeared as informers, something that was done in Georgia 
 two years ago, the parents of children who had been brought before 
 the Legislative Committee being dismissed from the mills. But the 
 act of 1833 created factory inspectors and forbade night work for 
 children under eighteen in any textile mills, except the silk mills, and 
 restricted children under thirteen to forty-eight hours a week. Then 
 began the long agitation for the ten-hour day, in the course of which 
 Lord Ashley, the children's champion, was defeated by Lord Ma- 
 caulay, who himself afterwards became a powerful advocate of the 
 children's rights. Oastler, the author of "Yorkshire Slavery," was 
 thrown into prison for conscience sake during this agitation, and his 
 language was bitterly resented by the manufacturers. Mr. Samuel 
 Townsend argues that "the occupation of the children is far from 
 laborious, and consists chiefly in the quickness and attention given 
 to the machine, allowing them abundant time to take refreshment 
 during mill hours. I am convinced that the present method of bring- 
 ing children forward to useful employment is far from being the 
 'horrid slavery of the worsted mills' (as Oastler had called it) 
 that it is rendered a comfort by the regular hours of rising from 
 and retiring to bed; and the most systematic regulation by which 
 refreshments are brought to them." It may be interjected that it 
 had already been admitted that the hours in the worsted mills were 
 thirteen a day, and one great trouble was that the children were 
 compelled to take part or all of the meal hour in cleaning the 
 machinery. A significant statement is made about this time that 
 "the labour in the mill is, strictly speaking, family labor, and that 
 there is no longer the system of a parent maintaining his children 
 by the operation of his own industry." That is the statement of an 
 economic law, that in the occupations which admit of the wholesale 
 employment of children, the whole family can make only as much 
 -wages as pater familias can in the trades that exclude children 
 from employment. 
 
 The act of 1844 defined night work for women and children as 
 the period between 6 p. m. and 6 a. m., and night work was forbid- 
 den. Birth registration had been made obligatory in 1837, and in this 
 
62 The Child Labor Problem — a Study in Degeneracy 
 
 matter our Southern States are behind. The act of 1844 was recon- 
 sidered, but passed again in 1847. This was followed by the defini- 
 tion of a normal day, to prevent the relay system, under which the 
 operatives not protected by law were sometimes obliged to work 
 fifteen hours a day, while the children were shifted about from one 
 part of the factory to another. The difficulties of administration 
 were great. There were forged certificates then, as now, and false 
 swearing. A boy made quite a financial success by getting examined 
 by different doctors and selling his certificates to other boys. Cer- 
 tificates were granted by dentists and cow doctors. But the principle 
 had been established of the right of the State to interfere for its 
 own sake as well as for the sake of the child. It was argued by 
 Lord Macaulay, and his argument was prophecy, that "intense labor, 
 beginning too early in life, continued too long every day, stunting 
 the growth of the mind, leaving no time for healthful exercise, no 
 time for intellectual culture, must impair all those high qualities that 
 have made our country great. Your overworked boys will become 
 a feeble and ignoble race of men, the parents of a more feeble 
 progeny ; nor will it be long before the deterioration of the laborer 
 will injuriously affect those very interests to which his physical and 
 moral interests have been sacrificed. If ever we are forced to yield 
 the foremost place among commercial nations, we shall yield it to 
 some people pre-eminently vigorous in body and in mind." 
 
 Lord Shaftesbury made the remark once that the child labor evil 
 had spread from the cotton mills into other industries. The period 
 between 1845 an( ^ 1861 was largely occupied with the inclusion of 
 these other industries, one by one, within the law that had applied 
 only to the cotton factories. The evil was found to be a hideous 
 one in the print works, dyeing works, and bleaching establishments, 
 and existed in lace works, pillow making, pottery trades, "each suc- 
 cessive generation of potters becomes more dwarfed and less robust 
 than the preceding one." The making of lucifer matches was espe- 
 cially hard upon the little folks, and children of four and five years 
 were found in the straw-plaiting establishments. In 1862 there were . 
 employed some 120,000 operatives in the hosiery trades, much of the 
 work being done by infant children in the homes, mothers pinning 
 the little ones to their knees while at work to prevent their falling 
 when going to sleep. In the hardware establishments of Birming- 
 
The Child Labor Problem~-a Study in Degeneracy 63 
 
 ham, England, as late as 1864, 2,000 children under ten were found, 
 half of these under eight. Then the act of 1867 extended to the 
 hitherto unregulated industries. In 1874 the age limit was raised 
 to ten for factories. But it was not until Booth's book on "Life 
 and Labour in London" appeared that the act of 1891 was passed, 
 extending the law to the sweat-shops. And the factory inspectors 
 were too few for the additional tasks laid upon them by these ex- 
 tensions of the law. The act of 1895 fixed the hours at which 
 a child should be employed at thirty a week, though allowing still 
 twelve hours a day. But amendments as late as 1901 show that 
 the laws are still imperfect. Some of our American States are 
 already in advance of England after a century of legislation. 
 
 I have spoken of the half-time system. For the last fifty years 
 the child has been allowed to go into the mill for half a day and 
 then required to go to school the other half. Thi6 has been the culti- 
 vation of the mind at the expense of the physical man, and in its 
 effects upon the constitution is hardly preferable to the long hours 
 of the mill. Recently the Massachusetts law, requiring the illiter- 
 ate child over fourteen to go to night school while working by day, 
 until he could read and write, has been repealed, and the more merci- 
 ful law substituted of forbidding any child under sixteen to work 
 unless he can read and write. And now it would seem that we might 
 expect some bad results from this hundred years of the exploitation 
 of the children as laborers in what was once "Merrie England." The 
 awakening came too late for England's comfort when, for the first 
 time since the Crimean War, she engaged in conflict with a civil- 
 ized people. Have you thought of the real reason for the impo- 
 tence of that mighty nation when contending with a handful of 
 South African farmers ? We have heard the prophecy of the Man- 
 chester physicians, of Lord Macaulay, concerning the threatened 
 degeneracy of the race. Let us see the fulfillment of prophecy. 
 
 Says John Dennis, in a magazine article during the current 
 year: 1 "In the silent revolution that followed the abolishing of the 
 Corn Laws, agriculture, which had been the backbone of English 
 character and English strength, withered away. Vast areas devoted 
 to the growing of wheat became hunting fields. The stout yeomanry, 
 their country's pride, ceased to exist. England turned from agri- 
 
 1 Everybody's Magazine, February, 1905, Article, "Hooligan." 
 
64 The Child Labor Problem — a Study in Degeneracy 
 
 culture to manufacturing; the country and the country town and 
 the village began to dry up and a steady stream of indigent men 
 and women poured into the great cities. . . . 
 
 The blow that the wise men had foreseen fell with the Boer 
 War. In a day, as it seemed, the nation awoke to the fact that its 
 physical vigor was sapped. It had no material for soldiers. The 
 percentage of rejections at the enlistment stations appalled every re- 
 flective mind. The standards were lowered, the tests were made 
 easy; the rejections continued to be most alarming. Regiments were 
 patched together of boys and anemic youths. They were food for 
 hospitals, not for powder. Once in South Africa enteric swept 
 them off like flies; they were only the shells of men. There were 
 other things equally disturbing. Men gathered from the dispatches 
 that, as a matter of fact, the war was fought on the British side by 
 the Colonials, Irish and Scotch. . . . There have been hints of 
 worse revelations. A London newspaper asserted that of 11,000 
 men examined in Manchester, nearly 10,000 were rejected. . . . 
 And the English people had always trusted so implicitly in their tra- 
 ditional physical stamina. And meanwhile, a change, tremendous, 
 but unnoted, had gone on in the habits and stamina and physical 
 type of that class of men that must ever make the rank and file 
 of armies. The men that faced the Malakoff and stormed Sebastopol 
 were no more. . . . When the typical Englishman of the class 
 that went to war — the John Bull of tradition — was broad-shouldered 
 and deep-chested, a ruddy-cheeked giant, then the brawn and en- 
 durance of the Englishman were a proverb. Against him Hooli- 
 gan, anemic, neurotic, emaciated, too often degenerate, dull of wit 
 and feeble of will, showed like a figure of fright. In 1903 in Lon- 
 don, not fewer than 200,000 people are without anything that by 
 any stretch of the imagination they can call home. 
 
 Dr. Robert Jones, an eminent London physician, wrote to the 
 Times that not only was insanity among the masses constantly in- 
 creasing, but it tended to assume worse forms, and that in 1,000 con- 
 secutive male cases between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five 
 the average weight and stature were so far below the normal that he 
 concluded that there was "an alarming impairment in national 
 physique." Dr. Robert Farquson, another eminent physician, cer- 
 tified to the truth of these conclusions and told worse things. The 
 
The Child Labor Problem — a Study in Degeneracy 65 
 
 president of a Manchester Improvement Association testified that 
 there were large districts in Manchester in which there were "no 
 well-grown children or men or women except those who have been 
 born in the country." What was it that the Manchester physicians 
 foretold in 1784? "The untimely labour of the night and the pro- 
 tracted labour of the day, with respect to children, tends to diminish 
 future expectations as to the general sum of life and industry by im- 
 pairing the strength and destroying the vital stamina of the rising 
 generation." What was it that Lord Macaulay, in 1846, prophesied? 
 "Your overworked boys will become a feeble and ignoble race of 
 men, the parents of a more feeble progeny. Nor will it be long before 
 the deterioration of the labourer will injuriously affect those very 
 interests to which his physical and moral energies have been sacri- 
 ficed. If ever we are forced to yield the foremost place among 
 commercial nations we shall yield it to some people pre-eminently 
 vigorous in body and mind." That people is the German nation. 
 And Germany is to-day pushing England to the wall in commercial 
 competition and winning the enduring victories of peace. 
 
 Nor is that all. The cotton milling industry, which was first 
 attacked for its horrible cruelty to young children and first had its 
 evils corrected, legislation being long confined to the cotton mills, 
 is the one bright spot to-day in English manufacturing life. Says 
 a recent authority: "In spite of keenest foreign competition, the 
 Lancashire cotton mill, in point of technical efficiency, now leads the 
 world, and the Lancashire cotton spinner, once in the lowest depths 
 of social degradation, now occupies, as regards the general standard 
 of life as a whole trade, perhaps the foremost position among English 
 wage-earners." The expansion of the industry in recent years is 
 measured by the millions of spindles. Surely, if England, with her 
 handicaps of distance from the cotton fields and the rising price 
 of fuel, can thus make this industry, so long cursed with child labor 
 and low wages, the foremost one as regards the condition of the 
 wage-earner, the South should be able to do the same thing with her 
 incalculable advantages over England or any other part of the 
 world. 
 
 Once more, who are ruling England to-day? Take the new 
 Cabinet. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman is a Scotchman, as was 
 Mr. Balfour, and as was Mr. Gladstone. Lord Elgin is a Scotchman. 
 
66 The Child Labor Problem — a Study in Degeneracy 
 
 Mr. Haldane is a Scotchman. James Bryce is an Irishman. Herbert 
 Gladstone is a Scotchman's son. Sir Robert Reid is a Scot. John 
 Burns is a Scot. Lord Tweedmouth is a Scot. David Lloyd-George 
 is a Welshman. Who knows what unknown Cromwells have had 
 their genius stifled in the atmosphere of the English mill? Scotch 
 fathers sent their children to school while the English parent reversed 
 the law of nature and of Scripture by allowing the child to work 
 for him. And now Scotland rules the destinies of the British 
 Empire. 
 
 And no one can pick up an English paper or read an English 
 magazine without seeing something about the great and increasing 
 army of the unemployed. Dr. S. M. Lindsay, secretary of our 
 Child Labor Committee, made an investigation of conditions in 
 England this past summer. And his testimony is that the unem- 
 ployed are not those who will not work, but who are unable 
 to meet the sharper conditions of modern manufacturing life, and 
 that it is not the absence of work to be done, but that they cannot 
 do the work that is required. In brief, they are "ineffectives." 
 
 So much for race degeneracy progressing for a hundred years 
 in England to its dire culmination. But it is beginning already in 
 the South. Just a few facts that are matters of common knowledge. 
 There has already been developed in our cotton manufacturing 
 communities a "factory type" easily recognizable, the children dis- 
 tinguished by their pallor and a certain sallowness of complexion. 
 Early employment tends to independence of parental restraint. The 
 breadwinner becomes a man too soon, and early marriages are the 
 rule. There are widows in Georgia fourteen years of age. The wife 
 and mother continues her work in the mill, since the wage of the 
 husband is not enough for the support of the family. What must 
 be the children born of such unions and their children ? Diseases of 
 the throat and lungs are common, and also diseases peculiar to 
 women brought on by employment long continued at the critical 
 period of a young girl's life. It was a true saying of John Ruskin, 
 "It is a shame for a nation to make its young girls weary." The de- 
 mand for the labor of children precludes their obtaining an education. 
 The mill owners often build school houses, and the mill superinten- 
 dents empty them of the children. Thus, without education of the 
 mind, the training of the hand will not win promotion even in the cot- 
 
The Child Labor Problem — a Study in Degeneracy 67 
 
 ton mill for the unfortunate illiterate. The cotton mill village is gen- 
 erally isolated, and the operatives separate themselves from others, 
 and often the church is as little able to get hold of them as the 
 school. The mountains are being depopulated by the agents of the 
 mills. I know of one little village railroad station in Western 
 North Carolina whence fifteen hundred people went last year to the 
 mills. And the growth of the industry indicates the alarming in- 
 crease in the number of children that are employed. The Blue 
 Book for 1904, already antiquated, shows that there are 238,000 
 operatives employed, instead of the 100,000 reported in the census 
 of 1900. The president of the American Cotton Manufacturing 
 Association declares that in North Carolina seventy-five per cent. 
 of the spinners are fourteen or under fourteen. His predecessor 
 in office says that only thirty per cent, of all the operatives are 
 adults. Considering the percentage of child to adult labor as set 
 forth in the last census, twenty-five per cent, for the South, there 
 must be 60,000 children under sixteen in the Southern mills. But 
 considering the imperfections of that census in this respect, con- 
 sidering the doubling of the number of operatives in many mills 
 through the larger amount of night work now done under present 
 prosperous conditions, considering the new mills in operation this 
 year, there must be a quarter of a million of operatives now, and it 
 is my calculation that there are 60,000 under fourteen, which is the 
 age limit of most of our manufacturing States in America. Vir- 
 ginia and the two Carolinas and Alabama have an age limit of 
 twelve. But the want of factory inspection precludes any enforce- 
 ment of the law, even as it now stands, while Georgia has no child 
 labor law, being the last of the manufacturing States of either 
 Europe or America that has failed to adopt one. It is estimated that 
 the number of spindles, and thus the number of operatives, and thus 
 the number of children employed, will be doubled in the next five 
 
 years. 
 
 But the National Committee has been organized in behalf of 
 the children, and State committees are co-operating with it, and the 
 pulpit and the press of the South are all but unanimous for protect- 
 ing the children by law. Public sentiment is being aroused in no 
 uncertain fashion, and the wrath of the people is being invoked 
 
68 The Child Labor Problem — a Study in Degeneracy 
 
 against our modern Herods who have sought the young child's 
 life and are indifferent to the slaughter of the innocents. 
 
 When, during the Napoleonic wars, the manufacturers, suffering 
 from the withdrawal of their employees into the ranks of the Brit- 
 ish armies, went to the younger Pitt with their complaint, he said 
 to them, "Take the children." When it was proposed to the Presi- 
 dent of the Confederate States to lower the age limit for the enlist- 
 ment of soldiers for the Confederate armies, he said: "We must 
 not grind the seed corn." The little children of the South, with 
 their heritage of heroic blood, untainted and pure, are the hope of 
 the South and may yet prove to have been the hope of the nation as 
 well. They are more precious than the dollars that can be coined 
 by the sacrifice of their childhood, by the denial of childhood's right 
 to play and to dream, of childhood's opportunity to learn. The child 
 is the harbinger of the Golden Age that is to be. We must not crush 
 his spirit with manhood's toil. The measure of the triumphs of the 
 race that is to be is what we can accomplish for the child that is, for 
 his protection, for his training, for his development physically, men- 
 tally, spiritually. 
 
 And it seems to me that the manufacturers of America should 
 be the last to raise objection to the interference of the State in behalf 
 of the child, seeing that the State has interfered in behalf of their 
 profits. Tariff controversies aside, it is certain that the tariff bene- 
 fits primarily the manufacturer. If then he demands protection by 
 law against foreign competition, how can he claim that the State 
 has no right to protect the life and health and morals of its future 
 citizenship? How can he hold the position of claiming the right of 
 "protection to infant industries and the exploitation of infant in- 
 dustry." The American people have dealt generously with their 
 manufacturers. Let the manufacturers be no less generous with 
 their country in this vital matter of preserving the integrity of 
 the race. 
 
 Certainly they should beware of forcing upon the American 
 people, for final action, the alternative mentioned in Judge Grose's 
 opinion, already quoted. "If the manufacturers insist that without 
 these children they could not advantageously follow their trade, he 
 should say that trade must not, for the sake of filthy lucre, be fol- 
 lowed, but at once for the sake of society be abandoned," 
 
THE OPERATION OF THE ILLINOIS CHILD LABOR LAW 1 
 
 By Jane Addams. 
 Hull House, Chicago. 
 
 It is very gratifying to state the situation for Illinois. For 
 while in the nation as a whole child labor is growing, — that is, we 
 are having each year in America more children at work than was 
 true of the previous, — we are able to say that that statement is not 
 true of Illinois. There has been a decided decrease in Illinois in 
 the number of children at work during the last four years. Not- 
 withstanding the annual increase in the population, and in spite of 
 the fact that our manufactures are increasing, we have a very 
 decided decrease in the number of children working both actually 
 and proportionately. In 1901, in proportion to the total number of 
 workers the child workers in Illinois was 4.1 per cent.; in 1902 it 
 was 3.7 per cent., and in 1903 it was 2.9 per cent., and in 1904 it 
 was 1.9 per cent., so you see they are steadily and rapidly decreasing. 
 
 Mr. Davies, the State Factory Inspector, who has attended the 
 various conventions, says that this is the lowest number of children 
 in proportion to the adult working population of any State in the 
 Union. And if we take this statement in connection with the other 
 statement that we have heard here, that Illinois is the third manufac- 
 turing State in the Union, we have reason to be proud of our show- 
 ing, and we are proud to have the Governor preside at a meeting 
 when we can make such a good report to him for his State. 
 
 Another interesting development in regard to Illinois comes 
 in connection with the educational test provided in our child labor 
 law, for while it is difficult to have any practical statistics on child 
 labor, some of the things happening in Illinois since the new child 
 labor law went into effect are most significant. Our law requires 
 not only an educational test, but it provides a place in which it shall 
 be made, and this test for all" the public and parochial schools of 
 Chicago being made in one place, enables us to know how many 
 children receive the certificates each year, and something more about 
 
 iAddress at the Chicago session of the 2d Annual Meeting of the National Child Labor 
 Committee, Chicago, Dec. 16, 1905. 
 
7<3 The Operation of the Illinois Child Labor Law 
 
 them. The total number of children who have received certificates 
 in the last three years for the Chicago office has been 26,886. Out of 
 that number we know they can all read and write something. I am 
 sorry to say that they cannot all read and write English, but they 
 can read and write some language, and the large majority of them, 
 of course, read and write English. We have the satisfaction of 
 knowing that of the nearly 27,000 children who have gone to work 
 in Illinois in the past four years, they have all passed the literacy 
 test. They have, further, all been weighed and measured, which 
 may be an inaccurate test, but it affords, at any rate, a guaranty 
 outside of the parents' word that they have attained an average 
 height and age. That is something to know. For a long time we 
 did not know how many children were at work, how much they 
 knew, nor of what size they were — whether they were big enough 
 for the age of fourteen years or only big enough for the age of ten. 
 The increased attendance in the schools has been very marked 
 since this law has been enforced. If the parents are once thoroughly 
 convinced — and the illiterate parents, most of all — that a child can- 
 not go out and earn money until he can read and write, of course 
 they will see to it that their children learn to read and write as 
 quickly as possible. We have taken some statistics from a school 
 in the stock yards district, and the increase in the attendance in 
 the fourth and fifth grades is very marked. The attendance in one 
 school in the fifth grade for the year before the law went into effect 
 averaged 53, in the year after the law had been put into effect in 
 the fifth grade in the same school it averaged 159 pupils. Allowing 
 something for the natural increase in population, it would still leave 
 a very large proportion, which was to be accounted for only by the 
 enforcement of the new law. And this educational test is result- 
 ing in good in other ways : it is slowly remedying one of the worst 
 evils of immigration. It has been the custom for many years for 
 immigrants already settled here to bring over boys and girls who 
 were but remotely related to them and too young to protect 
 themselves, in order to exploit them. They took all their wages 
 in return for scanty food and shelter, but now that these children 
 must learn to read and write before they can go to work, it is no 
 longer profitable to have them sent over, and I assure you there is 
 a very marked decrease in this enforced immigration in those 
 States in which the educational provision is rigidly enforced. 
 
The Operation of the Illinois Child Labor Law 71 
 
 The child labor law is, further, having a marked influence upon 
 the immigrant as he slowly learns that a child cannot go to work until 
 he has reached a certain physical and mental well-being, that there is 
 a standard in American life, and it seems to some of us that all these 
 things afford a much better way for new people to learn about 
 America than that they should merely be able to repeat the Constitu- 
 tion of the United States. 
 
