Chapter XI: Part VII: Proceedings of Annual Meeting 287 (7)

I am aware that business success is but a partial test of true education, and my mark is missed if I seem to have set up that as my test alone. Perhaps from the unfavorable conditions of child labor in the past, has arisen the assumption that to work for wages in early years is necessarily a misfortune to the child, and, until now at least, the instinctive choice of parents is for long years in the schools. But as time brings to working men and women improved conditions, shortened hours, higher standards of intelligence, increased rate of earnings, may not a proportionate bettering for the child bring conditions so normal, to the best education and development, as that labor in the real world of business or trade will accomplish more, and more desirably, for the child that which is striven for in business and trades courses of the schools?

Modern educational methods have carried much of the shop and counting-house into the school-room, while but little in the reverse order has been accomplished, at least in this country. Pennsylvania State law has done little more for the child than to forbid his being employed in manufacturing or mercantile establishments before the age of thirteen, and thereafter to surround his employment with some safeguards against danger to life or limb. But considerably greater progress has been made in Germany. Some present here will recall a paper read in this room by our Consul at Chemnitz, the Hon. J. C. Monaghan, on “Industrial Education, a German Example.” Mr. Monaghan tells of industrial schools established in manufacturing districts for the benefit of the workers of the factories, where the law requires so many hours in the week to be spent in these schools by the younger employees, who thus combine the practical of their business with the theoretical of their school. I quote from Mr. Monaghan: “I have had exceptional opportunities during three periods, since the war of 1870, of investigating the industrial progress of Germany, and to make what might easily be a long story short, I may say it is due mainly to education. When you are building a house, you begin with the foundations. When you are building up a man, you begin with the child. Germany a century ago, after its exhaustion and humiliation caused by the great wars, fixed the foundation of its new life and development on the rock of education. The country was poor, its people could only exist by hard work, and their education was organized so as to help them with their work.... Germany has a system of further-developing schools, and industrial art schools, so close to the people that they aid the trades and industries in such a way as to commend themselves to all parties concerned therewith. Education in Germany is compulsory. After graduating from the public schools (or leaving the public school, for reference here is to the lower grade schools which boys leave at fourteen or fifteen for work, as they do with us at thirteen) and entering upon an employment, they are not only expected but compelled to attend these further-developing schools for a period of three years. They go two or three times each week, sometimes on Sunday. They are developing the scientific side, if one may put it thus, of the trade or business with which they are connected.” Here, then, is the child at work and yet the school brought to him. But a step further brings to him also those branches of study usually associated with the school alone and suggested more by the liberal than the strictly business and trade view of education. Instead, then, of commercial and mechanical work in the school of the schools, we have school-work in the school of actual commerce and industry, in the store and factory.

And shall we say that this reversal of the older plan may not have a wise and lasting place in educational life?

Is the labor of the store, shop or office more truly educative when imitated in the class-rooms of commercial and trade schools, than when done in course of actual business? Do not the labor and experiences of business life, with their real responsibilities, their unartificial rewards and retributions, their contact with men in real life, do all the former can do and much more? Certainly the real thing done in business or shop, and shaped and regulated to serve the ends of the world’s actual economic life, must have an educative advantage above the like thing theorized over in the school-room; while of unquestionably great value is that further reward which the school of actual business gives to its pupils, namely—a knowledge of men and affairs, confidence, judgment, association with practical workers at the centre of the world’s daily life.

Keep the children young, we are tempted to say as we see them in our own home circles. A dangerous plan! Rather, let the children learn what they must, of the best masters, and as their years are able! So wise and devoted a parent as Lord Chesterfield wrote his young son: “Do not imagine that the knowledge, which I so much commend to you, is confined to books, pleasing, useful, and necessary as that knowledge is; but I comprehend in it the great knowledge of the world, still more necessary than that of books. The knowledge of the world is only to be acquired in the world, and not in a closet.” “Happy the man who, with a certain fund of parts and knowledge, gets acquainted with the world early enough to make it his bubble, at an age when most people are the bubbles of the world, for that is the common case of youth.”