 I want to say just a word in regard to the dangers surrounding 
 our new child labor law. We, too, have had our long continued 
 trouble with the glass workers. I suppose legislation in regard to 
 child labor has never been attempted but what its friends at the leg- 
 islature have encountered the lobbyists from the glass works. We 
 have been told that all the glass works will move out of the State of 
 Illinois if we have a rigid child labor law, and yet each year we 
 find that the glass works have extended and improved their plants, 
 and that at least two firms have moved into the State since this 
 law has been enacted and enforced. So that we no longer fear 
 them, but there is a feature of the child labor law in Illinois that is 
 at present sustaining sharp attack from the theatrical people, and it 
 is just here where pubilc opinion may be of great value. If a child 
 under sixteen years is allowed to play in any theater after seven 
 o'clock the law is violated, and to make any exception to the law is 
 most dangerous. Just imagine an honest farmer at the next session 
 of the legislature saying, "You make an exception for the people 
 in Chicago, you allow the children to play in the theaters at night, 
 but you won't allow a boy to make an honest living in the glass 
 works." One can easily see that the entire law would be weakened. 
 Two cases of the infraction of the law by theatrical people are 
 now awaiting decision in the Superior Court of Illinois, and another 
 case has been indicted before the grand jury, and we will have to 
 wait for the judge's opinion as to the application of the law to the- 
 aters. But in the meantime it will make a great difference if when 
 this law is broken at the theatrical performances the public would 
 protest and declare that it attended the theater to see the art of 
 acting and not the exploitation of children. We like to see a child 
 on the stage because it moves our sympathies and touches our sensi- 
 bilities; we say that it is true to life, and we think that we like 
 acting of that kind, when, on the contrary, it is the lack of acting 
 
J2 The Operation of the Illinois Child Labor Law 
 
 which we like, the touch of reality which the child brings to the 
 stage. But it is hardly legitimate to keep children on the stage so 
 that they may appeal to our sensibilities any more than it would be 
 fair to keep the same little children begging on the street because 
 in that way they arouse adult generosity, or as the old-fashioned 
 circus-goer liked to see the lady put her head into the lion's mouth 
 and gasped, waiting for something dreadful to happen. But if we 
 really believe that acting is an art requiring preparation and a care- 
 ful training, if we respect the stage sufficiently to demand artistic 
 ability and not mere emotionalism, then we will refuse to have our 
 sensibilities appealed to by little children on the stage. And here we 
 see the need for national legislation in regard to children. Eighty- 
 five per cent, of the children on the stage — the theatrical people say 
 ninety-two per cent, of the children on the stage- — in America are 
 supplied in New York. The New York law permits these children 
 to go on the stage after they have been examined by a certain chil- 
 dren's society there. This is in accordance with the New York 
 law, but when they reach Chicago we have to deal with them 
 according to the Illinois law. I wish very much that we all may 
 try to arouse some sentiment against this exploitation of chil- 
 dren on the stage. Here is where the consumer is touched very 
 directly. When we buy a glass bottle which we think may have 
 been made by a child we are not quite certain about it, and it 
 is at best remote. But going to a theater and looking at a little 
 child and encouraging that sort of thing because it arouses a 
 sickly sort of sentiment, is certainly to induce the managers to 
 continue it. It would be very easy to say to the managers of the 
 theater, "We came here to see the legitimate drama." Mr. Daly and 
 other clever managers insist that there is no play requiring children 
 which cannot be better done by grown people taking the children's 
 parts. One cannot imagine Henry Irving putting children upon the 
 stage ; it would have hurt his artistic ideas of what a play ought to 
 be. Let us see if we cannot put aside this emotionalism and stand 
 by the child labor law from the side of art as well as of humanity. 
 It is easy to discuss the wrongs in the South and to agitate for laws 
 affecting manufacturers, but here in Chicago where in relation to 
 the theaters the law touches us directly we are in sympathy with 
 the law, and here is an opportunity to aid in its enforcement, and 
 I hope that we will all endeavor to do our share. 
 
CHILD LABOR A NATIONAL PROBLEM 
 
 By Samuel McCune Lindsay, Ph.D., 
 Secretary of the National Child Labor Committee. 
 
 The evils of child labor cannot well be exaggerated. Neither 
 can they be quantitatively measured with any precision. I would 
 like to have accurate statistics of child labor in the United States, 
 which we have not got so far, but it makes comparatively little differ- 
 ence whether a million and a half or two million and a half children 
 of tender years are at work. It is fundamentally wrong, it is a con- 
 tradiction of the basic principles of this free republic that upon the 
 shoulders of any child who has not attained its full ( mature, physical 
 development, who has not enjoyed a reasonable time in which to 
 play, and who has not received an elementary English education, 
 there should be put the smallest fraction of the burdens of our mod- 
 ern competitive industrial life. Viewed in the light of our advanc- 
 ing civilization and its greater opportunity for growth and human 
 service, and also its greater demands for preparation for lives of 
 highest usefulness, I say again, the evils of child labor cannot well 
 be exaggerated. Dr. Felix Adler, the chairman of our National 
 Committee, has truly said that these evils are increasing. The de- 
 mand for cheap labor, which so often means infant labor, increases 
 with the growth of competition for markets and the consequent desire 
 to sell goods more cheaply. The demand for such labor as children 
 can perform increases often with the progress of inventions and 
 mechanical devices. Not long ago I had my attention called to the 
 advertisement of a manufacturer of mill machinery, and one of the 
 attractions of his machines was that they were adapted to the use of 
 very small children. When we go down South we are told by promi- 
 nent manufacturers that they cannot get along without children in 
 their mills because the machines cannot very well be operated by 
 adults. These are some of the arguments that we meet in every 
 State when we ask for legislation to prevent child labor. The 
 
74 Child Labor a National Problem 
 
 very greed of modern capitalists demands the labor of the child in 
 order that they may have the largest profits. Likewise the greed of 
 incapable, ignorant and avaricious parents and the indifference of 
 others demands the right to put the child to work in order that they 
 be relieved of responsibility for his education and control, and may 
 live off the pennies the child can earn. How blind even the natural 
 parent may be when he sees in his child a possibility of profit, is seen 
 when he is willing to sacrifice the future of his child without any 
 thought of the to-morrow when the child will be a man and should 
 be fit to bear his share of the work of the world. 
 
 Our standards of living, our tests of efficiency and of industrial 
 fitness as well as our educational opportunities have increased at a 
 rapid rate in the last few years. So much greater, therefore is the 
 wrong that is done to the children who are deprived of even the 
 ordinary opportunities to prepare for the greater demands of the 
 future when they reach the years of adult life. Child labor in 
 America means that as a nation we are deliberately breeding social 
 inequality and striking at the roots of democracy. Ostrich fashion, 
 we only bury our heads in the sands of the temporary excuses — that 
 of industrial necessity, or the poverty of parents, or the absurd fal- 
 lacy that we are giving an industrial education to the child worker — 
 when we refuse to look squarely in the face the inevitable conse- 
 quences of our madness and our racial folly. 
 
 The problem which the gainful employment of two million chil- 
 dren under sixteen years of age to-day presents to the American 
 people is a national problem of the first magnitude. It has to do 
 primarily with a question of race development. What these two mil- 
 lion children are now and will be twenty years hence raises questions 
 which are fundamental for the welfare of the human stock and 
 for the happiness of this land of ours. Industrial processes like the 
 processes of nature have what the biologists call "selective values." 
 They weed out the unfit and incompetent workers and segregate 
 them into the slums of our large cities where society must bear the 
 burden and pay the cost. I know of no better illustration of this 
 selective aggregation of the industrially worn-out than is presented 
 by the great problem of the unemployed in London to-day. While in 
 England last summer I was surprised to hear from the lips of mem- 
 bers of Parliament, who were not given to exaggeration, that there 
 
Child Labor a National Problem 75 
 
 were from eight hundred thousand to one million persons, many of 
 them able-bodied men, out of work at a season of the year when 
 employment is usually abundant. It was said that a very large num- 
 ber of them were simply inefficient, unfit for any industrial work 
 under the demands of modern industry. What chapters of English 
 history do you recall when you are told that in the city of London 
 thousands of men, women and children are segregated in East Lon- 
 don, living in dire poverty and distress, because they do not possess 
 the physical vitality or intellectual capacity to perform the kind of 
 labor demanded in modern society. A very shrewd journalist who 
 knew probably little about the theories of race development, said : 
 
 "There has been evolved in London a race distinct, unlike any 
 other race in the British Islands, with strongly marked characteris- 
 tics, with alien features and habits. It is a race stunted in size, sal- 
 low complexioned, dark haired. Its moral sense is blunted, its men- 
 tality is low. It has even evolved a speech of its own." 
 
 In a few sharp sentences this journalist has drawn for us a 
 picture of what the neglect and non-development of children in the 
 past means for the British people to-day. If that picture allows 
 any reasonable doubt concerning the causes of physical deterioration 
 in England about which the whole nation was so aroused during the 
 Boer war that a voluminous government report was made on the sub- 
 ject, he who reads the history of England must surely admit that 
 the system of child labor which prevailed for a century has been the 
 one great contributory cause. This is the fate that awaits us also 
 in America in the no distant to-morrow if we fail to grapple with 
 the great problem of child labor in our own country until we have 
 abolished its evils. 
 
 Child labor is a national problem, in the second place, because 
 our industrial processes have become national and international. 
 The glass workers of New Jersey oppose any attempt to prohibit 
 the night work of boys under sixteen on the ground that such work 
 is permitted in the neighboring State of Pennsylvania. Some peo- 
 ple in Georgia seem to think that they cannot afford to place any 
 restrictions upon their cotton manufacturers, because they are just 
 making a good start in competition with New England and the rest 
 of the world in cotton manufacturing and they want to enjoy every 
 
76 Child Labor a National Problem 
 
 advantage they possess, even that of killing the goose that lays the 
 golden egg. 
 
 And so it goes, from State to State. We have constantly to 
 meet questions arising from interstate competition. Then in other 
 States we have the pheneomena of peoples passing from the agri- 
 cultural to the manufacturing stage of development with all the at- 
 tendant changes in their social, moral and economic life. States in 
 this transition stage from the simpler communal life of the agricul- 
 turist to the more complex and individualistic life of a manufacturing 
 community must be protected from the new dangers which the ex- 
 perience of older States can point out. So again we see the inter- 
 state character of our child labor problem. The National Child 
 Labor Committee came into being for the purpose of meeting this 
 situation and helping States that are just beginning to take notice 
 of the evils of child labor by bringing to their attention the results 
 of the neglect of childhood or the wilful misuse of their children in 
 those States that have already paid too high a price for their indus- 
 trial progress. If we can in any way bring these lessons home so 
 as to influence public opinion in the States that have little or no pro- 
 tection for childhood we may hope for an American standard of pro- 
 tection that shall apply all over this country. Such a standard 
 when attained can be made effective in all our States only when pub- 
 lic opinion is uniformly aroused and our captains of industry are 
 told that they may compete with their money, with their brains and 
 ingenuity, and with their machines, but not with human life, least 
 of all with the child's life. Only when a true American standard 
 of protection is thrown around every American child and the oppor- 
 tunities of education and physical development are guaranteed to 
 all alike, to the "carrying-in boys" in the glass houses of New Jer- 
 sey, to the "breaker boys" in the mines of Pennsylvania, to the "dof- 
 fers" in the cotton mills in the Carolinas and Georgia, and to the 
 little street traders in our large cities, will the dream of democracy 
 be a reality. 
 
 The problem of child labor is a national problem, in the third 
 place, because the responsibility for it rests upon the consumers and 
 purchasers of goods made with the aid of the work of young children, 
 whether the purchaser and consumer lives in a manufacturing State 
 or in an agricultural community, in Georgia or California. With 
 
Child Labor a National Problem jj 
 
 the extension of our system of manufacturing and the conditions 
 brought about by world markets you and I cannot very well avoid 
 some participation in these evils so long as we are buyers of Ameri- 
 can made goods; and we cannot more surely or reasonably satisfy 
 our consciences that we are not the oppressors, the real oppressors of 
 these little children until we are satisfied that this American standard 
 of protection reaches out over all the children and through all the 
 industries of our American States. We are then individually and 
 collectively accountable for the American standard or lack of stand- 
 ard of protection of childhood. A national sentiment must, and can 
 be made effective according as the different conditions and problems 
 presented in each State and territory are met and solved in the 
 light of the best legislation and enforcement of child labor laws not 
 the poorest. 
 
 The movement to bring this to pass is not without some signs 
 of encouragement. During the past year thirty-nine State legis- 
 latures were in session and in fifteen of these the child labor issue 
 was a prominent issue. In twelve of the fifteen States to which ref- 
 erence is made new or amended child labor laws were enacted. 
 Delaware for the first time was removed from that blacklist of States 
 that give the child no protection, and now Georgia stands almost 
 alone in the shame and cruelty indicated by absence of any legisla- 
 tion. In addition to the legislation obtained, new forces to speak 
 for the child have been aroused. Fourteen State Child Labor 
 Committees are now working for better laws and better enforce- 
 ment. They are composed of representative men and women in all 
 the leading States, and usually contain members who represent the 
 labor unions, the manufacturers, the churches, the women's clubs, 
 the school officials and all the various interests that can be rallied in 
 a reform that differs from any ordinary reform or charity in that 
 it stands for something in which all can unite. Three of these 
 State committees were organized before our national committee came 
 into existence. And this work is going on. During this winter 
 of 1905-06 nineteen State legislatures are in session. It is what 
 politicians call an "off year," but in many of these legislatures, prac- 
 tically for the first time, an effort is being made to have a child labor 
 law enacted that can be really enforced. 
 
 In conclusion, let us remember that no child labor law has in 
 
78 Child Labor a National Problem 
 
 itself any self-acting principle. Such legislation does not enforce 
 itself. Child labor laws need back of them first of all enlightened 
 public opinion, which the humblest citizen of the republic and every 
 citizen may help to create. They need back of them well-trained 
 and efficient public officials who are not controlled by politi- 
 cal influence, but who will rigidly enforce the law. Right- 
 minded officials require liberal appropriations for the work. Even 
 greater than these is the responsibility which a child labor law, to 
 be really efficient, to be a real benefit to the community, places upon 
 the educational machinery of the State. Good, compulsory educa- 
 tion laws, well enforced, and schools properly equipped to meet the 
 needs of all the classes of the community, schools that will train the 
 hand and eye and mind, that assume responsibility for all the children 
 of the community, inspect their welfare in their homes and provide 
 for intelligent direction of all their activities, are the essential and 
 inevitable consequences of wise child labor legislation. Such schools 
 and such care for the children of the State are the surest guarantees 
 of industrial prosperity, social progress and peace; their absence 
 spells race suicide and national degeneration. 
 
ORGANIZED LABOR'S ATTITUDE TOWARD CHILD 
 
 LABOR 
 
 By Samuel Gompers, 
 President of the American Federation of Labor. 
 
 It should be entirely superfluous for me to say that I am in hearty 
 accord and in full sympathy with the purpose for which the National 
 Child Labor Committee and the various committees throughout the 
 country are organized. 
 
 To-day there is no division of opinion relative to the inadvis- 
 ability and inhumanity of employing children of a young and ten- 
 der age in gainful occupations. So much at least has been gained. 
 In some sections of the country opposition is still manifested against 
 the movement for the abolition of child labor upon the pretense that 
 the enactment of such a law would be the encouragement of or- 
 ganized labor. I am not prepared to deny that. The abolition of 
 child labor would have an influence to encourage the organization 
 of wage-earners in those industries, but I do think also that it might 
 be submitted to the gentlemen who interpose that as an objection, 
 that in several of the Southern States in order to maintain what is 
 called white supremacy laws have been enacted requiring educational 
 qualifications to entitle the citizens to the suffrage, and it may not 
 be inappropriate to this subject to call attention to the further fact 
 that in the cotton industries of the South the children employed 
 therein are the offspring of white women and white men, and that 
 the black children go to school and receive an education. And, 
 therefore, as a matter of fact, the very purpose of the educational 
 qualification to entitle the citizen to the right of suffrage will inevit- 
 ably result in the disenfranchisement of the future white citizen and 
 the enfranchisement of the colored. 
 
 My honored friend, the Commissioner of Labor, anticipated the 
 very remark I intended to make, and I am proud to be in accord with 
 his judgment that an industry that depends for its success upon the 
 
80 Organized Labor's Attitude Toward Child Labor 
 
 labor of young and innocent children is not worthy of success and 
 ought to go down. 
 
 I am not sure that I gained a correct impression of a state- 
 ment alleged to have been made here during an earlier session. If 
 the information is incorrect, I should be most pleased to be corrected, 
 for I do not care to proceed under a misapprehension. I have been 
 told that at one of your meetings in this city it has been stated that 
 the organizations of labor are insincere in their advocacy of the abo- 
 lition of child labor. If anyone entertains any such thought, I desire 
 to say that there is not a provision of law upon the statute books of 
 any State of the Union or the statute books of any of the civilized 
 countries, that has for its purpose the protection of the child and the 
 health of not only children but also women that cannot be traced in 
 some way to the efforts of the much abused organizations of labor. 
 
 It is within my recollection that the Hon. Eldridge T. Gerry, 
 of New York, for many years active in the movement for the 
 protection of children, came before the conventions of the Federa- 
 tion of Labor and said that the hope and the mainstay for the 
 inauguration, for the enactment, and for the enforcement of child 
 labor laws rest in the last degree upon the organizations of labor. 
 If there is anyone who harbors the thought that the organizations 
 of labor are insincere in the effort to have laws passed and enforced 
 for the protection of children, let me quote to you a statement made 
 by a gentleman who presumably was associated with us in the effort 
 to abolish child labor, Dr. A. H. Freiberg, of Cincinnati, president of 
 the Ohio Child Labor Committee, in which he said: "The com- 
 mittee," speaking for his committee, "is not in sympathy with the 
 movement of labor unions for increasing the age at which children 
 may labor from fourteen to sixteen years." He then adds as a 
 comment on it: "It is felt in the committee that the action of the 
 unions is taken purely for the selfish motive of preventing competi- 
 tion and not with the idea of the child's welfare at heart." 
 
 I quote the gentleman because he charges the unions of labor 
 with selfishness in the advocacy of the child labor laws in increasing 
 the years to sixteen as against any opinion which may be entertained 
 that the unions are insincere. 
 
 You should not infer from that statement that I believe that 
 Dr. Freiberg is accurate in his charge that it is from selfish motives 
 that the unions of labor are favorably disposed towards the abolition 
 
Organized Labor's Attitude Toward Child Labor 81 
 
 of child labor, but I quoted simply to show that at least, even accord- 
 ing to this accusation, we must necessarily be sincere in defense of 
 our own self-interests. 
 
 I presume that there are a number of men and women in this 
 city of ours, and in this country of ours, who are altruistic. Thank 
 God that there is a continually growing number of men and women 
 who act from that high purpose. But taking men and women as 
 they are, not here and there, but the accepted view of men and 
 women as they are, I wonder whether all the bankers and all the 
 brokers and all the business men and all the newspaper men and all 
 the companies have all been prompted from purposes of absolutely, 
 purely, ideal altruism. And now as to the insinuations that are made 
 and indulged in that labor men, from the standpoints of their own 
 personal interests, advocate a certain policy, how is it that you 
 find men usually who are engaged in the manufacture of certain 
 products, universally protectionists from the viewpoint of the tariff ? 
 And, on the other hand, you will find men who are engaged in com- 
 mercial pursuits simply, free traders. Is it a physiological influence 
 that brings this about ; is it physical ? is it climatic ? is it providential ? 
 or is it not purely selfish interest that prompts them to do or be the 
 one or the other? And yet some people expect that the men who 
 have only their labor power upon which to defend themselves and to 
 support those dependent upon them that they shall govern all their 
 actions from purely altruistic motives and purposes, surrendering 
 everything that they possess. 
 
 We are just as good as they are — not better, but I repeat, just 
 as good. From the earliest days of the present industrial era, as 
 it emerged from the days of serfdom, and from the days of the intro- 
 duction of the factory system, the organizations of labor have 
 advocated the restriction of child labor. There is not a child labor 
 law on the statute books of the United States but has been put 
 there with the co-operation of the trade union movement. In Ala- 
 bama — I think my memory serves me right — about two years ago, 
 a law was passed, in Tennessee, Texas, and I think in Oregon, 
 too, due entirely to the organized labor movement. I know that in 
 Alabama where some better progress has been made than in Georgia 
 in so far as the conception of such a law is concerned, that the 
 American Federation of Labor sent a lady, not a wage-earner, into 
 Alabama and into Georgia and into Florida and into Tennessee, for 
 
82 Organised Labor's Attitude Toward Child Labor 
 
 the purpose of bringing about first a better feeling and better judg- 
 ment and better conception among the people generally in order 
 that a child labor law might be enacted. I know that when I men- 
 tion the name of the lady you will all agree with me as to her splen- 
 did attainments and her faithful and intelligent work, Miss Irene 
 Ashby, now Mrs. Irene Ashby-Macfadyen, and who is now in South 
 Africa with her husband. Permit me to give just two quotations 
 from Miss Ashby's first report which was submitted to me and which 
 was published in our official journal, the American Federationist, in 
 1901: 
 
 "Four months ago I accepted a commission from Mr. Samuel 
 Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, to agitate 
 the subject of child labor with the view of getting a law on that 
 subject through the legislature of Alabama. Although I return 
 with the news of present defeat, I believe that my mission has helped 
 to give another blow to that slowly dying cause of building com- 
 mercial success on the ruin of little children." 
 
 At the close of that report she says : 
 
 "In resigning my commission on which Mr. Gompers acts, my 
 regret at failure is tempered by the hope that what I have been 
 able to do in concentrating previous interests, collecting facts which 
 have aroused new interests, and in some degree amalgamating differ- 
 ent forces, may not be without fruit in the near future, and that this 
 campaign will at least have a share in the formation of another 
 which will put an end forever to this particular blot on American 
 civilization." 
 
 The lady tendered her resignation to me, but I am proud to say 
 that I declined to accept it, and commissioned her to persist for sev- 
 eral years in the work. And I may add that it was impracticable 
 and inadvisable that Miss Ashby should appear as the representative 
 of organized labor, for the reason that I have tried already indirectly 
 to communicate to you, that the cotton manufacturers oppose the 
 passage of the child labor law upon the pretense that it would 
 encourage the organizations of labor if such a law was passed. It 
 is needless to make any argument before the National Child Labor 
 Committee in favor of the total abolition of child labor. We want 
 to make this country of ours grander and greater and more beautiful 
 than it is. Should anyone ask me, "Do you believe that we are mak- 
 
Organized Labor's Attitude Toward Child Labor 83 
 
 ing progress ?" I would gladly give my assent, and am proud of the 
 progress that we are making, greater than any other country on the 
 face of the globe. 
 
 We, organized labor, are glorifying and are glorified in the 
 recognition of the wonderful advance that is being made and has 
 been made. But it is not quite good enough. So long as there is 
 an injustice done to one man, to one woman or to one child that is 
 capable of rectification by us, so long there is work enough for us to 
 do to try and secure the right and justice and a better condition. We 
 want to make all our people not only politically the bright star in the 
 diadem of nations, not only as an inspiration for political freedom, 
 but also for industrial justice. In that work I am sure you will con- 
 tribute much through the National Child Labor Committee. 
 
 There are a number of ladies and gentlemen associated both in 
 the National Committee and in the several localities with whom I 
 have had the honor and pleasure of working and cooperating for 
 very many years. I hope that so long as life shall remain with me 
 that I shall have the pleasure of still working and helping to solve 
 this problem, and then the next problem, and then the next problem, 
 as it shall confront us. 
 
OVERWORK, IDLENESS OR INDUSTRIAL EDUCATION? 1 
 
 By William Noyes, M.A., 
 Teachers' College, Columbia University, New York. 
 
 The great difference between the child labor of other times and 
 civilizations and our own consists in the fact that in more primitive 
 forms of industry the work of children constituted a large part 
 of their education. Since labor was principally done by hand and 
 with the simplest tools, the steps into artisanship were well adapted 
 to child development. In early New England life — to go no further 
 afield — both boys and girls were occupied in a hundred activities 
 whose very variety had an undoubted effect in developing resource- 
 fulness, endurance, alertness, skill and other high qualities of mind 
 and heart. Even if their work was hard, it was also helpful ; even if 
 the hours were long, the processes were not so monotonous and irk- 
 some as to ruin the child for future usefulness. 
 
 To-day, however, labor has been specialized and subdivided into 
 innumerable and infinitesimal operations. Power machines are driv- 
 ing out the handicrafts, and domestic industry has been supplanted 
 by shop and factory methods. Industries are so housed and segre- 
 gated that it is possible neither to see nor to partake in a large 
 part of modern industries except as a wage-worker, and then only 
 to learn one infinitesimal process. Even the apprentice system is 
 dead or fast dying. Journeymen no longer have apprentices, but 
 only "helpers," whom they teach as little as possible. 
 