If, then, the commercial and trades training, the business or manual, or whatever the course be called, can be found in actual commerce and trade; if a sufficient degree of scholastic education can there be added, and if with this the maturing man or woman shall gain a higher degree of technical skill and a safer knowledge of men and affairs, does not the plan of the school in business best meet the educational problem for at least a majority of childkind? Answer as you may for present or future, this is true now—that child labor in the Wanamaker store means education, physical, scholastic, commercial; development in character, fitness for intelligent work, and fitting into a place in the bread-and-butter belt of the world; an open path and a helping hand to the career of the man or woman who shall add a due part to the sum of life and win the crown fashioned by the Great Father for each of us, His children, who finds his duty and does it.

DISCUSSION.

“Q. Has the store any difficulty in keeping out boys under thirteen?

“A. Practically no difficulty. I have no doubt the truth is stretched occasionally and those not yet thirteen brought in, but there must be an affidavit as to age, and few of the class of people from whom our employees are drawn are willing to swear to a lie in order to secure earlier employing of the child.

“Q. Is there a physical examination, a physician in charge?

“A. There is no physical examination other than that which the eye of the employer can give. The first weeks or months of the boy’s service, or girl’s, develop the fact whether physically, mentally and otherwise, the child is suited for the business.

“Q. How long has this system been in operation?

“A. I think it was six years ago that we began with the school for cash boys. It was some two or three years before that the initial step, out of which all the rest has grown, was taken. The plan arose originally from a recognition of the fact that the young people who came into the store were not sufficiently looked after. They were apt to be lost sight of, as distributed in the various departments, and when the busy season passed and some reduction in the force became necessary, the department head was often not far-sighted enough to consider that the small boy now would be his best man in the years to come. It was the recognition of this fact that led to the beginning of the plan of which the first step was merely the placing of the smaller boys of the establishment under one head. All the other steps came one by one, as our experience led to them.

“Q. You referred to the fact that your experience had shown that college training was not useful in business career. Are there many college men in your departments, or are you able to find that out?

“A. I did not give this as our own experience and conclusion, but was quoting that of others as given in the pamphlet of Mr. Crane’s, to which I referred, and which contains my answer to a letter from him. Mr. Crane sent letters to representatives of various establishments, asking that question. So far as I can recall the answer, it was that we were unable to say exactly, but taking such departments as required salesmen, bookkeepers and so on (that is, dropping out the delivery and packing rooms, where the more highly educated would naturally not be found), aggregating some five hundred and fifty men, we found twenty-six who had had either a full or partial college education. It is not our custom to inquire as to the college education. The difference in the success of the college-educated man and the one not so educated has not, in our experience, been sufficiently marked to make that a point of distinction in engaging the rank and file of our men, although in the man of college education we naturally look for quicker progress or brighter mental work.”

THE NECESSITY FOR FACTORY LEGISLATION IN THE SOUTH

By HAYES ROBBINS

Dean, Institute of Social Economics, New York

The keynote that needs to be struck in the child labor matter, South or anywhere, is not “hands off,” but hands on. It is fortunate for social progress that the point of view of modern economic thought has drifted so far away from the old-school doctrine of non-interference that we can take hold of a problem like this to some robust, practical purpose, without becoming intellectually disreputable; and the reason why this is fortunate is that right here factory legislation has met its bitterest opposition, ever since the first child labor act in England, in 1802.

The doctrine that cheapness is the all-sufficient goal of economic progress, the only economic fact of any possible interest or concern to the laborers, has been a corner-stone in political economy. Only within recent years has the idea begun to dawn that an adequate theory of economic welfare must include the interests of the citizen as a producer as well as a consumer; that the conditions under which the man works, and his opportunities of enjoying the fruits of his labor, are quite as vital to his happiness as the price of potatoes or beef or clothing. It is clear, now, however, that cheapness, important as it is, must come, and in the long run can only come, through more effective utilizing of natural forces, by invention and machinery, not through the overworking and social degradation of labor; and the great enlightening circumstance on this point has been the fact that the whole price-cheapening trend of our modern industrial era has come hand in hand with increasing wages, diminishing hours, and restrictions on the labor of women and children.