 The contrast between child labor in earlier days and in modern 
 city conditions perhaps appears most deplorable when attention 
 is directed to what are euphemistically called the "home industries." 
 So completely has the home lost its good name as a center of industry 
 that the only remedy for the sweat shop is now considered by experts 
 to be the prohibition of profit-making home industries and the conse- 
 
 i This article was contributed to the Annals, and although not a part of the 
 program of the Annual Meeting of the National Child Labor Committee, is included in this 
 volume because of its pert inancy to the topics discussed. 
 
Overwork, Idleness or Industrial Education 85 
 
 quent increasing relegation of industries to factories where they 
 can be brought under regulation. Truly a noteworthy change from 
 the time when children got a large part and a good part of their edu- 
 cation in domestic industries to the time when domestic industries 
 must be abolished in order to save the children from exploitation in 
 them! 
 
 The only relief from the intolerable conditions of modern child 
 labor is found by the ordinary child in migration to some other 
 employment just as bad. This instability is commonly deplored 
 because of the evident evil of thus producing an army of shiftless, 
 irresponsible ne'er-do-wells with no lasting associations, but the fact 
 further illustrates the failure of our modern methods of child labor 
 to educate the child. He changes from one form of employment 
 to another, but is educated in none. 
 
 In any age previous to the introduction of power machinery, a 
 new employment for children always meant new opportunities for 
 education. Doing something new meant learning something new. 
 But although we have provided by the help of machinery hundreds 
 of new employments for children, we do not thereby give them 
 new sources of education and larger opportunities for development. 
 On the contrary, these new occupations put at stake child-life and 
 sap the foundations of future prosperity. 
 
 At the very time when man's power is multiplied a thousand 
 times, when he has at his disposal fingers of steel infinitely more nim- 
 ble than his own, when he can lift inconceivable weights and strike 
 irresistible blows, and when he can reach around the globe, he does 
 all these things at the expense of his own manhood, womanhood, 
 and, worst of all, childhood. Modern invention is like Franken- 
 stein's creation, which, dehumanized by abuse, became a curse to the 
 inventor. It is bad enough to sacrifice adult life, but to lay the future 
 life and power of the race, in the form of the children, on this altar 
 of mechanical improvement means not progress, but the surest retro- 
 gression. "Where there is only a cupidinous ravishment of the 
 future, there, we think, is no true society." 
 
 In a word, whereas once the labor of the child was advantageous 
 to him as a means of growth, physical, mental and moral, the effect 
 of modern child labor is degrading, dehumanizing, stupefying and 
 demoralizing. 
 
86 Overwork, Idleness or Industrial Education 
 
 Bad as child labor is, there is another phase to this problem of 
 the modern city child which, though not so commonly recognized 
 because not so startling nor so dramatic, is none the less serious. It 
 is that presented by the idleness of city children. It is commonly 
 assumed that the children who are not at work are taken care of 
 by the schools, and it is this assumption which leads to the stress 
 laid upon compulsory education by the opponents of child labor. 
 
 What proportion of children are in school, what proportion at 
 work and what proportion idle it is not possible to prove statistically 
 because adequate enumerations have not been made. But that chil- 
 dren are occupied in school far less than is ordinarily supposed 
 is evident from a computation which takes account of the number 
 of school days in a year, the number of absences, the waking hours 
 of the child and the number of school hours per day. From these 
 it appears that on an average the school keeps children busy about 
 one-third of the time when they are awake. 
 
 Now the question arises : What are the children of the city doing 
 during their out-of-school hours? On the one hand some are en- 
 gaged in exhausting physical labor, in factories, sweat shops and 
 especially in the delivery of goods. Many are news and errand 
 boys. For them the school session is a comparatively restful time 
 between hours of work that are both stultifying and demoralizing. 
 Pitiable as their lot is, it is hardly less so than that of the far greater 
 number of school children in the city who have no required work 
 to do. We cannot deceive ourselves into the belief that since they 
 are not being overworked either in school or in shop they are there- 
 fore happily at play 2 or at rest at home. 
 
 A visit to the poorer part of any of our large cities will dis- 
 prove this assumption. As the result of the prevalent conditions of 
 home life in the tenement, the child is inevitably forced out into the 
 street, not only during the day time, but, as common observation 
 shows, until late at night, not only in good weather but in foul. 
 The child has nothing to do at home unless, perhaps, his "home" 
 be a sweat shop where he works; otherwise he is only in the way 
 there. In the evening he cannot go to sleep even if he stays there 
 on account of the work and talk, and so he often runs in the street 
 
 2 The cultural effects of play and the Importance of providing ample opportuni- 
 ties for it are well recognized and do not need emphasis here. The neglected issue 
 is the educational importance of work. 
 
Overwork, Idleness or Industrial Education 87 
 
 until ten, eleven or twelve o'clock. As a result it is no exaggera- 
 tion to say that the tenement child grows up on the street, where he 
 is "educated with fatal precision." What street life makes of the 
 boy and girl is known to all who are familiar with the actual condi- 
 tions or with the literature of the subject. 
 
 But it is not tenement children alone who are exposed to the 
 evils of idleness. It has been estimated by Robert Hunter that there 
 are one-half a million children in greater New York whose only play- 
 ground is the street. As a matter of fact most of the children in 
 the borough of Manhattan play on the streets, and the street, I sub- 
 mit, is not the place where healthful, stimulating games can be 
 played. As a result the children are largely idle. Even in the bet- 
 ter parts of the city one constantly sees groups of well-dressed chil- 
 dren listlessly standing about "waiting for something to turn up." 
 Play on an asphalt pavement between two rows of brownstone fronts 
 soon gets to be monotonous. The parks are far away and often 
 protected with warning signs to "Keep off the grass." At home 
 there is little to do in the few small rooms except to read books, 
 just what is done at school. To tease and annoy others, to make 
 uncanny noises, to smoke, to gamble, to dissipate energy in trifling 
 ways, to use and scribble foul language and symbols and to be always 
 ready to "cheese it, the cop," are the open doors before most city 
 boys. With things as they are, between the school and the factory 
 and the street and the pigeon hole flat and the policeman's club, it 
 is little wonder that many a boy finds mischief to do, nuisances to 
 commit and crimes to perpetrate until he is shut up in the reforma- 
 tory, where some rational account of his nature may be taken and 
 he is given something useful to do. 
 
 The case is not so bad for the girls., for there is more for them 
 to do ; there is still a remnant of domestic industry left in the apart- 
 ment home in which they can take part. But still there is plenty of 
 idle out-of-school time left for them, when their far-fetched devices 
 of games are exhausted and they sit gazing and gossiping and "show- 
 ing off." There is good evidence that the ranks of prostitutes are 
 largely recruited from those who are untrained in any sort of manual 
 labor. The dilemma for the city child seems to be either painful 
 exhaustion and demoralizing work on the one hand, or futile idleness 
 and its consequent immorality on the other. 
 
88 Overwork, Idleness or Industrial Education 
 
 Even when parents realize the dangers and would gladly set 
 their children at some worthy and educative employment they find 
 that it costs more to do so than to keep them in idleness. The 
 problem has become too large for the individual parent to handle. 
 What was once an individual or domestic problem has become 
 a social problem. Once the responsibility lay with the parent; now 
 it lies with society. Serious as this problem seems when viewed in 
 its social relations, it appears none the less so from the point of view 
 of child nature. This is clear when we remember that the normal 
 child is not averse to work ; on the contrary he is bubbling over with 
 energy which under normal conditions expends itself partly in play, 
 partly in work. Children can work, under proper conditions children 
 like to work. President G. Stanley Hall begs the whole question in 
 his definition, "I think work is doing something you don't like 
 to do because somebody else makes you do it." This is not work; 
 this is drudgery. Of course children do not like drudgery. No 
 more do adults. But there is no greater joy of chilhood than manip- 
 ulative and creative activity. This, beginning as play, a delight in 
 the activity itself, shades insensibly into work, which has a deter- 
 mined end. 3 
 
 Enforced idleness either on city streets or in prisons is a hor- 
 rible fate for child or adult, and children, we may well believe, are 
 not idle because they want to be idle. They are idle because they 
 are deprived of work, except under such conditions as make it over- 
 wearisome, painful and demoralizing. Yet even so they submit to 
 it, even embrace the opportunity to perform it. Enormous numbers 
 of them quit school to take up work. 
 
 Where shall we lay the blame for this ? The greed of employers 
 in exploiting the unskilled labor of childish hands is a common 
 object of reprobation, and justly so; the stupidity and shortsighted- 
 ness of parents is open to the severest criticism for allowing their 
 children to become laborers, but neither the greed of the employers 
 
 3 The truth is, that the common idea of work needs correction. So much of 
 the world's work has teen done under compulsion, either in chattel, serf or wage 
 slavery, that the idea of work as the irrepressible outflow of energy for a determined 
 end has not permeated the common consciousness. Now the discharge of energy is 
 the most continuously pleasureable of human sensations. Impressions, however de- 
 lightful, in time lose their force, but expression in the free outpouring of energy 
 is an unceasing joy. Our concept of work is so confused by the shame attached 
 to it in its common form of toil, by the pain and exhaustion of drudgery, that we 
 are blind to the joy and glory of work, the means and the proof of human achieve- 
 ment. 
 
Overwork, Idleness or Industrial Education 89 
 
 nor the foolishness of their parents, nor their immediate economic 
 necessity, could prevail were it not for the love of activity, the pas- 
 sion for creation, the instinct of work which has become a part 
 of the nature of civilized man. The irksomeness of school duties 
 and the ennui of the street are the only alternatives, and hence the 
 children are willing — alas not ready! — to go to work. The reason 
 why parents cannot keep their children in school, but can keep 
 them at work is because the children themselves want to do some- 
 thing. Irene Ashby Macfadyen, in speaking of the number of chil- 
 dren in cotton mills in Alabama, has said : ". . . to these must be 
 added the children who come in to help elder brothers and sisters, 
 who are not counted or paid as workers, although they often do a 
 full day's work for the fun of it." "The fun of it"— the pity of it ! 
 This is an extreme example, but none the less a real example of the 
 irrepressible activity of the child which takes advantage even of 
 the cotton mill to express itself. With a stupid school curriculum 
 that gives little opportunity for doing things, with idleness on the 
 street for the other hours of the day, it is little wonder that the 
 chance to work — even in degrading and injurious and monotonous 
 employments claims and takes the child away from school. 
 
 These facts indicate that there is room and need for an advance 
 beyond legislation prohibitory of child labor and compulsory of edu- 
 cation. These measures are sound, progressive and essential. But 
 when we have prevented the child from being ruined in the factory, 
 when we have said that he must go to school, then we are compelled 
 to ask, What shall we do with him in school? 
 
 To compel children to go to school, no matter what the failings 
 of the school be, and to give them no occupation for empty hours may 
 prove vastly disastrous. The apparent remoteness of the subjects 
 now taught in our public schools from what seem to be the practical 
 duties of life, influences many parents to put their children to work 
 and evade the law. It is next to useless to show to such parents 
 that the very entrance of children into gainful occupations tends 
 to drag down wages and to drive adults out of work. The average 
 parent thinks not of the general economic situation, but simply asks : 
 "Will my child's work add to our family income ?" But when he is 
 convinced that added schooling increases the child's chances of mak- 
 ing a better livelihood, he strains every resource to keep him in 
 
90 Overwork, Idleness or Industrial Education 
 
 school, unless, indeed, the evils of out-of-school idleness are so im- 
 pressive that he puts him to work to keep him out of mischief. 
 
 The alternative then is not overwork on the one hand and futile 
 schooling and idleness on the other; the cure is not to drive the 
 child by law from the factory back to the foul street and the over- 
 crowded school. The question is : Shall we be content with prohibi- 
 tion of child labor or shall we proceed to have organization thereof 
 for educational purposes? Children, we have seen, have for ages 
 worked, have been educated in the truest sense by their work, can 
 work to great advantage to the community and to themselves and, 
 under proper conditions, like to work. The inference does not seem 
 far-fetched that they have a right to work. The problem then faces 
 us, how to keep children happily at work during such part of their 
 time and at such kinds of work as shall build them up physically, in- 
 tellectually, socially — in a word, educate them. 
 
 Since experience shows that the factory as it exists to-day 
 cannot do this, inevitably we turn to the public school as the means of 
 solving the problem. One's recognition of the present value of the 
 public school need not be doubted because he points out that its 
 present function is totally inadequate to the task now before it. Its 
 recognized function to-day is that of securing literacy, and we learn 
 with satisfaction that illiteracy is steadily decreasing throughout the 
 whole country, even in the great manufacturing States, with their 
 vast tides of immigration. It sets itself the task of widely establish- 
 ing the "conventionalities of intelligence," namely the three R's, 
 and therein its success is apparent. We may gratefully recognize 
 that the common school does much in fitting children for common 
 human intercourse. 
 
 But there is a growing demand, often blindly expressed, that it 
 do more than this. There are signs of heresy against the fetich wor- 
 ship which confidently assumes literacy to be a cure for all our ills. 
 There is a growing demand that the object of the public school 
 shall be to prepare the child for "complete living." Whatever else 
 "complete living" may include, it always has included, as I contend, 
 an appreciation of industrial processes. But in our schools, as 
 Superintendent Seaver, of Boston, says, "the traditional balance be- 
 tween learning and labor has been upset and learning has taken 
 the whole time." It is even worse than that. It is one particular 
 
Overwork, Idleness or Industrial Education 91 
 
 kind of learning that has taken the whole time. There are other 
 "conventionalities of intelligence" except the three R's. Familiarity 
 with economic processes, which have long constituted the substratum 
 of conventional intelligence is relegated into unimportance in our 
 educational systems. This gives firm ground for the criticism that 
 the schools are isolated and apart from life. The reason is that 
 now, as always, life is chiefly industrial, whereas the school attempts 
 to educate apart from industry, or, at best, for a commercial or lit- 
 erary environment. Children are trained to be consumers rather 
 than producers. They do not adequately partake in the community 
 life, especially on its industrial side, and since the school continues 
 its tradition of teaching the three R's as its chief function there is a 
 great hiatus in their lives, namely a lack of rich, personal experi- 
 ence, without which their school training in linguistic expression is 
 largely futile. It expects them to talk and write without sufficient 
 material of experience about which to talk and write. By over- 
 specialization the school defeats its own avowed purpose. The func- 
 tion which the home has been obliged to abandon, namely, the fur- 
 nishing of valuable industrial life to the child, the school has not 
 assumed. What the school needs is to amplify its utilitarian func- 
 tions, to think more in terms of the real world of industry. 
 
 "Manual training" as ordinarily conducted does not satisfy these 
 conditions. In almost no school does it occupy more than one per 
 cent, of the childs' waking hours. It is only by the elasticity 
 of language that it can be dignified as "work," for it is plainly 
 not productive labor. It is too commonly a histrionic participation 
 in certain primitive processes which are factitiously interesting and 
 fictitiously important. At best, constructive handwork takes the 
 child no further than the town or craft stage, and there he is left, 
 so far as systematic education goes, at the threshold of modern indus- 
 try. After the child leaves school, until he is ready to take up his 
 life occupation, there is a gap. This may be filled by some juvenile 
 industry, but there is little or no education therein, for the benumb- 
 ing, dwarfing atmosphere of the factory or the sweatshop is more 
 likely to demoralize the child than to fit him for future usefulness. 
 His industrial education is not under the direction of wise teachers. 
 He sees industrial life with no perspective, but is plunged into it 
 when he leaves school under the compulsion of earning a living 
 
92 Overwork, Idleness or Industrial Education 
 
 by the monotonous repetition of one little act. He is not educated 
 by the school for the industrial system; he is simply fed into its 
 maw. To appreciate industrial processes in any large and mean- 
 ingful way is then impossible. We boast of our practical education 
 and of the stress we lay on "the essentials," and yet allow nine- 
 tenths of our children to pass out of school without any adequate 
 conceptions of the industries in which they are sure to spend the 
 rest of their lives, to say nothing of their inability to make a living 
 therein. 
 
 This, then, in a word, is our problem : how the children of the 
 community shall be saved from the evils of premature and deteriora- 
 tive labor, from ignorance, from idleness and from the consequent 
 immorality. If the school does not make them intelligently industri- 
 ous, the factory, the mine, the store, will make them ignorantly so, 
 or the street will keep them idle and worthless. 
 
 When we ask how modern productive processes can be so used 
 we are led at once to recognize certain indispensable conditions of 
 such use. There is, of course, a certain minimum age limit. It is 
 not here suggested that Bessemer furnaces and rolling mills be made 
 a part of the kindergarten. But it is suggested that there is a 
 gap between the present school age of most children and the age 
 at which they are able to enter the trades, when they could be edu- 
 cated in those processes in which they are to be engaged. 
 
 Another condition is that the hours be not overlong at which 
 the child shall work. This principle is already recognized in the 
 limitation of study hours; the futility of study when attention has 
 flagged is well known. The exhaustion of power when interest is 
 lacking is equally applicable to work. 
 
 A third negative condition is that the work should not be unduly 
 monotonous. This is closely connected with the previously named 
 condition. If work is varied its hours may be lengthened. The ex- 
 treme subdivision of labor so characteristic of modern industry is 
 what constitutes its chief evil. That began in the seventeenth cen- 
 tury long before the advent of modern power-driven machinery. 
 Machine production has but accentuated it. If it were eliminated, 
 machine production would be robbed of most of its horrors. In an 
 educational system of work, therefore, which is not conducted for 
 
Overwork, Idleness or Industrial Education 93 
 
 the profit of an exploiter it is an indispensable condition that there be 
 variety of work. 
 
 A more positive demand to be made of industrial education is 
 that there be a preliminary acquaintance with the evolution of the 
 industries in question. With this scheme many schools are already 
 familiar in the study of the primitive and craft stages of production. 
 These are valuable in giving an understanding of the principles in- 
 volved in the industrial processes taught. When these principles are 
 understood, many modern methods easily lose their mysterious and 
 ugly character. 
 
 Education for modern industry involves, it almost goes without' 
 saying, an acquaintance with the principles of machines. The in- 
 clined plane, the wedge, the lever, the screw, the pulley, the wheel 
 and axle, the cam, have become "conventionalities of intelligence" 
 among us almost as truly as the symbols of language. To master 
 them and the principles of the prime movers and of machines for 
 the transmission and utilization of power would tend to make boys 
 and girls not slaves but masters of modern processes. Now, instead 
 of rejoicing in them they are too often afraid of them. 
 
 Last, but not least, of the conditions under which modern indus- 
 trial process should be made a part of education is that real work 
 should be required. Not merely to study about work nor to play at 
 work, but to engage in positive productive work is a necessary part 
 of preparation for complete living. The acquisition of habits of 
 industriousness involves a certain amount of pressure, not to be 
 determined by momentary whims. We do not hesitate at com- 
 pulsory education — which at present means little but book learn- 
 ing — w hy should we hesitate at a degree of compulsory work? 
 This does not mean that there should be no joy in work. Far 
 from it. Work is not drudgery. Drudgery educates no one, 
 whether the drudgery be learning to spell or learning to weave. Nor 
 does it mean that the fullest use should not be made of all those 
 stimuli to work which the experience of the race has found valuable 
 in the past, such as festivals, games, music, esprit du corps, and the 
 rest. It does mean that the child should learn the force of the mo- 
 tives that will chiefly actuate him when he goes to work for a living, 
 not indeed the cupidity and fear of starvation which the old econo- 
 mists assumed were the real motives, but the joy of expression and 
 production, the "instinct of workmanship," which have become a 
 
94 Overwork, Idleness or Industrial Education 
 
 part Of our race inheritance in spite of the exploitation of man by 
 man. 
 
 If these are the conditions of modern industrial education it 
 is evident that a new duty lies before the public school, and the 
 question at once arises: If the school is to teach industry as well 
 as letters and the other essentials, must there not be an extension of 
 school hours? Certainly, and why not? We have seen that the 
 evils confronting us are child labor and child idleness. If the child 
 is in school, that occupies only one-third of his waking hours, at 
 other times, especially in the city, he is idle or overworked. Let us 
 now suppose the entire success of the campaign against child labor 
 and for compulsory education up to the highest standard proposed. 
 These measures which we may assume as fundamental and necessary 
 steps, taken by themselves simply intensify the situation. What will 
 the school do ? What must it do if it is to be loyal to its traditions ? 
 Whatever else we include in industrial education, a fundamental re- 
 quirement to be made of it is that it take its cue from modern indus- 
 try. Let the value of learning primitive and mediaeval processes be 
 granted. But that is not enough. Unless the boy or the girl who 
 goes out of the school to make his living knows how to make modern 
 things in a modern way he is not in any proper sense of the word 
 educated. Child labor is not bad any more than modern industry is 
 bad because of the use of the machine, because of the division of 
 labor. It is the abuse of the machine, its unguarded condition, its 
 excessive speed through unduly prolonged hours — it is the repetition 
 of the same mechanical movement once a second and twelve million 
 times a year, it is the minute subdivision of labor with the conse- 
 quent confinement and mechanization of the worker, that is bad — bad 
 enough for the adult, worse for the child. It is the utter sacrifice 
 of the worker, and especially the child worker, to the process of 
 machine production and divided labor that calls for condemnation. 
 Can, then, the machine and the accompanying division of labor be 
 utilized as an educational force. To deny that they can is to deny 
 that education has to do with real life, and to affirm that labor and 
 culture are antithetic. We are so impressed with the evils of modern 
 machine production partly through the effectiveness of the anti- 
 child labor campaign, that we are loth to acknowledge that the evils 
 are incidents, not essentials, of such production. But when we once 
 
Overwork, Idleness or Industrial Education 95 
 
 realize that the machine is a means both of subduing nature and 
 of stimulating the intellect a whole new field of education is open 
 to the pedagog. 
 
 The alarming increase of neurotic diseases among school chil- 
 dren, the crying need of facilities for play and the social necessity 
 for industrial education — all three facts point in the same direction, 
 namely, that the school must assume the responsibility for a greater 
 share of the child's time. If it educated him through play, through 
 the dance, through systematic exercise, there would be less idle and 
 vicious time upon the street; if it educated him through work, it 
 would increase his industrial efficiency, and through both play and 
 work he might well be spared some of his present study of books, 
 with no loss of knowledge of what they contain. Three hours for 
 study, three hours for play and three hours for work would be an 
 arrangement far in advance of our present system with its worse 
 than waste of child energy. 
 
 "It would be a most wholesome arangement in schools," said 
 Froebel, "to establish actual working hours similar to the existing 
 study hours ; and it will surely come to this." 
 
PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR CHILD LABOR 
 
 By Graham Taylor, D.D., 
 Warden of Chicago Commons 
 
 This question is more than an ethical question, far deeper than 
 a legislative question, — this is a human question. So human that 
 it seems like one of those cross-section plans of a great structure 
 which lets you see it from the top to the bottom. It is so human 
 that it cuts like the great chasm of the canon of the Colorado, all 
 down through the strata of human life; so human that it really 
 bewilders one at first thought, and yet we need something to lead us 
 down from the top to the bottom, from the surface away down to 
 the elemental principle. But we must begin at the top of the ground. 
 I wish you could look across the street from where I live and see 
 the little one-story house, and see the people on the porch watching 
 for someone, and finally around the corner comes an express wagon, 
 and in it a whole collection of new immigrants, just arriving from 
 the old country, with their baggage, bananas and babies. Such 
 greetings, such huggings of men with men, such kissings on both 
 cheeks, such a wonderful cheer to welcome the poor steerage passen- 
 gers as they come to this far El Dorado, to this land of promise ! 
 
 Well, now what is there that effects their nature most? It is 
 their deep, intense, almosf wild love of their children, especially 
 among the Italian immigrants. Yet the factory inspector tells us that 
 eighty-five per cent, of those arraigned for breach of the child labor 
 law are of the foreign-born people, and eight per cent, of them are 
 these very Italians who come from southern Italy. How do you 
 account for it that these people, so passionately fond of each other, 
 can apparently be so indifferent? Well, they arrive, and there is a 
 warm welcome given them, and after awhile the hospitality is over 
 and the hard struggle for existence is on. They are survivors in 
 the first stages of that hard struggle, but after awhile, when sick- 
 ness or bad weather or some industrial depression comes and the 
 father is out of work, then the temptations of severe poverty appear 
 
Parental Responsibility for Child Labor 97 
 
 and the struggle for existence is on in earnest and some of them 
 yield, but you would be astonished to know how few do yield and 
 let the child go to the shop. 
 
 From the new country itself there is a more infectious and insidi- 
 ous temptation still. It comes not from across the sea, but it comes 
 from the very atmosphere charged with electrical industry in this 
 new land. There comes the temptation of the quest for money that 
 is almost the religion of the Americans. Great is American "Thrift," 
 and Benjamin Franklin its prophet. These immigrants begin to see 
 what their neighbors are doing; their neighbors are getting more 
 income, so they, too, strive until they are able to buy the house in 
 which they live. This done, they keep the family in the basement of 
 the rear tenement and they buy a second house; and they can still 
 pass down the streets and everybody applauds them for getting on 
 in the world. The contagion is spreading, and in fact the inspector 
 tells us that people who bring their children in to apply for work are 
 fairly well dressed, especially in the summer time. In the winter they 
 are the poor who come. Before these mostly illiterate parents get our 
 uplift toward the appreciation of education they get the down-let 
 to money-thrift at the expense of childhood, manhood and woman- 
 hood. So this country has to take part of the responsibility. 
 
 Two educational agencies are at command and are adequate to 
 lift the family out of inherited indifference to the value of play and 
 schooling, and to protect it from the aggressions of American 
 "thrift" upon childhood. First of all the deterrent effect of enforced 
 law is amply demonstrated by our experience in Illinois. Our col- 
 lection of $25,000 in fines from over a thousand prosecutions in a 
 single year, is in striking contrast with the score or more convic- 
 tions reported from some other large industrial States. The records 
 of the factory inspector's office show a decrease of twenty per cent, 
 in the discovered breaches of the law the past year over the preced- 
 ing one, although during this period the school population increased 
 two per cent. While in 1901 the number of children at work was 4.1 
 per cent, of the total employed in 1904, they constituted only 1.9 per 
 cent, of the total. Meanwhile 2,200 of them have been released 
 from the mines and thousands more from the holiday work after 7 
 p. m. The commensurate increase of the school attendance in Chi- 
 cago indicates the pressure upon even the greediest parents, at least 
 to hasten the process of their children's learning to read and write. 
 
98 Parental Responsibility for Child Labor 
 
 The attractive influence of the new schooling and other social 
 agencies may be depended upon to draw such parents out of their 
 bad ways more effectively even than they can be driven out by the 
 terrors of the law, as applied by the compulsory education depart- 
 ment and the factory inspectors. For from the kindergarten to the 
 vacation school, and from the social settlement clubs to the new 
 park houses, with their public library, stations and gymnasiums, the 
 tendency of these educational up-lifts is to rescue the child's leisure 
 from idleness and vice to both profit and pleasure. And this solu- 
 tion of the very real parental problem in the leisure of their children 
 promises to help solve the problem of child labor. 
 
 Facing the railway entrance to Bradford, England, is the monu- 
 ment to a young man. Clinging to his stalwart form is the figure 
 of a little girl. Beneath his outstretched arm a boy has fed for 
 refuge from a pursuer, whose approach is warded off by the pro- 
 tector. On the base of the monument is inscribed the belated tribute 
 to the man who dared lead the forlorn hope against child labor in 
 England seventy years ago — "Richard Oastler was born in Brad- 
 ford." Belated indeed, long after the hero had suffered his martyr- 
 dom in the debtor's prison, and neglected old age. Of that genera- 
 tion which Thomas Sadler arraigned before Parliament, as first guilty 
 of child labor, he said in 183 1 : "Our ancestors could not have sup- 
 posed it possible, posterity will not believe it true, that a generation 
 of Englishmen had existed that would work lisping infancy of a few 
 summers' old, regardless alike of its smiles or tears, and unmoved 
 by its unresisting weakness, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, sixteen hours 
 a day, and through the weary night also, till in the dewy morn of 
 existence the bud of youth faded and fell where it was unfolded." 
 It seems hardly possible that the light from our statue of "Liberty 
 enlightening the world," seventy-four years after England began to 
 repent of its crime against childhood, should fall upon a generation 
 of Americans as heartlessly repeating the same cruel folly, as though 
 the experience and law of civilization had not outlawed the barbarity. 
 But by that light a new generation of Americans is emerging who 
 will cease not to lift and bear the gauntlet that fell from Richard 
 Oastler's hand, until every child in America is assured its right to 
 play and learn, as the best assurance of the nation's perpetuity and 
 progress. 
 
THE OPERATION OF THE WISCONSIN CHILD LABOR 
 
 LAW 1 
 
 By Edward W. Frost, Esq., 
 
 of Milwaukee, Wis. 
 
 All social reforms in Wisconsin begin with the inspiration of 
 noble women. Three or four years ago we made up our minds, be- 
 cause the women showed us the way, that we would write upon 
 the statute books of Wisconsin laws which would protect children, as 
 they were not then protected; and in one session — we do not know 
 how we did it, we are very glad that something did it through us — 
 a compulsory education law, an improved juvenile court law, and 
 more than all a strong child labor law, were written into the laws of 
 Wisconsin. It was a good achievement, if I may speak for my 
 State so frankly. 
 
 The conditions which brought about these laws in our State 
 were not so dreadful as those described by Dr. Adler as existing in 
 many other States. I would far rather discuss things which I have 
 seen in South Carolina, in Georgia, of little children going to work 
 at six o'clock on twelve-hour shifts. But we have the same condi- 
 tions in Wisconsin that prevail elsewhere with respect to greed, 
 ignorance, the hurry to be rich at all costs, the tenements inhabited 
 often by an alien population, men and women who began work 
 when they should have been in school, and who see no reason why 
 their children should not work as early, — and we were forced in 
 self defense,— in defense of our institutions, in defense of the land 
 that was to be regenerated and purified by such work as the National 
 Child Labor Committee stands for — to take these laws up and put 
 them through. We had the same old law that permitted little chil- 
 dren under fourteen to work to help support the family, and we 
 struck that law off. We had a law which permitted little children 
 to work on an affidavit, taken before some obscure notary public, 
 merely an affidavit made by a parent or guardian or a little child 
 itself, and you know what that meant. 
 
 iAddress at the Chicago session of the Annual Meeting of the National Child Labor Coin. 
 mittee. Pep. 16, 1005. 
 
ioo The Operation of the Wisconsin Child Labor Law 
 
 These things were struck from the laws of Wisconsin that the 
 fair name of our State should no longer be disgraced, and in their 
 place we put the permit system, based on what has been pronounced 
 by the National Factory Inspectors Association, a body of experi- 
 enced men, one of the most practical tests of the age of a child 
 applying for work, that is to be found anywhere in the United 
 States. Those who come close to this work know that it is com- 
 paratively easy to forbid work for wages by children under fourteen ; 
 that it is comparatively easy to classify the employments in which 
 children under sixteen can be employed; and that it is more than 
 comparatively hard to find out how old the child is when he asks 
 for a permit to work. I asked in South Carolina the age of 
 the little children employed in one of the great mills. I was per- 
 mitted to do so, I hardly knew why, by a hard-headed superin- 
 tendent of one of the greatest mills in the South. I said to him, 
 "How do you get at the age of these children?" "Oh," he said, 
 "we don't pay any attention to it ; their parents say they are twelve 
 (the required age there) and we take them," I said, "May I ask 
 them their age?" and he said, "Yes, go ahead." I said to the first 
 child, "Hold old are you?" "Ten." How long have you been at 
 work?" 'About a year and a half." I said to the next one, "How 
 old are you?" "Eleven." "How much schooling have you had?" 
 "Never had none." And so it went on. 
 
 The question is how to get the correct age of the children. 
 Now, under our old law permitting children to work on a mere 
 affidavit, the people who were clothed by law with the authority 
 occasionally took a child out of work, but it was very hard to 
 do it. Once in a while a man would be brought up for swearing 
 falsely to the age of his child, and he was poor generally, and the 
 court was very well-dressed and the District Attorney had had a 
 good dinner, and they didn't want to be hard on the poor man — 
 we are all very merciful sometimes when we ought not to be — 
 and the man was let go without a fine to do the same thing over 
 again. So in this new law we wrote these requirements, that when, 
 in the State of Wisconsin, a child applies for work, when there is 
 any doubt, and there is doubt in a very large part of the cases, 
 the official to whom he applies must demand a verified birth certifi- 
 cate, and a verified baptismal certificate if he cannot get the first, 
 
T&e Operation of the Wisconsin Child Labor Law ' v -_ idj*^/' 
 
 and if he cannot get the verified baptismal certificate he must demand 
 legal proof of age given at entering school, and then if he cannot 
 get any of these proofs he must be satisfied by other evidence. These 
 tests were at that time rare in child labor laws. What has been the 
 result? It has revolutionized the system in Wisconsin, and some 
 one thousand children were taken, in a year, out of the factories 
 and stores where they were unlawfully employed and thousands 
 kept from beginning work under age. These tests work. The first 
 two can sometimes be evaded, because parents cannot produce the 
 first two certificates, but it is increasingly hard to escape the first, 
 and very often the school age gives the facts. When the child 
 entered school there was less reason to misrepresent his age. 
 
 We must remember that modern tendencies, modern improve- 
 ments in machinery, the outworked condition of hard working men 
 and women made prematurely old by child labor while in your cir- 
 cle of life and mine they would still be young, are daily calling 
 louder and louder for the labor of little children, and no amount of 
 heart-breaking anxiety on that point will do. We must secure legis- 
 lation and then see that the law is enforced. A good legislature 
 with a good Governor will put through a law, but only public opin- 
 ion applied steadily can have power over the officials who execute 
 that law ; without the aid of public opinion it cannot be enforced. 
 
 I am glad to say that in the State of Wisconsin we are supported 
 in the enforcement of the child labor law by the great majority 
 of large employers of labor. We did have our conflict with the 
 glass works. I have heard it rumored that in other States there 
 is conflict with the glass works. Glass works and child labor do not 
 seem to get along very well together. But the great employers have 
 accepted the law. They send for the factory inspectors themselves 
 and say to them, "Go through our factory, and if any one is wrong- 
 fully employed here let us know it." But the little stores and the 
 little businesses break the law. The first things which we must 
 look out for are the stores on the corners employing only one or two 
 boys or girls. And only constant energy and wide-awake interest 
 will help solve the problem in every State as we are trying to solve 
 it in Wisconsin. We have no perfect law. We would be glad to 
 have the educational test and further limit of the hours of labor. But 
 no law can go too fast and too far ahead of public opinion and be 
 enforced. 
 
102 The Operation of the Wisconsin Child Labor Law 
 
 THere came a time when a great people had broken through 
 into a promised land; they had won many battles; they had writ- 
 ten the pages of history with glorious deeds, but it was said there 
 was yet much land to be possessed. This is a great field. We who 
 are laboring in it know we are building, be it ever so little, so that 
 those who come after us may build upon our foundations, to con- 
 struct more successfully strong walls of protection for the children 
 of the future. There is much to be grateful for, and when we hear 
 what the past ten years have done for child labor reform let us 
 thank God and take courage. 
 
A BUSINESS MAN'S VIEW OF CHILD LABOR 1 
 
 By S. W. Woodward, 
 Of the firm of Woodward & Lathrop, Washington, D. C. 
 
 It is supposed that the question of child labor has been fully 
 discussed from the ethical standpoint, and that all are agreed that 
 it is harmful to the mental and physical growth of the child, and 
 also hurtful to the state to place a child at work at an age under 
 fourteen. I shall, therefore, try to discuss the question from the 
 practical standpoint of the business men. 
 
 In the complex interests of business as conducted to-day, there 
 is opportunity for the employment of many children under sixteen 
 years of age. To complement this, the conditions rendering it neces- 
 sary for many children to seek some gainful occupation, at an early 
 age, are so many and so varied, that lest it may be thought a simple 
 matter of law-making, let us look at some known conditions which 
 confront us in every-day life in business affairs. 
 
 From a somewhat long experience, the following conditions 
 have constantly appeared: 
 
 Even with both parents living, lack of employment by the bread- 
 winner of the family may make it necessary for the child to make 
 some contribution weekly to the family support. 
 
 Again, the father dying, the mother is often compelled to use 
 every means to supplement her own earnings in order to support 
 the family and keep younger brothers and sisters at school for a 
 year or two more. 
 
 Or, both parents being dead, the child is often thrown into the 
 custody of the nearest of kin, who themselves are not able to sup- 
 port him, and must, from force of circumstances, place him in 
 some employment. 
 
 Under these conditions it would seem that they were a law 
 
 lAddress at the third session of the Second Annual Meeting of the National Child Labor 
 Cpmmittee, Washington, December 9, 1905. 
 
104 A Business Man's View of Child Labor 
 
 unto themselves, and provided the child is in good physical condi- 
 tion, the chances are that there will be no great harm done. 
 
 However, a thoughtful consideration shows the very great 
 difficulty in dealing with the situation, as these children constitute 
 a large proportion of the applications for employment in mer- 
 cantile lines. These conditions existing, thousands of children drift 
 into gainful occupation, either wisely or unwisely, and thus become 
 a factor in social, economic, and business life. Some of the broad- 
 est-minded merchants, in order to remedy the recognized incon- 
 sistency of the situation (not to say evil), and having in their employ 
 many children under sixteen, deprived of opportunity hitherto, have 
 opened schools of instruction in their establishments, giving the 
 boys two hours' instruction in the early morning in elementary 
 education. This, however, is exceptional and can only reach a 
 limited number; but is nevertheless a move in the right direction, 
 and proves in itself that a better education is needful for promotion 
 and advancement. It may be stated as a safe proposition that for 
 every dollar earned by a child under fourteen years of age ten-fold 
 will be taken from their earning capacity in later years. Lest it be 
 said the statement is too strong, the writer hastens to say that he 
 is perfectly familiar with instances, from Alexander Hamilton to 
 Andrew Carnegie, and many others of personal knowledge, who 
 were compelled to begin life's work at the age of thirteen, and whose 
 success would seem to disprove the statement. One of the most 
 successful merchants in Boston to-day was forced at nine years of 
 age, on account of his father's death, to assist a widowed mother in 
 the support of three younger children. 
 
 But exceptions only prove the rule, and it is only necessary 
 to point to the large number of children under sixteen years of age 
 who, for greater or less misdemeanors, have become public charges 
 upon the State, and are compelled, a few years later, to go into 
 life's work with not only little education to help them, but an experi- 
 ence which will tend to degrade them, to show the necessity for 
 wise legislation in the matter. 
 
 The present prosperity of business interests in our country has 
 brought about a condition of affairs which must count for much 
 in the future welfare of the children of to-day. For the past five 
 years, the average wage earner has had perhaps more steady, con- 
 
A Business Man's View of Child Labor 105 
 
 tinued employment than in any previous five years of this genera- 
 tion. A consequence of this is, that in looking to the future welfare 
 of his children he very properly and wisely decides that he can 
 afford to send the boy or girl to school for one, two, or three years 
 longer, knowing that by this course he is doing all that lies in 
 his power to prepare him for usefulness. This action is felt in all 
 business interests and has very noticeably reduced the number of 
 applications from the families composing the better class of wage- 
 earners. It will result in giving the children of to-day an oppor- 
 tunity for such education and equipment as will tend to make them 
 more self-respecting and better citizens. It is an encouraging feat- 
 ure of the present situation. 
 
 Since the province of the State is to legislate for the greatest 
 good of all its citizens, it would seem that the highest wisdom would 
 be to place an age limit by written law, below which children ought 
 not be placed in gainful occupations, and this age may possibly be 
 best fixed at fourteen years. 
 
 It may be interesting to know that the unwritten law is also 
 quite effective in this particular, viz.: that there do not appear at 
 the present time any children between the ages of eleven and four- 
 teen, the average child seeming to pass from the age of eleven to 
 fourteen without due regard to the Gregorian calendar. 
 
 While in Washington we have peculiar conditions, in that we 
 are not a manufacturing or commercial city, we fully sympathize 
 with the views of those advocating child labor laws in mining and 
 manufacturing communities, and shall be glad to be placed in the 
 columns of States favoring advanced laws for the protection of the 
 youth of both sexes. 
 
THE ESSENTIALS OF A CHILD LABOR LAW FOR THE 
 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA 1 
 
 By Henry J. Harris, Ph.D., 
 
 United States Bureau of Labor, and Secretary of District of Columbia 
 Citizens' Child Labor Committee. 
 
 Before discussing the essential provisions of a law regulating 
 the employment of children in the District of Columbia, it should 
 be stated that the local Child Labor Committee is in hearty sym- 
 pathy with the efforts of the Civic Center, the Public Education As- 
 sociation, and the numerous citizens' associations to secure a conn 
 pulsory education law for the District. The necessity for such a 
 law is so patent that it would be a waste of time to discuss the 
 subject before this audience. The relation of a compulsory educa- 
 tion law to a child labor law is a vital one, for perhaps the principal 
 reason for prohibiting the labor of young children is to assure them 
 an opportunity of obtaining the educational and other advantages 
 offered by the public school system. 
 
 The bill proposed for the District of Columbia was drawn up 
 on lines suggested by the National Child Labor Committee, and was 
 carefully adapted to the needs of the District by the president of 
 the Board of District Commissioners and the local Child Labor 
 Committee. In its present form the bill may be called a conserva- 
 tive one; it contains no provisions which have not been in actual 
 operation in other States and which experience has shown to be 
 effective in removing the evils which also accompany the employ- 
 ment of children in this city. 
 
 The first part of the bill provides that no child under fourteen 
 years of age may be employed in any occupation while the public 
 schools are in session. During the time that the schools are not in 
 session no child under fourteen may be employed in any factory, 
 
 l Address at the third session of the Second Annual Meeting of the National 
 Child I^ahor Committee, Washington, D. C, December 9, 1905, 
 
A Child Labor Law for the District of Columbia 107 
 
 workshop, mercantile establishment, store, business office, telegraph 
 office, restaurant, hotel, apartment house, theater, bowling alley, or 
 in the distribution or transmission of merchandise or messages. 
 
 For children fourteen years of age, but under sixteen, the pro- 
 posed law requires that such children must obtain an age and school- 
 ing certificate before securing employment. This certificate shows 
 the age of the child, and states that the child can read and write sim- 
 ple sentences in the English language; it also states that the child 
 has attended school for at least one hundred and thirty days during 
 the school year previous to the fourteenth birthday, or during the 
 year previous to applying for such school record, and during this 
 time has received instruction in reading, spelling, writing, English 
 grammar, geography, and is familiar with the fundamental opera- 
 tions of arithmetic, including fractions. The schooling certificates 
 are to be approved by the superintendent of public schools, or a 
 deputy acting under his instructions. The superintendent also keeps 
 a duplicate of each certificate on file in his office. In addition to 
 the age and educational qualifications, the child must also be in 
 good health and physically able to do the work at which he expects 
 to be employed. 
 
 The statements of the parents regarding the age of the child 
 must be substantiated by documentary evidence, such as transcripts 
 of birth or other certificates, unless the official in charge is con- 
 vinced that it is impossible to secure such documentary evidence, in 
 which case the affidavit of the parent or guardian will be accepted. 
 
 The employer is required to keep on file all age and schooling 
 certificates of the children under sixteen employed by him, and to 
 return to the children their certificates when they leave his employ. 
 The employer must keep two complete lists of the names of such 
 children — one on file and one posted where it can be consulted 
 readily by the inspectors authorized by the act. In addition, in 
 each room where children under sixteen are employed there must 
 be posted a notice stating the number of hours of labor required 
 on each day, specifying the hours of commencing and stopping 
 work, and stating when the mealtimes begin and end. Any child 
 found working at other than the times specified in this notice is to 
 be considered as employed in violation of the law. 
 
 No child under sixteen years of age may be employed more 
 
 r/S. 
 
 L... . 
 
108 A Child Labor Law for the District of Columbia 
 
 than eight hours per day, or forty-eight hours per week, or between 
 seven in the evening and six in the morning. 
 
 The penalties for violations of the law are the same as those 
 imposed in most of the child labor laws of other States. In some 
 cases, penalties may be imposed on the parents as well as on the 
 employers. To secure the proper enforcement of the law, two 
 inspectors are provided. 
 
 How would such a law remove the evils which now exist as 
 the result of the employment of children? First of all, it would 
 prevent the employment of very young children in occupations which 
 must be classed as harmful because of their physical, mental, and 
 moral effects on the development of the child. Thus, during the 
 time that the public schools are not in session, children under four- 
 teen may not be employed in factories, where the physical strain is 
 apt to be severe, or in stores, or in the messenger service, where the 
 influences of street life are morally dangerous. The employment of 
 very young children in the street trades is perhaps the greatest of 
 the child labor evils existing in the city at the present time ; this and 
 the uncalled for working of children at night will be prevented by 
 the bill under discussion. 
 
 The regulation of children's work should not stop when the 
 child has completed his thirteenth year ; such a child is by no means 
 ready for the exploitation of his laboring capacity to the full extent 
 which present industrial methods make possible. The bill, therefore, 
 not only limits the working time of children under sixteen years 
 of age to eight hours per day, but provides that these hours shall 
 come between 6 a. m. and 7 p. m. and shall not amount to more 
 than forty-eight hours per week. How successful the committee 
 will be in securing these provisions regarding hours of labor remains 
 to be seen, but an earnest effort will be made to persuade Congress 
 to grant them. Some of the workmen in this city are now preparing 
 for a struggle to secure for themselves an eight-hour day, and it 
 must in reason be conceded that a child should not be subjected to 
 harsher treatment than a full-grown man. From the current dis- 
 cussion of conditions in this city it has been demonstrated beyond 
 question that such a provision is urgently needed. The factories in 
 this city are those engaged in "light" manufactures, and it may 
 be regarded as a certainty that we shall always have a number of 
 
A Child Labor Law for the District of Columbia 109 
 
 such establishments because of the opportunity afforded to exploit 
 the cheap labor of the women and children of the men engaged in 
 the various skilled and unskilled trades of this locality. Factories 
 engaged in this line of production always find it more profitable to 
 use the labor of women and children — especially of children — than 
 to instal machinery, and as this type of industry is particularly sub- 
 ject to periods of intense activity, we find the factory children of 
 the District worked for excessively long hours during the busy 
 seasons which precede the Christmas and Easter holidays. The 
 same state of affairs was found in connection with the children 
 employed in the stores and in the messenger service. The evil was 
 emphasized in an unexpected manner when the principal of one of 
 the largest night schools in the city stated that it was not advisable 
 to visit the night schools in the present month (December) if one 
 wanted to obtain an idea of the educational work carried on, since 
 the schools were almost deserted because so many of the children, 
 including the youngest, were working until late at night. It needs 
 no argument to prove that children under sixteen are not ready 
 for such excessively long working hours, and the beginning of many 
 a case of disease and physical incapacity must date from the ex- 
 haustion of the long hours of toil of the holiday season. 
 
 It will be noticed that the bill does not provide for any regula- 
 tion of the sale of newspapers. It is unquestionably true that some 
 restriction of this demoralizing traffic is desirable and would be 
 beneficial, but it is doubtful if Congress would grant such a law. In 
 case the present bill is put into force, the Child Labor Committee 
 will exert its best efforts to remedy such other evils as may call 
 for regulation, and one of the first evils to receive attention will be 
 those connected with the most extensive of the street trades. 
 
 Before concluding, your attention is requested to some of the 
 objections which have been urged against the bill. The objection 
 which has been heard most frequently is due to the fact that the 
 bill makes no exception in the case of the children of a widowed 
 mother or invalid father, who because of poverty, may be in need of 
 the earnings of the child who has not yet reached fourteen. It 
 should be stated that there are a number of States which make such 
 an exception, but both the national and the local Child Labor Com- 
 mittees object most earnestly to inserting such a provision in the 
 
no A Child Labor Law for the District of Columbia 
 
 proposed law; first, because it would be an injustice to the child, 
 and, second, because it would open the way to abuses of a serious 
 character. 
 
 A careful study of the problem has led the committee to the 
 conclusion that this phase of child labor restriction has been given 
 a prominence altogether unwarranted by the facts. In several cities 
 efforts have been made to ascertain how many families would be 
 forced to apply for charitable aid if the earnings of the children 
 under the statutory age were denied them. In New York, Chicago, 
 and Cleveland, the results of such investigations have uniformly 
 shown that though there are children of widows at work, the number 
 of families which would be forced to ask for aid is very small. At a 
 recent interview, the secretary of the Board of Charities of the 
 District stated that although for many years he had been in daily 
 contact with the poorest of the city's population, he could not at 
 that moment recall from memory a single case where the child's 
 earnings made the difference between self-support and the neces- 
 sity of asking for outside relief. The agents of the Associated 
 Charities, however, state that such cases are found occasionally, 
 though they are rare. But granting the existence of such cases, can 
 it be claimed that it is the wisest solution of the problem to deny 
 to the poorest of our children all the mental, moral, and physical 
 advantages obtained from attendance at the public schools for the 
 sake of the few dollars of weekly earnings which this sacrifice may 
 bring? Furthermore, such a policy would be a confession that 
 there exists in this community a number of worthy persons who 
 are conspicuously in need of assistance, but that the community pre- 
 fers that the burden of this relief should be placed on the shoulders 
 of little children rather than have it borne by the community itself. 
 It certainly needs but to state this matter plainly to convince every 
 one of the great injustice which such an exemption would cause. 
 European practice in this connection should be suggestive. Recently 
 an examination was made of the child labor laws of the seven 
 leading European industrial countries. These laws provide for 
 almost every imaginable kind and degree of exemption, but in not 
 one of these countries could a child be deprived of his right to 
 attend the common schools because of the pecuniary misfortunes of 
 his parents. 
 
A Child Labor Law *or the District of Columbia i 1 1 
 
 Another objection to the proposed child labor law arose from 
 the claim that a compulsory education law would remedy the evils 
 of child labor as they exist in this city. A number of Senators 
 have been especially insistent on this point. As stated before, the 
 Child Labor Committee regards a compulsory education law as 
 absolutely essential to the proper protection of the working children 
 of the District, but that such a law would remove the evils attacked 
 by a child labor law has yet to be proved. The education bill now 
 before Congress provides for the compulsory attendance of children 
 eight to fourteen years of age at a public school or its equivalent. 
 It would therefore prevent the employment of children under four- 
 teen while the schools were in session. To enforce this provision, the 
 truant officers authorized by the act shall visit all places where "chil- 
 dren" (as no age limit is specified, this may include all persons under 
 twenty-one) are employed, and as often as twice a year shall demand 
 from the employer a list of such children, with their names and 
 ages. These are the only provisions regulating the employment of 
 children. Experience elsewhere has shown that such lists of work- 
 ing children, with merely a statement of their ages unsupported 
 by documentary evidence, are practically worthless. One of the 
 largest employers of young persons in the city has said that 
 there seem to be no children between the ages of eleven and 
 fourteen if one my judge from the statements of those who 
 apply for work. Until six months ago, in Pennsylvania, the 
 affidavit of the parent as to the age of his child was sufficient to 
 secure an employment certificate, but the wholesale perjury on the 
 part of parents which this provision led to soon nullified the whole 
 child labor law and required a radical change. The simple list of 
 children, therefore, with the ages as reported by the children them- 
 selves, will hardly prove an efficient means of detecting the employ- 
 ment of children under the age fixed by the law. It must also be 
 remembered that if the education law alone is to be depended upon 
 for the removal of the evils connected with the employment of 
 children, it means that the day after a child has completed his thir- 
 teenth year he may be kept at work for twelve or thirteen hours 
 per day, or he may be employed throughout the night. This would 
 leave absolutely untouched two of the principal evils which the 
 committee is endeavoring to check. The proposed education law 
 
ii2 A Child Labor Law for the District of Columbia 
 
 also takes no account of the educational qualifications of children 
 over fourteen years of age; if an illiterate child of fourteen comes 
 into this city from one of the neighboring states, the compulsory 
 education law would not prevent such a child from securing employ- 
 ment and being deprived of educational opportunities. These state- 
 ments are not made in any spirit of criticism of the compulsory 
 education bill — that bill is apparently an efficient means of securing 
 educational opportunities to children between the ages of eight 
 and fourteen, but it will not prevent, and indeed was not expected 
 to prevent, the evils connected with the exploitation of child labor 
 now existing in the national capital. 
 
 If this discussion of the objections to the proposed child labor 
 law has seemed to deal too much with the obvious and the self-evi- 
 dent, your indulgence is asked on the ground that these have been 
 the very objections which have impeded the progress of the bill and 
 which may possibly hinder its passage. The account of the pro- 
 visions of the bill is anything but interesting, of course, but per- 
 haps it was worth while in order to make clear what is the aim of 
 the bill and what are the methods by which it is sought to attain 
 this end. 
 
 The passing of this bill would be materially assisted if all friends 
 of the movement would write to their members of Congress and 
 urge the early consideration of the measure, both on account of the 
 immediate benefits it would confer on the working children of this 
 city and of the indirect, but very real, benefits which would spring 
 from having a child labor law of a high standard at the nation's 
 capital. 
 
THE PROCEEDINGS OF THE SECOND ANNUAL MEETING OF 
 THE NATIONAL CHILD LABOR COMMITTEE 
 
 The first annual meeting of this committee was held in New York, 
 February 14th to 16th, 1905. Scarcely a year elapsed before it was deemed 
 advisable to hold another national convention. The second annual meeting 
 was called to meet in the city of Washington, December 8th to 10th, 1905, 
 and the demand for the public discussion of the subjects with which it was 
 to deal made it necessary, before the Program Committee had completed its 
 labors, to arrange for two supplementary sessions, one in the city of Phila- 
 delphia, on December 7th, at the Witherspoon Hall, and the other in the city 
 of Chicago, on December 16th, in Sinai Temple. Still another meeting was 
 held in Milwaukee on the night of December 18th, which really constituted 
 a third supplementary session, although the proceedings of the Milwaukee 
 meeting have not been included in the official report. 
 
 The following program for the entire annual meeting was finally arranged 
 and carried out: 
 
 Program of the Second Annual Meeting. 
 
 New Willard Hotel, Washington, D. C. 
 
 December 8th, 9th and 10th, 1905. 
 
 Two supplementary sessions of the annual meeting held in Philadelphia and 
 Chicago, on December 7th and 16th, respectively. 
 
 General topic of the annual meeting : 
 Child Labor a Menace to Industry., Education, and Good Citizenship. 
 
 First session, Friday December 8th, 3 p. m. 
 Presiding Officer, Hon. Charles J. Bonaparte, Secretary of the Navy. 
 Topic: Recent Legislation and Efforts to Restrict Child Labor in the 
 United States. 
 
 1. Address of Welcome. 
 
 Hon. Henry B. F. Macfarland, Commissioner of the District of 
 Columbia. 
 
 2. "The Menace of Child Labor." 
 
 Felix Adler, Ph.D., Chairman of the National Child Labor 
 Committee. 
 
 3. "The Progress and Outlook of the Movement Against Child Labor." 
 
 Samuel McCune Lindsay, Ph.D., Secretary of the National Com- 
 mittee. 
 
H4 The National Child Labor Committee 
 
 4. "Child Labor in the Cotton Industry of the Southern States." 
 
 A. J. McKelway, D.D., Assistant Secretary of the National Com- 
 mittee. 
 
 Second session, Friday, December 8th, 8 p.m. 
 
 Presiding Officer, Felix Adler, Ph.D., Leader of the Society for Ethical 
 Culture, Professor of Political and Social Ethics, Columbia University, and 
 Chairman of the National Child Labor Committee. 
 
 Topic: A Symposium on the Evils of Child Labor and Practical Legis- 
 lative Remedies. 
 
 1. "Some Arguments Against Child Labor." 
 
 John Graham Brooks, Cambridge, Mass., President of the Amer- 
 ican Social Science Association. 
 
 2. "The Federal Government and the Working Children." 
 
 Mrs. Florence Kelley, Secretary of the National Consumers' 
 League. 
 
 3. "Child Labor in the Coal Mines." 
 
 Owen R. Lovejoy, Assistant Secretary of the National Committee. 
 
 Saturday, December 9th, 9 a. m. — Joint executive meeting of the National 
 and State Child Labor Committees. Reports from the State Chairmen and 
 representatives of State Committees. 
 
 11 a. m. — The President of the United States received the members of 
 the National Committee and their guests at the White House. 
 
 Third session, Saturday, December 9th, 3 p. m. 
 
 Presiding Officer, Dr. George M. Kober, Chairman of the Citizens' Child 
 Labor Committee of the District of Columbia. 
 
 Topic: New Legislation, with Special Reference to the Needs of the 
 District of Columbia. 
 
 1. "Child Labor at the National Capital." 
 
 Hon. Charles P. Neill, Ph.D., United States Commissioner of 
 Labor. 
 
 2. "A Model Child Labor Law for the District of Columbia." 
 
 S. W. Woodward, of Woodward & Lathrop, Washington, D. C. ; 
 Henry J. Harris, Ph.D., Secretary of the Citizens' District 
 Child Labor Committee. 
 
 3. "Child Labor and the Attitude of Organized Labor." 
 
 Samuel Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor. 
 Sunday, Decembr 10th. — The churches of Washington very generally 
 responded to the request that this day be especially observed as Children's 
 Day, and that at least at one service reference be made to the work being 
 done to free children from premature toil and its evil effects. In several of 
 the churches an entire service was devoted to this subject, and addresses made 
 by pastors and members of the National Committee and others identified 
 with work for children. 
 
The National Child Labor Committee 115 
 
 Supplementary Sessions. 
 
 Philadelphia, December 7th, 8 p. m.— Joint meeting of the National and 
 Pennsylvania Child Labor Committees, held under the auspices of the Amer- 
 ican Academy of Political and Social Science. 
 
 Presiding Officer, L. S. Rowe, Ph.D., President of the Academy. 
 
 Topic : The Protection of Children. 
 
 1. "The Menace of Child Labor." 
 
 Felix Adler, Ph.D. 
 
 2. "Some Results of the Recent Child Labor Law in Pennsylvania." 
 
 Mary E. Richmond, Secretary of the Philadelphia Society for 
 Organizing Charity. 
 
 3. "Child Labor— A National Problem." 
 
 Samuel McCune Lindsay, Ph.D. 
 
 4. "Child Labor in the Coal Mines." 
 
 Owen R. Lovejoy. 
 
 Chicago, 111., Sinai Temple. — Saturday, December 16th, 8 p. m. 
 Presiding Officer, Hon. Charles S. Deneen, Governor of Illinois. 
 Topic: The Scope and Progress of the Child Labor Movement. 
 Opening remarks by Dr. Emil C. Hirsch. 
 
 1. "Menace of Child Labor." 
 
 Felix Adler, Ph.D. 
 
 2. "Some Results of Recent Child Labor Legislation in Illinois." 
 
 Jane Addams, Hull House, Chicago. 
 
 3. "Child Labor— A National Problem." 
 
 Samuel McCune Lindsay, Ph.D. 
 
 4. "Parental Responsibility for Child Labor." 
 
 Graham Taylor, Warden, Chicago Commons. 
 
 5. "The Wisconsin Child Labor Law." 
 
 Edward W. Frost, Chairman of the Wisconsin State Child Labor 
 Committee. 
 
 The first meeting held in Philadelphia was under the auspices of the 
 American Academy of Political and Social Science, whose invitation brought 
 together a most distinguished audience of at least twelve hundred people. 
 President Rowe, in opening the meeting, referred sympathetically to the work 
 of the National Committee, and pointed out what movements of this kind 
 stood for in our national life. The addresses of Mrs. Kelley, Professor Lind- 
 say and Mr. Lovejoy are printed in full in this volume. That of Prof. Adler 
 will probably be printed later in pamphlet form by the National Committee. 
 Miss Mary E. Richmond, Secretary of the Philadelphia Society for Organizing 
 Charity, gave a most clear and succinct account of the organization and work 
 of the Pennsylvania Child Labor Committee, and the arduous labor necessary 
 before the new child labor law in Pennsylvania, approved May 2, 1905, was 
 possible. 
 
n6 The National Child Labor Committee 
 
 The provisions of this law, especially those with reference to the rather 
 complicated requirements for employment certificates for children between 
 fourteen and sixteen, were explained, and the necessity pointed out for the 
 more vigorous prosecution of the violators of the law and for more strenuous 
 efforts on the part of the Department of Factory Inspection. This meeting 
 was followed by an informal reception tendered to the officers and members 
 of the National Child Labor Committee by the American Academy. 
 
 The first regular session of the annual meeting was held at the New 
 Willard Hotel, in Washington, on Friday afternoon, December 8th. From 
 four to five hundred people were assembled in the beautiful auditorium on 
 the tenth floor of the hotel. The Washington Committees had planned well 
 every detail for the success of the meetings, and to these committees, com- 
 posed of the following persons, is due much of their success: 
 
 Committee on Arrangements — Dr. George M. Kober, Chairman; Mrs. 
 Joseph Weeks Babcock, Professor Alexander Graham Bell, Aldis B. Browne, 
 John W. Douglass, Mrs. Fred T. Dubois, Mrs. Charles W. Fairbanks, Mrs. 
 Jacob H. Gallinger, Mrs. John M. Gitterman, Henry J. Harris, A. Lisner, 
 Mr. and Mrs. Henry B. F. Macfarland, John R. McLean, Charles W. Need- 
 ham, Charles P. Neill, Mrs. Robert L. O'Brien, Gifford Pinchot, Mrs. H. T. 
 Rainey, George W. Scott, Dr. Z. T. Sowers, General George M. Sternberg, 
 Professor C. W. A. Veditz, B. H. Warner, Mr. and Mrs. Henry L. West, 
 Mr. and Mrs. S. W. Woodward. 
 
 Finance Committee — S. W. Woodward, Chairman; M. E. Ailes, C. J. 
 Bell, Emil Berlimer, John Joy Edson, Martin A. Knapp, H. T. Newcomb, 
 John B. Sleman, Jr., B. H. Warner, Simon Wolf. 
 
 Press Committee — Charles F. Weller, Chairman; William E. Curtis, 
 Henry J. Harris, A. Maurice Low, G. A. Lyon, Robert L. O'Brien, Edgar D. 
 Shaw, H. M. Suter, Jr., H. Parker Willis. 
 
 Secretary Bonaparte, representing the President's Cabinet, opened this 
 meeting with a most earnest and sincere endorsement of the movement to 
 abolish child labor. In appropriate words, he characterized the evils of child 
 labor as among the most serious blemishes on our social and industrial life, 
 and bade the National Committee God-speed in the task to which it had 
 addressed itself. After these opening words from Secretary Bonaparte, the 
 Hon. Henry B. F. Macfarland, representing the Commissioners of the District 
 of Columbia, gave the following address of welcome : 
 
 "No one could be more welcome to the national capital than you who 
 come in the interest of the children of our country. Their appeal to our 
 hearts is as strong as ever. All the world loves a child, as the celebration 
 of Christmas will soon attest once more, even though all the world may 
 not love a lover. All right minded fathers and mothers want their own 
 children to have every advantage in life, and all right minded men and 
 women broaden out this feeling to take in all children. We want the child 
 to have full childhood. The 'vision splendid' fades all too quickly into the 
 common day. The only true liberty, equality and fraternity, childhood's 
 exclusive possession, turn all too soon into our common living. Moreover 
 
The National Child Labor Committee 117 
 
 this economic age begins to see the economic necessity for protecting children. 
 Not only does Mrs. Browning's 'Cry of the Children' quicken our heart- 
 beats, but it quickens our minds with the thought of the economic waste of 
 economic roots without which we cannot have economic fruits. Stunted 
 children make stunted citizens. And stunted citizens make a stunted state. 
 All our material wealth would be dearly purchased at the price of the labor 
 of the children. And in a few generations we would lose not only that 
 wealth, but our national life. Hence, under the compelling demand of the 
 new industrial civilization, with its great and growing cities, comes the new 
 legalization for the protection of child labor, which is fundamental to the 
 protection of all labor and to the preservation of society. The District of 
 Columbia is not an industrial or manufacturing community, no large number 
 of children are employed here, and the more serious evils found elsewhere 
 do not exist. But prevention is better than remedy, and we seek a law 
 which shall be a model and shall take us out of the black list of states and 
 territories which have no child labor laws. The Commissioners of the Dis- 
 trict of Columbia have once more asked Congress to enact a bill drafted 
 by them on the model approved by your committee, and are hopeful that it 
 will be passed at this session of Congress, with any amendments that may be 
 deemed necessary." 
 
 The addresses at this session following those of Secretary Bonaparte 
 and Mr. Macfarland were given by Professor Adler, Professor Lindsay and 
 Dr. McKelway. Dr. McKelway's admirable paper appears in full elsewhere 
 in this volume. Those of Professors Adler and Lindsay will probably be 
 printed later in separate pamphlet form by the National Committee. At the 
 second session, held on Friday evening, after a few appropriate remarks by 
 the chairman, Dr. Adler, three addresses were deliverd, by Dr. Brooks, Mrs. 
 Kelley and Mr. Lovejoy, all of which appear in full in this volume. A 
 telegram was received from Mr. Gompers announcing that he was detained 
 in New York, and his address, which was to have been a part of the evening's 
 program, was postponed until Saturday afternoon, at which time his telegram 
 announced he would be able to be with us. The addresses at the third session 
 are all printed in full. 
 
 The three introductory addresses at the three sessions held in Washing- 
 ton by the chairman of the National Committee, Professor Adler, were as 
 
 follows : 
 
 "Traveling abroad in Europe a year ago I was visiting the estates of a 
 distinguished nobleman in Prussia. He was explaining to me the classifica- 
 tion of labor on the estates. The skilled labor he said is done by experts, 
 expert foresters and gardeners, the less skilled work is done by apprentices, 
 and the hard work is done by women. I shuddered at the thought, but what 
 
 he said is a fact. 
 
 "Perhaps in traveling through Germany on the train looking out through 
 the window you, too, may have seen women stooping in the fields, digging 
 and doing the hard work. And there is a well-known story about a peasant 
 and his wife who came to a certain stream which had to be forded and the 
 
n8 The National Child Labor Committee 
 
 woman stepped into the stream and carried the man across on her shoulders 
 like a beast of burden. Now, we shudder at that, and say it is inhuman, it is 
 un-American. But we, in our country, have allowed the little child to become 
 a beast of burden and the adult to sit upon his shoulders and be carried across 
 the stream. 
 
 "It is a strange fact which we have got to admit that in this land of free- 
 dom and humanitarianism, slavery has flourished, human slavery. Ex- 
 plain it as you will, this country which proudly boasts to be the most 
 humanitarian in the world had for years and years this unenviable pre- 
 eminence in wickedness. And it is this same humanitarian country of ours, 
 this same humanitarian republic, that allows this modern form of slavery, 
 child's labor, the most pitiful of all. Of the details there will be others to 
 speak, and of the arguments. Indeed, I cannot help feeling every time that 
 this matter is argued as if it were sheer humiliation to argue it, to argue and 
 to prove that a little child of ten years or twelve years, or, if you will, of thir- 
 teen years, should not be exhausted by premature labor. They say that there 
 are sixty thousand children under fourteen years to-day — more perhaps — 
 in the textile mills of the South ; sixty thousand under fourteen, and many of 
 them doing night work. It seems to me humiliating to argue that a human 
 plant of such tender years should not be required to bear fruit ; to prove that 
 it is a sin against mankind to exact precocious fruit-bearing of the human 
 plant ; that a child which is set to continuous physical labor and long physical 
 labor in those early years when it should just grow, just absorb the sunshine 
 and that the child which is put into the mill for ten long hours a day, that 
 such a child is being stunted and crippled! Can we answer before our con- 
 science before the world and before the Divine power why we allow it ! Why 
 we allow that a child instead of going to school shall grow up in ignorance, 
 that its mind shall remain undeveloped and that instead of having a guarded 
 home it shall be exposed to all the corrupting influences that are incident to 
 an irregular life. Must I descend so far in the presence of the cultivated men 
 and women sitting here in this national capital as to argue the elementary 
 rights of the child, that the child should not be misused, that the adult should 
 not sit on its back and use it as a beast of burden. 
 
 "And the evil is increasing. Here are our local Child Labor Committees ; 
 here is our National Committee, and we have done our best. We have done 
 what little we can, the National Committee; and the local Child Labor Com- 
 mittees that have done far more than our National Committee has yet been 
 able to do. Here are all these forces that have been at work; we have been 
 trying to stem the tide, and the black fact is that all these forces have not 
 only not availed, but that the tide is gaining upon us ; that there is more child 
 labor to-day than there was five years ago, more of it. So you will realize 
 what I have said at the beginning that it is no lukewarm interest that brings 
 us here, it is the feeling that we have for our task to strangle a snake that is 
 coiling around the neck of the young child, that we have to abolish a new 
 kind of slavery, that we have got to take action, not only to check a retreating 
 evil, but we have got to use every power at our command to prevent the 
 
The National Child Labor Committee 119 
 
 steady increase, the steady and ominous increase of this disastrous and danger- 
 ous woe and wrong. 
 
 "I hope that this meeting will arouse an earnest interest in you all that 
 here from the capital of the nation will radiate influence through the United 
 States, and that your District of Columbia, though it is not an industrial cen- 
 ter, will help us by setting for the country a standard which other parts of 
 the United States may follow. And I hope, that as a result of these meetings 
 you will feel, each and every one, that you are called upon, whatever your 
 Dther philanthropic interests may be, to become propagandists in this cause. 
 
 "And now, as to what finally the National Child Labor Committee intends 
 to do. It is a national committee. It has the assistance in its work of light 
 and leading men. Cardinal Gibbons is one of the members, Bishop Greer is 
 one of the members, and it has some of the most eminent names in the 
 country on its list of members, and it hopes with the help and countenance 
 of men and women associated with it to put into the focus of national interest 
 the necessity of the abolition, the total abolition, of child labor. It does not 
 propose to interfere with local bodies, but to supplement their efforts, to 
 be of use by encouraging legislation in those States which are without legis- 
 lation or in which the legislation which has been passed is deficient. It pro- 
 poses, above all, to bring it about that the laws which are passed shall also be 
 enforced. Much of our legislation is excellent; many of the laws on our 
 statute books can hardly be improved upon, and yet in the very States in 
 which such laws exist we find that the evil is growing. Why is it growing? 
 Because of our American weakness in trusting to legislation, trusting to the 
 mere fact that the law exists, and not providing as we must the force, which 
 shall put the law into constant operation. That force in the United States 
 is public sentiment. To rally public sentiment on behalf of the abolition of 
 child labor is the prime object of this conference which we have opened. 
 
 "It is hardly necessary to try to convince you that child labor is monstrous. 
 If anyone needs to be convinced, there is one test which I would suggest. 
 How would you like your own child not yet thirteen years of age, how would 
 you like your own child, say eleven years of age, to be at work in the break- 
 ers? In place of arguing the question, picture to yourself some little child 
 that is very close to your heart, a tender, undeveloped, loveable and beloved 
 girl or boy, infinitely dear to you; think of that little girl or that little boy 
 that means so much to you, at work in the mill, or in the coal breakers, where, 
 as Mr. Lovejoy told us, it is so dark that you cannot see five feet ahead — dark 
 because of the dust. Think of your little girl in one of those textile mills in 
 the South working night shifts. You know that your child's eyes begin to 
 droop when night falls. At that hour you want your little one to be safely 
 tucked in bed. You would think it monstrous if your little child should be 
 forcibly kept awake till midnight. What then do you think of that other 
 child's being kept awake all night, its eyelids drooping, its strength going from 
 it, till it is hardly able to stand? 
 
 "There is an inspector in Cleveland of whom I learned from one of our 
 
120 The National Child Labor Committee 
 
 co-workers that he somewhat resented the agitation of the child labor issue 
 because he claimed that Cleveland is free from the evil of premature child 
 labor. Yet he convinced himself that he was mistaken. He investigated, and 
 he found to his own amazement and horror that hundreds of children are 
 employed in the sweat shops of Cleveland during the night. And what I gath- 
 ered from his statement was this picture. A picture sometimes burns itself 
 into the mind so that one cannot get rid of it; and ever since I have learned 
 of his statement that picture has haunted me. The picture was that of a 
 hundred, or more than a hundred, little folks, little bits of human beings, 
 trudging through the streets of Cleveland in the gray dawn of the morning, 
 coming home from work. 
 
 "Now, imagine any child of yours as one of that troop on which the gray 
 dawn looks down. What is the difference between our children and those? 
 Are we to say that the lot of life is differently apportioned? But surely not 
 to that extent, surely not to the extent of bringing such misery and degrada- 
 tion into the lives of the very young. Let the pain and horror of seeing in 
 imagination your own child as one of that troop going through the streets 
 in the gray of the dawn, coming home from work; let that be with you, as 
 it has been with me, and you will become propagandists in this child labor 
 movement. Then I am sure that it is not you who need to be convinced, 
 but that what we are here for is to take counsel as to how we may convince 
 others. And there is no one who can give us better counsel than the proved 
 and efficient worker in this cause, whom I am now going to introduce to you, 
 Mrs. Florence Kelley. 
 
 "I have just a few words to say before I introduce to you the chairman of 
 the afternoon and to apologize if I myself withdraw from the meeting. But 
 I desire, before my participation in the public conferences ends, to put one 
 point before you touching our committee and its work which we have consid- 
 ered in our private conferences, but which I feel has not yet been sufficiently 
 emphasized in our public meetings, namely, this point: that we are combating 
 a recurrent evil, if there be such a thing as periodicity to be remarked in the 
 historic recurrences of certain great moral wrongs. For instance, Europe at 
 the close of the middle ages had practically extinguished or very largely ex- 
 tinguished serfdom and human slavery. And then of a sudden new conditions 
 occurred, of which the discovery of the American continent was the principal 
 one, and behold slavery re-emerged on a scale and magnitude perhaps quite 
 unequaled in the world's history. 
 
 "So, in the last century it was believed that through the efforts of Lord 
 Shaftesbury and others the form of slavery which we call child labor, the 
 exploitation of child strength — that this form of servitude had been abolished. 
 And now we behold in the United States a recurrence of this condition on a 
 scale and magnitude which gives occasion for the most profound alarm. 
 
 "The object of the National Child Labor Committee, therefore, is not 
 merely to deal with an existing situation, but its larger purpose is to become 
 a steering committee for the United States. One by one our great agricultural 
 communities will wheel into line and become industrial communities, the agri- 
 
The National Child Labor Committee 1.2 1 
 
 cultural will pass into the industrial type of civilization, and then the tempta- 
 tion will always recur to secure a temporary advantage in the industrial 
 world by exploiting the labor, the cheap labor, of the undeveloped child. 
 
 "We felt, therefore, on coming together to constitute this National Com- 
 mittee that the occasion for our efforts was not merely the necessity of equaliz- 
 ing the efforts of the local committees, the necessity of promoting the estab- 
 lishment of local State committees where they do not exist, but also that this 
 committee is needed to be on guard, to be an ever vigilant factor for years 
 to come in the economic life of the United States in order, if possible, to 
 bring it about that the evils which history has shown to be incidental to the 
 incipient stage of industrialism shall not be permitted to recur. This is the 
 larger purpose of the National Committee, which ought to be clearly and 
 definitely set forth at this conference. 
 
 "The meeting this afternoon has for its topic, new legislation, with 
 special reference to the needs of the District of Columbia. 
 
 "I shall now ask the chairman of the Citizens' Child Labor Committee 
 of the District of Columbia, Dr. George M. Kober, to take the chair." 
 
 Three other events in connection with the Washington meetings deserve 
 to be chronicled: (1) Two important executive sessions of the members 
 of the National Committee and members of the State Committees present at 
 this convention were held between the sessions, the first on Saturday morning 
 at 9 o'clock, and an adjourned meeting on Saturday afternoon at 5 o'clock, 
 at which important reports were presented from the several State Committees 
 which threw much light on the child labor conditions in their respective 
 states. A summary of these reports is given below. (2) The meeting of 
 the National Committee and its guests in the executive office of the President 
 of the United States, which occurred on Saturday morning at 11 o'clock. 
 The President, with his usual courtesy, received the committee graciously, 
 and likewise with his usual courage placed himself clearly on record in favor 
 of the most stringent child labor legislation and the most earnest efforts to 
 abolish child labor in the United States. He spoke approvingly of the plan 
 of the National Committee to ask Congress to establish a national bureau 
 in one of the executive departments of the government, to be known as the 
 Children's Bureau, through which a scientific investigation of the problems 
 of infant mortality, the birth rate, juvenile delinquency, illiteracy, child labor, 
 and other allied questions might be made. There are many children's problems 
 needing the special co-ordination in their study which only such a bureau, 
 composed of proper experts, could give. (3) The dinner meeting of the 
 members of the National Committee, Saturday evening, at the house of Mr. 
 Gifford Pinchot, the only resident member of the National Committee, at 
 which the question of the proper steps looking to the establishment of the 
 Children's Bureau was discussed. 
 
 On Sunday, December 10th, child labor meetings were held in many of 
 the churches, in response to the invitation addressed by the National Com- 
 mittee to the pastors of the leading churches. Among the more notable 
 addresses of this day were those given in the First Congregational Church, by 
 
122 The National Child Labor Committee 
 
 Mr. Owen R. Lovejoy; in the First Unitarian Church, by Dr. Felix Adler; 
 in the People's Congregational Church, by Dr. E. T. Devine, and in a Presby- 
 terian Church, by Dr. A. J. McKelway. 
 
 At the joint executive meetings of the National and State Committees 
 Dr. Lindsay presided, and at the opening session called first on Mr. Robert 
 Hunter, the chairman of the New York Child Labor Committee, who opened 
 the discussion with an outline of the work done by that committee and the 
 plans it had in contemplation. Mr. Hunter said: 
 
 "We haven't brought an official report from our committee, because it 
 was very difficult to have a meeting after we heard of the desire on the part 
 of the National Committee to have reports of the various State Committees 
 at this time, I can say, therefore, only certain general things that may be 
 of interest. 
 
 "Our problem has gone beyond that of most of the states. The reason 
 is that we have about as much legislation now as we are likely to get until 
 the more backward states, that is, the southern states, are brought up more 
 nearly to the standard of Massachusetts, New York, and a few other states 
 which have been working longer for child labor legislation. About three 
 years ago we managed to get our laws in what seemed to us about final 
 shape for the time being. Since then we have made very little effort to get 
 more advanced legislation, not that we think that the legislation of New 
 York state is adequate or in any way model legislation; it is in nowise 
 satisfying to those of us on the committee. But I do not think that we shall 
 make in the next two or three years any very striking advance upon the 
 position we now hold in the matter of legislation. 
 
 "After obtaining our legislation we found that we were getting little, if 
 any enforcement of our laws. Although we have fairly satisfactory means 
 of enforcement, the enforcement has been inadequate. It was almost as if 
 we had no legislation whatever. I mean that there kad been on the statute 
 books some eighteen years a law prohibiting a child under fourteen years 
 of age from working. That law was about as much ignored last year and 
 a few years before as it was when it was first put in the statutes. In fact, 
 the Commissioner of Labor of the state openly said that he could not enforce 
 the law because there were so very few manufacturers familiar with it, and 
 he thought it was a serious matter to enforce the law until the manufacturers 
 were made more familiar with it. Until then he said he was inclined to be 
 with those who violated the law. This was seriously stated, although the 
 law was then fourteen years old. 
 
 "We had a very interesting fight in the matter, and fortunately we had 
 the Governor on our side. He was disposed to treat the question as a matter 
 of principle. And when we clearly demonstrated to him that the law was 
 not being enforced, he refused to reappoint the delinquent Commissioner of 
 Labor. Since then he has appointed another commissioner, who is not 
 altogether acquainted with this kind of legislation, but he is a good man and 
 a good type of public official. I think he is trying to do his best, and I am 
 convinced that he will do some very effective work. Up to the present his 
 
The National Child Labor Committee 1 23 
 
 efforts have been very largely to acquaint himself with the conditions that 
 exist, with the working force at his command, and with the legal aspects of 
 the situation. He is so sincere that he is planning a number of changes in 
 the law so as to make it more effective. I do not know now just what are his 
 plans in this regard, so I cannot speak of them at this time. I don't know 
 how many of the changes we shall be able to support, and it may be that 
 we may have to be against him on some of the changes he wants. At any 
 rate, at present we do not know what the coming Legislature, which opens 
 the middle of January, will bring in the way of changes in the law. 
 
 "Our committee was the means of securing certain amendments to the 
 laws last winter, which have since been found to be of decided assistance. The 
 new evidence of age amendment has been enforced about nine months. By 
 this change in the law, whenever parents cannot produce birth or baptismal 
 certificates or other religious record originally required as proof that a child 
 is fourteen years of age, the following proof that the child is fourteen may 
 be accepted instead: (1) Any "other documentary evidence of age;" (2) a 
 certificate of graduation from a public school or other school having an 
 equivalent eight years' course. During the first six months that this amend- 
 ment has been in operation fifty certificates have been granted under its 
 provision. Of this number thirty-four children filed graduation certificates as 
 proof of age. Evidence filed by the remainder included transcripts of Custom 
 House records, vaccination certificates, foreign family record and transcripts 
 of institutional records. Another amendment that our committee was instru- 
 mental in having passed was one which allows a factory or mercantile 
 inspector to demand of the employer documentary proof of age in cases of 
 children who claim they are sixteen years old. Commissioner Sherman, of 
 the Department of Labor, has warmly commended this change, as it shifts 
 the burden of proving the child's age from the department to the employer. 
 Under the law hundreds of children have been discharged from- factories 
 who would otherwise have been able to continue to work illegally by claiming 
 that they were sixteen. 
 
 "Now, there are one or two other things which we have undertaken to 
 do which may interest the other states. We have been engaged very earn- 
 estly in trying to see if the law could be enforced, so that we have been 
 working at various ends of the thing. In the first place, we have tried to 
 make use of the compulsory education law. We have done everything we 
 could to get the Board of Education to use this means to limit child labor. 
 We found that a good many of the children leave school before they are 
 fourteen years of ago and go to work, and that some of these children when 
 they were turned out of the factories do not go back to school. They were 
 either walking the streets or working in some other illegal employment. 
 Altogether there are about a thousand children whose names we know, and 
 probably there are a great many more whom we do not know. This matter 
 has been brought before the City Superintendent of Schools, and an investiga- 
 tion will be made to see how many children are not in school, how many are 
 idle on the streets and how many are illegally employed. 
 
124 The National Child Labor Committee 
 
 "Another interesting thing, which Miss Wald, I hope, will speak of more 
 in detail, because it has been her work largely which has brought it into 
 being, is the "scholarship fund" which has been raised. A member of our 
 committee kindly gave a fund to the committee for the purpose of giving 
 scholarships to those children whose families would be in distress if the 
 children were not permitted to work. That, of course, is a serious matter 
 in any state. We know it has been very, much overestimated ; and, as Mr. 
 Lovejoy said last night, the professed interest of the employer in the welfare 
 of widows and of poor children is largely hypocritical. They have no real 
 interest in the children, and no real interest in the widows. They are 
 employing the children solely for their own profit. While that condition 
 has been very much exaggerated by the manufacturers, there is still this 
 much trouble in it. There are in every state a certain number of families 
 who really feel it necessary on account of their unfortunate economic 
 position to send their young children to work. We intend to prevent the 
 necessity for that. We realize the inadequacy of the small fund we can raise 
 or give to supply temporary or permanent pensions to cover conditions of 
 that kind. As has been said, there will probably come some time a movement 
 to make the school fund or some other fund of the state bear the expense 
 of these pensions. 
 
 "Those are the main things we are working on. Our effort now on all 
 lines is to get enforcement of such laws as we now have. 
 
 "The newsboy law is very disappointing to us. It was so when the law 
 was passed. The law was very carefully drafted, and was a rather complete 
 law when it went before the Legislature. But it was altogether new. It 
 was a law prohibiting street trading for certain classes of children and 
 regulating street trading for other classes of children. The law was very 
 bitterly opposed by a number of people who did not understand it, and who 
 did not realize that there was any precedent for it. They believed it was 
 very radical and very absurd legislation. So, through the influence of these 
 rather powerful persons, in New York the law was very much mutilated, so 
 much so that I remember saying to the Legislative Committee at the time 
 the bill Was under consideration that if they passed it in that form I knew 
 it would not be enforced; indeed, that it could not be enforced. I may 
 have stated that too strongly. We have gotten some little enforcement. But 
 I think my point at that time was right. I don't believe the law as it now 
 stands will ever be enforced. It may be possible in the coming Legislature 
 to get some changes in this law. This last year the Commissioner of Police 
 has appointed a squad of four policemen, plain-clothes men, to enforce the 
 law; but even under this new arrangement the law is not being strictly 
 enforced, although there has been some improvement. There have been about 
 500 arrests since the squad was appointed, last May, and perhaps in time 
 we shall be able to make it — the mutilated law we have — work with some 
 degree of satisfaction to ourselves. 
 
 "Another piece of work before our committee at this time is to attempt 
 to get the school officials in the state to take a school census. New York 
 
The National Child Labor Committee 125 
 
 1» behind many other states in the matter, although a statute put on the 
 books in 1895 requires the taking of such a census every two years. No 
 census has been taken, however, since 1897. Our committee is now urging 
 upon the Board of Education the importance of the question as the best 
 practical means of enforcing the compulsory education law." 
 
 Dr. Lindsay then called upon Miss Lillian Wald, who, like Mr. Hunter, 
 is not only an active member of the New York State Committee, but also an 
 active worker on the National Committee, asking her to report on the 
 scholarship fund which the New York Committee administers to aid those 
 unable to attend school and not eligible for employment certificates. Miss 
 Wald addressed the meeting as follows: 
 
 "One of the members of the committee has presented to the New York 
 Child Labor Committee the sum of $2500 a year for child labor scholarships. 
 He has not committed himself to give this amount for any stated number 
 of years, but at the same time, if it is needed, he has intimated that it will 
 be continued for some time. The purpose of the donor in establishing these 
 scholarships was to make it possible for the committee to prevent hardship 
 to a family as a result of the child labor laws not allowing the child to work 
 when its earnings were needed. Another object of the fund is to remove 
 from the mind of the officials who are responsible for enforcing the law any 
 tendency there may have been to make exceptions in the law's enforcement 
 because of the plea of poverty in the child's family. The scholarship thus 
 acts as a substitute for the child's illegal earnings, and at the same time 
 prevents violation of the law in order to keep the family from suffering. 
 The fund is very valuable for the experiment, and to really test how much 
 truth there is in the popular claim that many widows or disabled parents are 
 absolutely dependent for support upon the earnings of their young children. 
 
 "A sub-committee having this work in charge has been meeting almost 
 weekly for the purpose of considering very carefully each individual applica- 
 tion for a scholarship. Letters were first sent out to the principals and 
 superintendents of schools, to settlement head workers, and to the Commis- 
 sioner of Labor, extending an invitation to call to the attention of the 
 secretary any instance where the law appeared to be working great hardship. 
 It was evident, after a meeting or two of the committee, that this was also 
 an invitation for the societies to unload on the committee. That was not, 
 however, the purpose of the giver or of the special committee. The scholar- 
 ship sub-committee has finally come to the conclusion that as a general rule 
 cases will not be regarded as eligible for scholarships under fourteen years 
 of age. No society in New York would deny that a child under fourteen 
 is properly a care for philanthropic aid. But, as much of the criticism of 
 the law was focussed on the difficulty by proving the child's age and meeting 
 the educational standard, the committee believes that it is up to them to meet 
 this criticism in a practical way. A great many cases that have come before 
 the committee have proved not to be properly within the scope of the fund. 
 The difficulty of getting the required evidence of age necessary to obtain an 
 employment certificate has not been so great as was thought, as with some 
 
126 The National Child Labor Committee 
 
 personal effort on the part of the secretary in several instances the needed 
 proof of age has been secured. It has been found that the acceptance by 
 the officials who have charge of issuing employment certificates of "other 
 documentary evidence" (allowed under a recent amendment of the law) 
 has made it possible for many children to secure working papers who could 
 not otherwise have done so. 
 
 "Since the announcement of our scholarship plan was made, about four 
 months ago, 117 applications have been received and investigated, either by 
 the committee or by representatives of the relief societies. Of this number 
 eighty-three, or 72 per cent., were found not to be in need of aid. Of the 
 remaining thirty-four cases help in the form of scholarships has been given 
 in thirteen instances, while in the other twenty-one cases, in many of which 
 the need was only temporary, assistance has been given by the various relief 
 societies. The scholarships vary in amount from $1 to $3 a week, and extend 
 over a period of from one to twelve months. The scholarship holders are 
 required to present weekly at the office of the committee a card signed by 
 the school principal certifying to their regular attendance at school. In cases 
 in which the investigator has shown that there is no need of assistance a 
 report to this effect is made to the principal, and by means of a 'tickler' 
 system ten days later the case is followed up, to learn from the principal 
 whether the child is again regularly attending school. 
 
 "I cannot give a full report, but it is extremely interesting as each case 
 comes up to find the difficulties are not altogether insurmountable. In many 
 instances the trouble is solved by referring the cases to one of the philan- 
 thropic societies, who have for some time been carrying the burden and 
 are willing to carry it a little further. In other instances the solution of the 
 problem is found by securing employment for the parents. In this manner, 
 as well as by means of our scholarships, the purpose aimed at is attained; 
 namely, to prevent the child becoming a violator of the law. The philan- 
 thropic societies, of course, have the privilege of coming under the limitation 
 which the Scholarship Committee has placed upon its fund. 
 
 "I do not know anything further I can say now. The $2500 has not 
 yet been exhausted, but when it is more widely known there will undoubtedly 
 be as many cases as the fund can take care of. It is very difficult to properly 
 and suitably investigate the applications, because, where the families have 
 been self-respecting and perhaps have made efforts for many years to keep 
 from applying to relief societies for aid, the Scholarship Committee believes 
 that their dignity should be respected, and that the committee should try to 
 make a private investigation. That, of course, will make additional expense 
 to the committee, but so far the work has been done by volunteer visitors." 
 
 Mrs. Kelley: "You have not mentioned how many cases the philan- 
 thropic societies find it necessary to help in the support of children." 
 
 Miss Wald: "That is true, because in this, as in all other cases, it is 
 impossible to enforce the law or to know just where we are without having 
 a school census. The committee intends to bring this to the attention of the 
 superintendents of philanthropic societies. In one instance four children 
 
The National Child Labor Committee 127 
 
 have been for five years under pension from a philanthropic society where 
 the almoner had been going there regularly and never discovered that not 
 one of the four children had ever been in school, although they were all 
 born in America. The oldest, fifteen years of age, had been one week in 
 school some years before. These facts have been brought to the attention 
 of the superintendent of the philanthropic society, who did all within his 
 power to have the children at school and the family supported. 
 
 "The next effort, in order to protect the superintendents of these societies, 
 would be to have a system of reports from the school superintendents. Our 
 committee is asking for the full measure of our bond. We are asking that 
 not only the child shall bring a report that he is regularly attending school, 
 but a similar card showing the attendance of his brothers and sisters is also 
 required, so that we really get the worth of the scholarship — that is, that 
 there may not be substitution of children." 
 
 The next speaker called upon was Miss Laura N. Piatt, representing the 
 Pennsylvania Child Labor Committee, who gave an interesting account ot 
 the recent efforts in that state to secure the new Pennsylvania law. Miss 
 Piatt spoke as follows: 
 
 "Although the child labor features of the factory law as revised by the 
 Legislature of 1905 did not accomplish all which the Pennsylvania Child 
 Labor Committee had worked for, and although the standard of legislation 
 was not reached which is held up by New York and Illinois, a long stride 
 has been made toward not only a higher standard, but toward effective 
 regulation. The gain in standard is: 
 
 (a) Protection for all working children except those engaged iti domestic 
 or farm labor. 
 
 Against. Protection for only those engaged in factories and certain 
 classes of stores and workshops. 
 
 (6) Prohibition of night work to all children between fourteen and six- 
 teen years (excepting those employed, in certain class of manufacture). 
 
 Against. No prohibition of night work. 
 
 (c) An advance in age limit at which children may commence work from 
 thirteen to fourteen years. 
 
 The gain toward effective regulation is: 
 
 (a) Requirement of record evidence of age. 
 (fc) The issuance of certificates by school authorities. 
 (c) The filing of duplicate certificates and record evidence in a central 
 office, where the documents filed are open to the inspection of the public. 
 
 "A recount of the work of the Pennsylvania Committee prior to the 
 introduction of its bill in the Legislature will give some idea of the founda- 
 tion on which the committee worked, as well as its qualifications. ^ The 
 initial work of the committee was its investigation into child labor conditions, 
 which covered, in time, four months. The investigation was so planned as 
 
128 The National Child Labor Committee 
 
 (i) to cover the sections of the state and localities where children are 
 employed in the largest numbers; (2) to discover to what degree and in 
 what respect the law failed to protect the children. 
 
 "In Philadelphia a probation officer gave three months to the investiga- 
 tion. She interviewed the children personally, as well as others who knew 
 them as school children, club children, employees; who knew them at home 
 and as friends. A resident of the east-central part of the state, and a well- 
 known student and writer on labor conditions in his own locality, spent six 
 months on a special investigation for the committee. A teacher of South 
 Pittsburg, well acquainted with the children who worked in glass houses, 
 gave a month to the investigation in that locality. The Assistant Secretary 
 of the National Child Labor Committee, also investigated and reported on 
 the condition of children in glass houses in the western part of the state, 
 in connection with the cross state investigation of the glass industry. His 
 valuable report was placed at the disposal of the committee. A special 
 investigation, undertaken for the committee, was made by the Public Educa- 
 tion Association. The material collected showed that night schools are not 
 a substitute for day schools, and that young children who work, either do 
 not attend the schools or, if they do, receive little or no benefit, on account 
 of the fatigue of their day's work. A dozen or more superintendents of 
 schools, as well as superintendents of parochial schools; the officers of school 
 boards; teachers of both parochial and public schools; Sunday-school 
 teachers; between thirty-five and fifty leaders of working boys' and working 
 girls' clubs; the residents of settlements in both the eastern and western 
 part of the state; superintendents and visitors of charitable societies; 
 eminent physicians, as well as physicians acquainted with the working people; 
 manufacturers; managers of telegraph and district messenger offices and 
 trade unionists were all consulted and all furnished the committee with data 
 which threw light on the various phases of child labor. Aside from the 
 expert testimony which the individual investigations brought together, the 
 records of the Boys' House of Refuge were carefully examined, as well as 
 the records of the court officers in the eastern and western part of the state. 
 The records told, as nothing else could, the heavy cost of early employment. 
 The Philadelphia Bureau of Compulsory Education, at the suggestion of the 
 committee, noted in its school census the kind of labor performed by children 
 between thirteen and sixteen years. 
 
 "The results of the investigation were sent in to the secretary in the 
 form of notes and schedules. One thousand schedules were filled in, some 
 giving the history of a child and the others a few items of interest in connec- 
 tion with its age, work and schooling. From these notes and schedules the 
 secretary compiled reports, which were printed in five pamphlets by the 
 National Child Labor Committee. Each of these pamphlets gives some one 
 phase of child labor as it exists in Pennsylvania. 'Illiteracy Promoted by 
 Perjury' illustrates the importance of requiring record evidence of a child's 
 age in place of depending on a parent's affidavit. 'Children Who Work at 
 Night' is an account of the children on night shifts in the messenger service, 
 glass houses, foundries, theatres and bowling alleys. The "Unprotected 
 
The National Child Labor Committee 229 
 
 Children' are the working children who had not, previous to the enactment 
 of 1905, been protected in their employment. 'Dependent Parents' answers 
 the old-time inquiry whether the state shall allow the burden of supporting 
 a family to fall on its youngest children. 'The Cost of Child Labor, a Study 
 of Disabled and Delinquent Children,' does not estimate, but indicates the 
 social loss through the employment of children. The Pennsylvania Com- 
 mittee also compiled and published a more popular presentation of the whole 
 subject in an illustrated pamphlet called 'The Working Children of Penn- 
 sylvania.' 
 
 "When the greater part of the data had been collected, but four months 
 before it was published, a sub-committee on legislation was appointed by the 
 Executive Committee, for the purpose of drafting a bill. The measure 
 recommended by the sub-committee was the result of careful consideration 
 for three months of the findings of the investigation; of the experience 
 of those directly and indirectly connected with the enforcement of the old 
 law; and of the experience of other states. The Legislative Committee held 
 conferences with the State Superintendent of Public Instruction; various 
 local superintendents of schools; grade teachers; the Chief Inspector of 
 Factories and deputy inspectors ; " Chief of the Bureau of Compulsory Educa- 
 tion, Philadelphia ; Chairman of the Committee on Compulsory Education, 
 Philadelphia; Superintendent of the Boys' House of Refuge; the Chief 
 Probation Officer of Pittsburg; probation officers in Philadelphia, as well 
 as manufacturers, trade unionists and others unofficially but actively inter- 
 ested in the enforcement of the law. 
 
 "The bill was re-drafted twenty-two times and every detail carefully 
 considered before it was finally presented to the Legislature by the repre- 
 sentatives of the Executive Committee. The committee was fortunate in 
 securing the criticism of one of the ablest constitutional lawyers in the 
 country, Mr. Alexander Simpson, Jr., as well as the legal advice of such 
 members of its committee as Hon. Lyman D. Gilbert and Mr. J. Percy 
 Keating. The bill was an attempt, primarily, to secure three points: (1) A 
 true age limitation, through certificates based on record evidence of age 
 rather than on affidavits; (2) prohibition of night work for all children 
 under sixteen years; (3) extension of legal protection to all children regu- 
 larly employed in industry and commerce. 
 
 "The bill was introduced in the House and in the Senate and given a 
 hearing before a House committee. The Legislative Committee in charge 
 of all the child labor measures introduced decided to report no bill favorably 
 until those interested in the legislation succeeded in effecting a compromise. 
 The Textile Workers' Union of Philadelphia introduced what it called a 
 child labor bill, which did not attempt to remedy the weakness in the old 
 law which made impossible the enforcement of an age limitation. The bill 
 introduced by the Factory Inspection Department was also defective on this 
 point. The three groups of advocates of child labor legislation had failed 
 to agree on a measure previous to the hearing, because they differed as to 
 what was vital. Before the Legislature adjourned, however, the Department 
 
130 The National Child Labor Committee 
 
 of Factory Inspection and the Child Labor Committee agreed upon a com- 
 promise. This compromise was the bill signed by the Governor May 2d, 1905. 
 
 "The important work of the campaign and the work immediately re- 
 sponsible for the passage of the bill was done by Dr. Samuel McC. Lindsay, 
 Secretary of the National Child Labor Committee. It was Dr. Lindsay's 
 skillful handling of the situation at Harrisburg which gave Pennsylvania 
 the new statute, of which it has been said: 'It is the most important law 
 of its kind in the country, because it contributes to the welfare of the 
 greatest number of children.' 
 
 "The work of the campaign carried on from the office of the Pennsyl- 
 vania Committee, while playing no part in the successful issue of the law 
 itself, was of importance from an educational point of view. The campaign 
 will have aroused, it is believed, interest in the enforcement of the law and 
 criticism of it which will be at once intelligent and effective. 
 
 "While the Legislature was in session the committee sent out over 
 9600 letters to individuals throughout the state, asking for their indorsement 
 of the bill. Support of the bill was also urged upon local and county super- 
 intendents of schools as well as selected lists of teachers and on the officers 
 of clubs and educational and philanthropic societies. Along with these letters, 
 and in explanation of the necessity of the legislation which the committee 
 advocated, 23,000 pamphlets were circulated and 6000 printed synopses of 
 the bill. Arguments for the child labor bill were sent to all the important 
 daily and weekly papers in Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia. 
 
 "For reference during the campaign, a card index of all the members 
 of the Legislature was compiled. This recorded the action of the various 
 members during the past five years on bills of importance similar to the 
 child labor bill. A committee of the State Federation of Women's Clubs, 
 of which Mrs. Wilbur F. Rose was chairman, sent a circular letter to all the 
 federated clubs of Pennsylvania. In answer to this appeal forty-three clubs 
 endorsed the bill drafted by the committee. 
 
 "Meetings inaugurated by the Women's Clubs in Pittsburg stirred the 
 interest of the people in the western section of the state. 
 
 "Since May 3d, when the new factory act became a law, the committee 
 has undertaken ihe task of informing, in an unofficial way, all people inter- 
 ested in the enforcement of the law, whom the factory inspectors could not 
 reach officially. As the new law became operative as soon as it received 
 the signature of the Governor, these unofficial announcements were important 
 as a prevention against the illegal issuing of certificates. Of special import- 
 ance was a printed letter sent to notaries public, who, under the new law, 
 are not permitted to issue certificates, but are required to administer the 
 oaths. One thousand eight hundred and seventy-two of these letters were 
 mailed directly to notaries, with printed extracts of the law. As it was 
 impossible to secure a full list of names and addresses, the work was supple- 
 mented by a notice through the Associated Press. The committee also, at 
 the suggestion of the State Superintendent of Schools, informed local super- 
 intendents and county superintendents of the passage of the law. 
 
The National Child Labor Committee 131 
 
 "The committee has had printed 5000 cards, which have been placed by 
 the Bureau of Compulsory Education in all the school rooms and lower 
 school halls in Philadelphia, and in 150 parochial schools. These cards, on 
 the side turned to the wall, notify teachers of the new provisions, and on 
 the other side children are told where certificates of employment are issued 
 and under what conditions they may be secured. 
 
 "Extracts of the new law were mailed to thirty-six associations of 
 manufacturers. In response to these notices requests have been received 
 for 6299 copies of the law. 
 
 "Immediately after the passage of the law the Chief of the Factory 
 Inspection Department appealed to the Pennsylvania Committee to draft a 
 form for the employment certificates which would comply with the require- 
 ments of the new law. The draft now in use is a compromise draft of the 
 form compiled by the committee and the Factory Inspection Department. 
 
 "As the committee was primarily responsible for the certificate features 
 of the new law it had more clearly in mind, as to details, than any of 
 the officials concerned with the issuing of the certificates, the details of 
 the new requirements. As the law took effect immediately, the committee 
 found it necessary to act, so far as its services were acceptable, as interpreter. 
 The work of issuing the certificates from the Bureau of Compulsory Educa- 
 tion was facilitated by the appointment in June of a deputy for that purpose, 
 who had been for the ten months previous a clerk in the office of the com- 
 mittee. In July the annual convention of State Teachers' Association was 
 held. During that convention it was discovered that the majority of super- 
 intendents of schools, on whom devolved the duty of issuing employment 
 certificates, were anxious for advice and interpretation of the new law — 
 whfch the representative of the committee was able to give them. 
 
 "Although this committee had no part in the successful passage of the 
 law relating to children working in the mines, it was gratified that the United 
 Mine Workers accepted, with some verbal modifications and higher qualifica- 
 tions, the bill which the Pennsylvania Committee had drafted and hoped 
 to pass for the protection of the children in the foundries and other estab- 
 lishments." 
 
 Dr. Lindsay added to the report from Pennsylvania a statement concern- 
 ing the recent decision of Judge Wheaton, of Wilkes-Barre, in which the 
 employment certificate feature of the child labor law relating to mines was 
 declared unconstitutional. The decision was due to defective wording of 
 one section of the law, which, in Judge Wheaton's opinion, required an 
 employment certificate from all minors employed in mines between the 
 ages of fourteen and twenty-one, whereas the intention of the law was to 
 require such certificates only for children between the ages of fourteen and 
 sixteen. That intent was expressed in a report to the Legislature of which 
 the court might have taken cognizance, but it regarded the statute as a penal 
 statute, and therefore subject to the strictest interpretation, and preferred 
 to construe the law as applying to all minors. The fact that a different 
 educational standard was required of those who could not present record 
 
132 The National Child Labor Committee 
 
 evidence of birth was, in the opinion of the court, an unjust discrimination, 
 and hence the law was held to be unconstitutional. The Pennsylvania Child 
 Labor Committee has appealed this case to the Superior Court and engaged 
 legal counsel to test the validity of the decision just rendered. 
 
 The next committee to be heard from was that known as the Legislative 
 Committee of the Consumers' League of Massachusetts, which in a sense 
 acts as a state child labor committee. This committee was represented by 
 Howard W. Brown, Esq., of Boston, who reported on its work at the last 
 session of the Legislature of Massachusetts. He said in part: 
 
 "What we did at the last session of the Legislature first of all related to 
 the condition of illiterate minors under sixteen. An amendment was secured 
 to the existing law doing away with the requirement that illiterates from 
 fourteen to sixteen legally employed were obliged to attend night school, and 
 in place of a requirement that only inflicted additional hardship upon the 
 children was substituted the legal requirement that no illiterate under six- 
 teen years of age may be employed in factories or mercantile establishments. 
 The second piece of legislative work that the committee had in hand was 
 to successfully combat an attempt to do away with the fifty-eight hour a 
 week restriction for the working women and children under eighteen in 
 factories and other establishments. There was a desire to suspend the 
 operation of this clause during the period of the holiday season in stores. 
 The committee considered this a dangerous exemption, and successfully 
 defeated the proposed legislation." 
 
 For the coming year Mr. Brown stated that the committee had in mind 
 an attempt to strengthen the legislative protection for children engaged at 
 night by prohibiting the employment of all children under sixteen after 7 
 o'clock in the evening and before 6 o'clock in the morning, and another con- 
 templated change in the factory law was to extend the fifty-eight hour law, 
 now covering only factories, workshops and mercantile establishments, to 
 all children under sixteen in all trades and occupations. This provision 
 would benefit especially the messenger boys, and boys working in business 
 houses, apartments, restaurants and hotels. 
 
 Mr. H. H. Jacobs, of Milwaukee, Wis., representing the Wisconsin Child 
 Labor Committee, from whose chairman, E. W. Frost, Esq., a written report 
 had already been sent to the meeting, was the next speaker. Both Mr. 
 Jacobs, who spoke informally, and Mr. Frost, in his written report, called 
 attention to the fact that the committee was organized on September 12th, 
 1905, consisting of sixteen persons, representing various sections of the 
 state, to which additions will be made from time to time until the number 
 reaches from twenty to twenty-five. The committee has already published 
 a pamphlet concerning the child labor and factory laws of Wisconsin, giving 
 the text of existing laws and preparing to enter upon an educational cam- 
 paign for the extension of the law, and especially for the inclusion of an 
 educational test. In the two years and a half that the present law has been 
 in operation the committee estimates that at least one thousand children 
 who were working illegally have been taken from such work. The new 
 
The National Child Labor Committee 133 
 
 requirements of the law as to permits and the ascertainment of the age of 
 the children have worked well. The National Factory Inspectors' Associa- 
 tion has pronounced it one of the best laws for practical enforcement, "be- 
 cause," says Mr. Frost, "of the fact that our laws provide a definite and practi- 
 cal way to ascertain the age of the child who applies for work. Inasmuch as 
 the factory inspectors or other official to whom the child applies for a permit 
 may, and do, demand either a verified birth certificate or a verified baptismal 
 certificate or proper proof of the age of the child at the time of entrance into 
 school. In the large percentage of the applications one or other of these re- 
 quirements gives the child's correct age. There has been, naturally, trouble, as 
 in the case of children of immigrants, who cannot produce either of these three 
 proofs, and the factory inspectors here have demanded vaccination certifi- 
 cates, passports and other forms of record evidence. The enforcement of the 
 law in Milwaukee is increasingly thorough, and in the state at large, in certain 
 counties where its provisions are better known. There is, however, much 
 ignorance on the subject. There is a great need of a proper educational test, 
 and it goes without saying that there is much to be said in favor of an 
 eight-hour day for children under sixteen, but I doubt the advisability of 
 any such movement at present, although we may get public sentiment up to 
 it by 1907. Some of the factory inspectors strain the law and refuse permits 
 in cases of great illiteracy, although such permits could be obtained by going 
 to the courts. There is an increasing disposition on the part of all Judges, 
 who have also the right to issue permits, to send all applicants to the factory 
 inspectors, of whom there are soon to be twelve in the state at large, or 
 about one for every 200,000 people; still an insufficient number, though a 
 great improvement on previous conditions. The next regular session of our 
 Legislature is in January, 1907, and meanwhile we hope to stimulate public 
 sentiment to the better enforcement of the law." 
 
 Mrs. Kelley, in commenting upon the report from Wisconsin, said that 
 theoretically she thought that the provision of the Wisconsin law in prac- 
 tically placing the issuing of employment certificates in the hands of the 
 factory inspectors was a bad one, that the duty of inspection should not be 
 to inspect one's own work, and, furthermore, that the work that factory 
 inspectors have to do in any community is too important and too vast in 
 amount to permit of their time being taken up to issue certificates. Mrs. 
 Kelley suggested that the issuing of certificates should be turned over to the 
 educational or health authorities. 
 
 A written report from the state of Missouri was made by the Secretary 
 of the Missouri Child Labor Committee, Professor Arthur O. Lovejoy, of 
 Washington University, as follows: 
 
 1. Recent Legislation— -The laws concerning the labor of children in 
 force in Missouri up to the year 1905 have prohibited the employment of 
 children under fourteen years in any manufacturing or mechanical estab- 
 lishment where steam, water or any other mechanical power is used, or 
 where the work to be done would, in the opinion of two reputable physicians, 
 be dangerous to the child's health 1 have also prohibited the employment 
 
134 The National Child Labor Committee 
 
 of boys under twelve or females of any age in any mine, and the employment 
 of boys under fourteen in any mine unless able to read and write; and have 
 also provided that no person having the care of any child under the age of 
 fourteen shall "in any manner sell, apprentice, give away, let out, or other- 
 wise dispose of such child to any person in or for the vocation or occupa- 
 tion of singing, playing on musical instruments, rope or wire walking, 
 dancing, begging or peddling," or as a gymnast, or for any immoral pur- 
 pose or exhibition, or in any business or vocation "injurious to the health 
 or dangerous to the life or limb of such child, or cause, procure, or encourage 
 any such child to engage in such occupation." 
 
 These last provisions of the law would apparently make it possible to 
 prevent children from being employed in any sort of peddling and in un- 
 healthful or dangerous trades; but this part of the statutes has never been 
 so construed, and has served only to diminish the use of children in public 
 exhibitions of a dangerous or immoral character. The enforcement of these 
 laws has been entirely in the hands of the state factory inspector and his 
 assistants, whose duties require them also to secure the enforcement of the 
 other multifarious state laws relating to factories. 
 
 During the last session of the Legislature a compulsory education law 
 was adopted, which requires that all children under fourteen shall attend 
 regularly some day school (public, private or parochial) not less than one- 
 half of the entire school session; and further contains the following sections 
 relating to child labor : 
 
 "No child between eight and fourteen years of age shall be employed in 
 any mine, factory, workshop, mercantile establishment, or in any other 
 manner, during the usual school hours, unless the person employing him 
 shall procure a certificate from the superintendent or teacher of the school 
 he attended, stating that such child attended school for the period required 
 by law, or has been excused from attendance as provided in section two; 
 and it shall be the duty of such superintendent or teacher to furnish such 
 certificate upon application of the parent, guardian or other persons having 
 control of such chifd entitled to the same. Every owner, superintendent or 
 officer of any mine, factory, workshop or mercantile establishment, and any 
 other person who shall employ any child between eight and fourteen years 
 of age contrary to the provisions of this act, shall be deemed guilty of a mis- 
 demeanor, and upon conviction, shall be fined for each offense in a sum not 
 less than twenty nor more than fifty dollars and costs." 
 
 The appointment of truant officers for the enforcement of the compulsory 
 education law is left optional with local Boards of Education, and such officers 
 will probably be appointed only in the large cities. Duly appointed truant 
 officers have power to enter factories and business houses to ascertain whether 
 any children who should be in school are being employed there. The law 
 thus has the effect, where put into operation, of prohibiting all labor of chil- 
 dren under fourteen years of age in the day time during at least the first 
 half of the school year. The St. Louis Board has appointed five truant 
 officers, and the law is being vigorously enforced in that city. The effect 
 
The National Child Labor Committee 135 
 
 during the first two months since it went into effect has been to increase 
 greatly both the enrollment and regularity of attendance in the public schools, 
 and to reach a considerable number of children employed in forms of labor 
 not covered by the older child labor laws. Thus the truant officers have 
 taken a number of boys under fourteen from the messenger service, and 
 placed them in school. The new law will probably continue to be of consid- 
 erable service in this respect. 
 
 2. Deficiencies of Present Missouri Laws. — The most notable deficiencies 
 of the Missouri legislation on child labor are the following: 
 
 (o) The laws do not apply to a sufficient number of trades; in particular, 
 they permit children to be employed during a large part of the year in certain 
 sorts of work highly injurious to health or morals. 
 
 (6) They contain no special provisions in regard to night work. 
 
 O) They do not restrict the total hours of labor per week for all children 
 under sixteen. 
 
 (d) They permit the exemption of children in the case of "extreme 
 poverty of the parent." 
 
 (<?) They place the burden of proof in respect to the child's age upon 
 the factory inspectors. 
 
 (f) The appropriation for the factory inspector's office does not permit 
 the employment of a sufficient number of inspectors to visit factories with 
 sufficient frequency and unexpectedness to prevent a considerable evasion 
 of the child labor statutes by employers so inclined. The provision that the 
 opinion of two reputable physicians may be taken as evidence that a given 
 sort of work would be injurious to the health of a child appears to be 
 construed to mean that no work is injurious which any two physicians will 
 swear that they believe to be not so. 
 
 3. Organization for Improvement of Conditions. — A meeting was held in 
 the Planter's Hotel, St. Louis, on May 12th, 1905, at the call of the Secretary 
 of the National Committee, Dr. S. M. Lindsay, at which an organization was 
 formed for agitating the question of child labor in Missouri and for securing 
 the adoption of an improved law by the next Legislature, which meets in 
 1907. A state committee was created, which is at time of writing composed 
 as follows : 
 
 N. O. Nelson, President of the Nelson Manufacturing Company, St. 
 Louis, Chairman; Mrs. Philip N. Moore, President of the State Federation 
 of Women's Clubs, Vice-Chairman ; A. O. Lovejoy, Professor of Philosophy 
 in Washington University, Secretary; Miss Mary E. Perry; Rev. J. W. 
 Day, minister of the Church of the Messiah, St. Louis; H. Steinbiss, General 
 Secretary of the International Building Trades Council. 
 
 This committee has power to increase its membership, and will eventually 
 be a committee of ten. The committee's duty will be to promote the organiza- 
 tion of local committees in the cities and towns of the state, to make investiga- 
 tions into the conditions in the several trades not now adequately reached 
 by the existing child labor laws, and to secure public support for the improved 
 bill which will be presented to the Legislature in 1907. The women's clubs 
 
136 The National Child Labor Committee 
 
 of the state are taking an active interest in the matter, and an effective system 
 of co-operation between those clubs and the State Committee is now being 
 arranged. The plans and the investigations of the committee are not as yet 
 sufficiently matured to justify a more detailed report at this time. 
 
 Informal verbal reports of the situation in Iowa and Oregon were made 
 by the Chairman, Dr. Lindsay, who had recently visited those states. 
 
 Dr. A. J. McKelway presented a report from the southern states, referring 
 to the work done by several of the State Committees that have been organized 
 in the South. Dr. McKelway said : 
 
 "In regard to the situation in the whole South to-day, I believe that 
 conditions are worse now than they have been, in spite of some remedial 
 legislation that has been adopted. The cotton mill industry is growing by 
 leaps and bounds, while at the same time the price of raw cotton is high, and 
 thus there is strenuous competition in the labor market between the factory 
 and the farm. In this pressing demand for labor the children are being 
 employed in greater numbers than ever before in the factories. 
 
 "Taking up the states one by one, Virginia has a pretty fair law on her 
 statute books, prescribing a ten-hour day for children under fourteen, 
 forbidding night work for children under fourteen, and forbidding the em- 
 ployment of children under twelve in any manufacturing, mechanical or 
 mining operation. There is no provision for factory inspection, however, 
 and the belief is general that the law is not enforced. The Labor Com- 
 missioner in Virginia hopes to have a law passed by the next Legislature, 
 which meets in January, 1906, giving him the authority for the inspection of 
 factories and the enforcement of the law. A state child labor committee 
 is now being organized in Richmond among the friends of our cause. 
 
 "North Carolina has a twelve year age limit, but the same difficulty 
 with regard to factory inspection and legal enforcement. A strong State 
 Committee has been organized in North Carolina, with Raleigh as head- 
 quarters, which will push the matter of amending the law before the North 
 Carolina Legislature, which meets in January, 1907. 
 
 "South Carolina has now an age limit of twelve years, but with excep- 
 tions which really reduce the age limit to ten. A strong State Committee 
 has been organized in South Carolina, which will advocate before the South 
 Carolina Legislature, meeting in January, 1906, the appointment of a factory 
 inspector, the raising of the age limit to fourteen for girls and for boys who 
 cannot read and write. 
 
 "An interesting letter from Rev. W. H. Mills, Secretary of the State 
 Committee, states that the present law is little else than a dead letter. 
 
 "The Legislature of Florida failed to pass the child labor bill at its 
 meeting last spring. A letter from Rev. John G. Anderson, of Tampa, Fla., 
 a member of our committee, who had charge of the bill, attributes its defeat 
 to the confusion of the closing hours of the session. The bill passed the 
 Senate unanimously, and a conference committee from the two Houses had 
 recommended its adoption. The bill was opposed by the cigar manufacturers 
 and the canning industries, and Dr. Anderson reports that the evil of child 
 
The National Child Labor Committee 137 
 
 labor in the cigar factories is on the increase. It is hoped that a better 
 law can be passed at the next Legislature, which meets in the spring of 1907, 
 than the one which was defeated in the last. 
 
 "Georgia is still without a_child labor law. After a hard fought cam- 
 paign last summer, in which the whole state was aroused as never before, 
 the bill which passed the House by forty-one majority failed by four votes 
 of passing the Senate. The Georgia Child Labor Committee was reorganized 
 during the year, with an Executive Committee in Atlanta and representation 
 throughout the state. The Georgia Legislature meets every summer, each 
 having two annual terms. It is possible that a bill can be passed at the 
 coming term of the same Legislature which defeated the last bill, but it is 
 confidently believed that the popular interest in the cause will secure the 
 passage of an adequate law by the Legislature of 1907. 
 
 "The Alabama Child Labor Committee, which had the honor of passing 
 the first child labor law in the South is beginning a campaign of agitation for 
 the amerdment of the law providing for factory inspection and enforcement. I 
 have an interesting letter here from Judge N. B. Feagin, of Birmingham, Ala., 
 who describes the political situation now existing, and believes that in the 
 conflict of opposing forces there is hope for the passage of a child labor law 
 for Alabama. 
 
 "Mississippi has no child labor law as yet, though the child labor evil 
 is a slight one in that state, as a large majority of the population is rural 
 and there are only twenty-one cotton factories in the state. An effort will 
 be made to organize a Child Labor Committee in January, and to promote the 
 passage of the bill through the Legislature which meets in that month. 
 
 "The Legislature of Louisiana, at its last session, defeated an amendment 
 to the present law which would have rendered it much more effective. 
 Much interest in the cause has been aroused in the state, and the effort at 
 amendment will be renewed at the coming session of the Legislature. 
 
 "I have no reports from Texas or from Arkansas. 
 
 "The activity of the factory inspector in Kentucky has been noticeable 
 of late, and several prosecutions for violations of the existing law will 
 undoubtedly make it more respected than it has been. The Kentucky law 
 has an age limit of fourteen for children working in factories and mines, and 
 also a compulsory education law. 
 
 "Tennessee has the same age limit of fourteen, but a letter from Chan- 
 cellor Kirkland, of our committee, indicates that the law is not adequately 
 enforced. An effort will be made to organize a State Committee in Nashville 
 in January, 1906." 
 
 A strong delegation from Maryland was present. The Vice-Chairman of 
 the Maryland Child Labor Committee, Mrs. John M. Glenn, presented a 
 most interesting verbal report, telling of the recent organization of that 
 committee and of the investigations made by the Consumers' League and 
 the efforts made to frame a child labor law to be presented at the coming 
 session of the Maryland Legislature, looking to the adoption of a child labor 
 law covering the entire state. Mrs. Glenn said : 
 
138 The National Child Labor Committee 
 
 "We have a child labor law on the statute books applicable to children 
 under fourteen years of age, but there is no machinery provided for its 
 enforcement. It applies to only four counties in the state, and it exempts the 
 canning industry and the children of widowed mothers. We want a law to 
 cover the entire state and all its industries. If we cannot begin with the 
 fourteen year standard, we will start with less, and if possible secure adequate 
 enforcement and investigation, so as to be in a stronger position two years 
 hence to raise our standard." 
 
 Dr. George M. Kober, Chairman of the District of Columbia Citizens' 
 Child Labor Committee, reported on the work of that committee and the 
 difficulties it had encountered in arousing sufficient interest in Congress to 
 get any legislation on the subject at all. The committee is very anxious to 
 have the District of Columbia removed from the black list of communities 
 in which there is no child labor legislation. 
 
 Mr. Love joy reported informally for the states of Michigan and Ohio, 
 in both of which State Committees' have been recently organized. 
 
 The following is a list of the general or state child labor committees, with 
 the names and addresses of their chief officers : 
 
 Alabama Child Labor Committee. — Dr. B. J. Baldwin, Montgomery, 
 Chairman. 
 
 Buffalo (N. Y.) Committee on Children. — Hon. George A. Lewis, Buffalo, 
 Chairman; Porter R. Lee, Buffalo, Secretary. 
 
 Citizens' Child Labor Committee of the District of Columbia. — Dr. George 
 M. Kober, 1600. T Street, Northwest, Washington, Chairman; Henry J. 
 Harris, 1429 New York Avenue, Washington, Secretary. 
 
 Georgia Child Labor Committee. — Ex-Governor Allen D. Candler, Gaines- 
 ville, Chairman; Rev. C. B. Wilmer, D.D., 16 Houston Street, Atlanta, 
 Secretary. 
 
 Hull House Child Labor Committee, Chicago, 111., Jane Addams, Chair- 
 man; Mrs. H. Van der Vaart, Secretary. 
 
 Iowa Child Labor Committee. — Professor Isaac A. Loos, Iowa City, 
 Chairman; Hon. Edward D. Brigham, Des Moines, Secretary. 
 
 Maryland Child Labor Committee.— Robert Garrett, Baltimore, Chair- 
 man; H. Wirt Steele, 101 West Saratoga Street, Baltimore, Secretary. 
 
 Legislative Committee of the Consumers' League of Massachusetts. 
 
 Edith M. Howes, 415 Marlborough Street, Boston, Chairman. 
 
 Michigan Child Labor Committee.— Professor Charles H. Cooley, Univer- 
 sity of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Chairman; Luman W. Goodenough, Detroit, 
 Secretary. 
 
 Missouri Child Labor Committee.— N. O. Nelson, Eighth and Charles 
 Streets, St. Louis, Chairman; Professor Arthur O. Love joy, Washington 
 University, St. Louis, Secretary. 
 
 New Jersey Child Labor Committee.— Hugh F. Fox, Plainfield, Chair- 
 man; Miss Florence D. Dale, Montclair, Secretary. 
 
 New York Child Labor Committee.— Robert Hunter, 88 Grove Street, 
 
The National Child Labor Committee 139 
 
 New York, Chairman; George A. Hall, 105 East Twenty-second Street, 
 New York, Secretary. 
 
 North Carolina Child Labor Committee.— Dr. Hubert A. Royster, Raleigh, 
 Chairman; C. L. Coon, Raleigh, Secretary. 
 
 Ohio Child Labor Committee.— Dr. Albert H. Freiberg, 19 West Seventh 
 Street, Cincinnati, Chairman; Wallace E. Miller, Columbus, Secretary. 
 
 Oregon Child Labor Commission. — H. G. Kundret, 232^ Washington 
 Street, Portland, Chairman; Mrs. B. H. Trumbull, 921 Corbett Street, Port- 
 land, Secretary. 
 
 Pennsylvania Child Labor Committee.— Hon Lyman D. Gilbert, Harris- 
 burg, Chairman; Scott Nearing, 708 North American Building, Philadelphia, 
 Secretary; George Woodward, M.D., North American Building, Philadel- 
 phia, Chairman of Executive Committee. 
 
 Rhode Island Child Labor Committee. — Prof. Gardner, of Brown Uni- 
 versity, Providence, Chairman; Miss Conington, Secretary. 
 
 South Carolina Child Labor Committee. — Rev. W. H. Mills, North 
 Augusta, Secretary. 
 
 Tennessee Child Labor Committee. — Dr. James H. Kirkland, Nashville, 
 Chairman; Rev. G. W. Bull, Secretary. 
 
 Wisconsin Child Labor Committee. — Edward W. Frost, Wells Building, 
 Milwaukee, Chairman; H. H. Jacobs, University Settlement, Milwaukee, 
 Secretary. 
 
 The closing session of the annual meeting, constituting the supplementary 
 session held in Chicago on December 16th, was presided over by the Gov- 
 ernor of Illinois, Hon. Charles S. Deneen, who referred to the excellent 
 record made by the comparatively limited force of factory inspectors in 
 Illinois. The Governor said: 
 
 "I have been invited to act as presiding officer, not to speak, and I shall 
 observe the rules of hospitality. It is fortunate for this audience, and I 
 believe also fortunate for the state, to have a meeting of this kind in this 
 church. It is still more fortunate that we have speakers of national reputa- 
 tion who will present the cause of children to the people here to-night 
 and to the greater public to-morrow. Those who will speak to you have ac- 
 quired a familiarity with their subject by actual work rather than through study 
 alone. Illinois has a good child labor law, but we are handicapped in the en- 
 forcement of it by the fact that there are only seven wotren inspectors and 
 eleven men inspectors. Last year, however, over fifty-five thousand inspec- 
 tions were made, and by means of this department the school attendance 
 in Chicago was increased eight thousand within the year. I believe that 
 the next General Assembly will come to the aid of this department and enlarge 
 it and enable us to appoint inspectors who will see that the children are 
 protected in this state." 
 
 A large and enthusiastic audience welcomed the speakers whom the 
 Governor introduced, the first of whom was Dr. Emil G. Hirsch, in whose 
 church the meeting was held. Dr. Hirsch made the following brief address 
 of welcome: 
 
140 The National Child Labor Committee 
 
 "This house has greeted often movements of great and deep importance 
 for the community at large, as well as for the nation, but I dare say we had 
 never the pleasure of being hosts at a movement that is nearer to our hearts 
 than the one that will be presented to you to-night. In our own old literature 
 the injunction is often repeated that the child shall not be burnt at the altar 
 of Moloch. While no bones whiten to-day the Valley of Hinom, in Jeru- 
 salem, we cannot .claim that the Moloch has to-day no altar and no 
 shrines on this wide globe. Mines and mills, factories and fields are wor- 
 shipping that old hideous idol and in the service of him, which is the service 
 of selfishness, child life is sacrificed without concern, further than in calcula- 
 tion that it is profitable, in the sense in which profits are reckoned in business 
 and in the market; but even in terms of commercial success child labor is 
 most expensive. It is short sighted to claim that sound business principles 
 are in favor of consuming these children at the shrine of the Moloch of 
 commercial success. Our hill tops are bared to-day, and why? Because of 
 our short sighted policy we have acted on the principle that the present 
 generation need have no thought of those that come after. 'Apres nous le 
 deluge;' if the deluge come after us what do we care, and we will engage 
 in robber tactics, in countenancing the burning of children at the shrine of 
 Moloch. 
 
 "These children are the future men and women; as they are so will be 
 the nation. Stunted in their growth, deprived of mental development, 
 immoralized, their souls touched by the fires of lust, their sense of human 
 decency burnt away, these children will be the fathers and mothers of the 
 next generation, and we all can easily foresee the result. Whatever be our 
 policy of life, whether we believe that selfishness is finally decisive in the 
 struggle that wages in every field of human activity, whether we believe that 
 there is a higher law of responsibility that cannot be ignored, and if ignored 
 will visit dire retribution on those that ignore it, or whether a tender senti- 
 ment touch our heart, we must, from whatever point of view we approach 
 this question, agree that this Moloch service of children with the smoking 
 fires and burning mines shall cease, and the sooner the better. Good business 
 policy, good patriotism, humanity and submission to the highest law of 
 morality demand that it shall cease." 
 
 The other addresses of the evening, by Professor Adler, Mr. Frost, 
 Professors Lindsay and Taylor and Miss Addams, are all, except that of Pro- 
 fessor Adler, published in full in this volume. The Committee of Arrange- 
 ments for the Chicago meeting was composed of the following persons : Jane 
 Addams, Chairman; Mrs. Emmons Blaine, Edgar T. Davies, Dr. Emil G. 
 Hirsch, Stanley McCormick, Graham Taylor, Mrs. Harriet M. Van der Vaart. 
 
 At the closing session in Washington the Chairman of the Finance 
 Committee of the National Child Labor Committee, Mr. Isaac N. Seligman, 
 of New York, made a statement to the effect that about $20,000 per annum 
 would be necessary to carry on the propaganda planned by the National Com- 
 mittee. He spoke of the interest manifested by those who have written or 
 who have sent money from quarters from which it was not expected. He 
 
The National Child Labor Committee 141 
 
 said that he believed that this amount of money and much more could be 
 spent effectively in helping to lighten the burdens of childhood, and that it 
 would come back many fold in the future. He closed with an appeal to those 
 who are interested in this subject to enlist the active co-operation of every 
 worker, and, if possible, of those who can give of their substance to the 
 financial support of the work of the National Committee and of the several 
 state and local committees. 
 
 PUBLICATIONS OF 
 Wbt /Rational CSilb Eafcor €ommitUt 
 
 Single copies of the publications of the National Child Labor Committee 
 may be had gratis except as otherwise noted, upon application to the Secre- 
 tary, Samuel McCune Lindsay, 105 East 22d Street, New York City. 
 
 /. SMALLER SERIES: 
 
 1. Folder giving names and addresses of the members of the National Child 
 
 Labor Committee, statement of the Objects of the Committee, and list 
 of executive officers. Pp. 8. 1905. 
 
 2. "Illiteracy Promoted by Perjury." Pp. 16. 1905. 
 *3- "Children Who Work at Night." Pp. 24. 1905. 
 *4. "Unprotected Children." Pp. 20. 1905. 
 
 *S. "The Cost of Child Labor." Pp. 36. 1905. 
 
 6. "Dependent Parents." Pp. 12. 1905. 
 
 7. "Extracts from the First Annual Report of the Secretary." Pp. 4. 
 
 1905. 
 
 8. "Child Labor in the South." Extract from a Report by Assistant Secre- 
 
 tary McKelway, dated Atlanta, Ga., May 1, 1906. Pp. 4. 
 
 II. LARGER SERIES: 
 
 1. Program of the First Annual Meeting of the National Committee, held 
 
 in New York City, February 14-16, 1905. Pp. 4. 
 
 2. "Child Labor." A volume containing the papers and addresses, and the 
 
 proceedings of the First Annual Meeting of the National Committee, 
 also two specially contributed articles on the subject of child labor. Pp. 
 176. Price, cloth bound, $1.25; paper binding, $1.00. 1905. 
 
 The papers and addresses of the First Annual Meeting printed separately 
 and for most part available for free distriubtion, as noted below, are marked 
 thus "*". The two special contributions to this list are marked thus "f. 
 
 3. "The School as a Force Arrayed Against Child Labor." By James H. 
 
 Kirkland, Chancellor, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn. Pp. 8. 
 1905* 
 
 4. "Child Labor from the Employer's Point of View." By Rev. Dr. Emil 
 
 G. Hirsch, Professor of Rabbinical Literature and Philosophy in the 
 University of Chicago. Pp. 8. 1905.* 
 
 *Out of print. 
 
5- "The Test of Effective Child Labor Legislation." By Owen R. Love- 
 joy, Assistant Secretary of the National Child Labor Committee. 
 Pp. 8. 1905.* 
 
 6. "Child Labor Legislation and Methods of Enforcement in the 
 
 Western States." By Judge Ben. B. Lindsey, Juvenile Court, Den- 
 ver, Colo. Pp. 8. 1905* 
 
 7. "Child Labor Legislation and Methods of Enforcement in the North- 
 
 ern Central States." By Halford Erickson, Commissioner of Labor, 
 Wisconsin. Pp. 16. 1905.* 
 
 8. "Child Labor Legislation and Methods of Enforcement in the New 
 
 England and Middle States." By Mrs. Florence Kelley, Secretary of 
 the National Consumers' League, New York. Pp. 12. 1905.* 
 
 9. "Child Labor Legislation and Methods of Enforcement in the South- 
 
 ern States." By Rev. Neal L. Anderson, Montgomery, Ala. Pp. 20. 
 1905-* 
 
 10. "The Work of the General Federation of Women's Clubs Against 
 
 Child Labor." By Mrs. A. O. Granger, Cartersville, Ga., Chairman of 
 Child Labor Committee, General Federation of Women's Clubs. Pp. 8. 
 190S* 
 
 11. "Child Labor in the United States and Its Great Attendant Evils." 
 
 By Felix Adler, Ph.D., Chairman of the National Child Labor Commit- 
 tee, and Professor of Political and Social Ethics in Columbia University, 
 New York. Pp. 16. 1905* 
 
 12. "Child Labor in Southern Industry." By A. J. McKelway, Charlotte, 
 
 N. C, Assistant Secretary of the National Child Labor Committee. 
 Pp. 8. 1905* 
 
 13. "Child Labor Legislation — A Requisite for Industrial Efficiency." 
 
 By Jane Addams, Hull House, Chicago. Pp. 12. 1905.* 
 
 14. "Children in American Street Trades." By Myron E. Adams, Head- 
 
 worker of West Side Neighborhood House, New York City. Pp. 24. 
 i9°5-t 
 
 15. "The Operation of the New Child Labor Law in New Jersey." By 
 
 Hugh F. Fox, President of the Children's Protective Alliance of New 
 Jersey. Pp. 24. 1905^ 
 
 16. "Why Amend the New Jersey Child Labor Law," with copy of bill 
 
 providing for the abolition of night work. Pp. 6. 1906. 
 
 17. "What Congress Can Do to Protect the Rights of Childhood." A 
 
 discussion and copy of A Bill to Establish in the Department of the 
 Interior a Bureau to be known as the Children's Bureau. Pp. 4. 1906. 
 
 18. "The District of Columbia Child Labor Bill in Congress." Text of the 
 
 bill with discussion thereof. Pp. 4. 1906. 
 
 19. Program of the Second Annual Meeting of the National Committee, held 
 
 in Washington, D. C, December 8-10, 1906, with supplementary ses- 
 sions in Philadelphia and Chicago December 7th and 16th, respectively. 
 Pp. 4. 
 
 20. "Child Labor — A Menace to Industry, Education and Good Citizen- 
 
 ship." A volume containing the papers and addresses, and the proceed- 
 ings of the Second Annual Meeting of the National Committee, also 
 two specially contributed articles on the subject of child labor. Pp. 144. 
 Price, cloth bound, $1.25 ; paper binding $1.00. 1906. 
 
 (*, f- Also contained in and printed as part of Larger Series, No. 2, 
 "Child Labor," a volume containing the papers and addresses, and the pro- 
 ceedings of the First Annual Meeting of the National Committee; also two 
 specially contributed articles on the subject of child labor. Pp. 176. Price, 
 cloth bound, $1.25 ; paper binding, $1.) 
 
The Papers and addresses of the Second Annual Meeting printed sepa- 
 rately and for the most part available for free distribution, as noted below, 
 are marked thus "§". The two special contributions to this list are marked 
 thus "t". 
 
 2I * " Child Lab ° e in the Southern Cotton Mills." Pp. 12. ioo6.§ 
 
 22. "The Child Labor Problem— A Study in Degeneracy." Pp. 16. 19064 
 
 By A. J. McKelway, D.D., Assistant Secretary of the National Child 
 Labor Committee. 
 
 23. "Child Labor at the National Capital." By Charles P. Neill, U. S. 
 
 Commissioner of Labor. Pp. 12. i9o6.§ 
 
 24. "Past and Present Arguments Against Child Labor." By John Gra- 
 
 ham Brooks, President of the American Social Science Association, 
 the National Consumers' League. Pp. 4, i9o6.§ 
 
 25. "The Physical and Physiological Effects of Child Labor." By George 
 
 M. Kober, M.D., Chairman of the District of Columbia Citizens' Child 
 Labor Committee. Pp. 4. i9o6.§ 
 
 26. "The Federal Government and the Working Children." By Florence 
 
 Kelley, Secretary of the National Consumers' League. Pp. 4. i9o6.§ 
 
 27. "Child Labor in the Coal Mines." Pp. 8. i9o6.§ 
 
 28. "Child Labor in the Glass Industry." Pp. 12, i9o6.§ By Owen R. 
 
 Lovejoy, Assistant Secretary of the National Child Labor Committee. 
 
 29. "The Operation of the Illinois Child Labor Law." By Jane Addams, 
 
 Hull House, Chicago. Pp. 4. i9o6.§ 
 
 30. "Child Labor a National Problem." By Samuel McCune Lindsay, 
 
 Ph.D., Secretary of the National Child Labor Committee. Pp. 8. 
 I906.§ 
 
 31. "Organized Labor's Attitude Against Child Labor." By Samuel Gom- 
 
 pers, President of the American Federation of Labor. Pp. 8. igo6.§ 
 
 32. "Overwork, Idleness or Industrial Education." By William Noyes, 
 
 M.A., Teachers' College, Columbia University, N. Y. Pp. 12. 1906.$ 
 
 33. "Parental Responsibility for Child Labor." By Graham Taylor, D.D., 
 
 Warden of Chicago Commons. Pp. 4. i9o6.§ 
 
 34. "The Operation of the Wisconsin Child Labor Law." By Edward W. 
 
 Frost, Esq., Chairman of the Wisconsin Child Labor Committee. Pp. 4. 
 I9°6.§ 
 
 35. "A Business Man's View of Child Labor." By S. W. Woodward, of 
 
 the firm of Woodward & Lathrop, Washington, D. C. Pp. 4. 1906.! 
 
 36. "The Essentials of a Child Labor Law for the District of Columbia/' 
 
 By Henry J. Harris, Ph.D., United States Bureau of Labor, and Secre- 
 tary of District of Columbia Citizens' Child Labor Committee. Pp. 8. 
 IQ05-I 
 
 37. "Proceedings of the Second Annual Meeting." Program ; Addresses by 
 
 Felix Adler, Ph.D., Chairman of the National Committee, and others; 
 Reports from State Committees. Pp. 32. i9o6.§ 
 
 (§, J. Also contained in and printed as part of Larger Series, No. 20, 
 "Child Labor — A Menace to Industry, Education and Good Citizenship," a' 
 volume containing the papers and addresses, and the proceedings of the 
 Second Annual Meeting of the National Committee; also two specially con- 
 tributed articles on the subject of child labor. Pp. 144. Price, cloth bound, 
 $1.25; paper binding, $1.)