In respect to child labor alone, the progress of protective legislation has been extraordinary. England has had a half-time factory and school law for children of nine and over since 1844, the half-time age having since been raised to eleven; and a fourteen-year age limit for full-day work since 1874. In Germany the limit for full-day work is fourteen years, and for any factory work at all thirteen; in Holland, Belgium, France, Austria, Norway and Sweden it is twelve; in Russia fifteen, half-time being allowed from twelve up. In Switzerland it is fourteen; in Denmark fourteen, with half-time allowed from ten up; and even in Italy child labor under nine years is absolutely prohibited.

Here in the United States, at the beginning of 1899, when the last complete compilation on the subject was made, there were limitations on child labor in thirty-four states and all the territories. To select for comparison our greatest manufacturing states, as showing most clearly the possibility of prosperity without child labor, the limit under which such labor is prohibited in Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, Illinois and Indiana is fourteen years; in Georgia no limit. In Rhode Island fifteen and Ohio fourteen, except during school vacations, and no work at all under twelve; in North Carolina no limit. In New Jersey twelve for boys and fourteen for girls; in Alabama no limit, except in mines, twelve years. In Pennsylvania thirteen; in South Carolina no limit. Happily, the tendency is moving Southward; Missouri, Maryland, Tennessee and even Louisiana now have restrictive laws; so that the section specially known as the new industrial South, the home of the Southern cotton and iron manufacturing industries, is the only place in the United States where the idea of protecting the physical, moral and educational opportunities of little children has made practically no impression in statute law.

At the outset, now, of her industrial development, the South has a unique opportunity. She can transfer to her own conditions the results of nearly all Christendom’s experience in humane factory regulation, without having to suffer over again the hardships and struggles this progress has cost. I do not mean to imply that all such legislation has worked to perfection, without evasion or hardship; but the vast improvement over no legislation at all indicates the soundness of the effort and points the line of further reform. Those who have not yet even made a start ought not to be frightened out of a beginning because the others still have something more to do.

The Japanese are a case in point. They are now reported to be sending students abroad to study modern labor legislation, with the object of applying it to their own oncoming factory system at the beginning, recognizing that it is as inevitable as progress itself. Russia, even Russia, has already done this. Surely the new South does not need to go to school in Russia and Japan.

It seems hardly necessary to prove the importance of doing something. Bare statement of the admitted fact that children of eight to twelve, and even younger, are working in the mills through the industrial South tells the story, and ought to be sufficient. Personally, I have seen the child labor system in operation in North and South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama, and gathered some vivid impressions; have seen scores of little people working in the dust and din of the spinning-rooms, seen scores of others on their way to the mills before daylight, who would not come out until after dark, the hours of labor ranging from eleven to twelve; have been in the homes of these people and learned something of how they live and the wages they receive. For example, we brought back from the South some 154 weekly pay envelopes for both adults and children, collected from operatives’ families in one of the best sections, and nearly 100 of them are for less than $1.50 each, per week, the average in most cases ranging from ten to thirty or forty cents a day; only older children earning the latter sums, however.

In other words, low as the wage rates are, the _actual earnings_, especially of children, are much lower. This is due partly to absences, partly to constant deductions of all sorts, for faulty work, rent, money advanced, car-fare advanced to get them down from the mountains or in from the country to the mills, and what not. In forty-four out of the 154 envelopes, these deductions exactly cancel the entire amount of wages due. Let me cite three or four specimen cases, omitting names. One envelope, repeated two or three times, shows wages for the week $1.00, rent seventy-five cents, balance twenty-five cents; another, wages $1.20, tin cup five cents, transportation $1.15, balance nothing; another, wages $3.00, rent $1.40, loan $1.00, balance paid sixty cents; another, wages $1.50, transportation $1.00, balance fifty cents; and so on.

It is impossible to state with exactness the number of children under a given age, say fourteen years, employed in Southern factories. The Federal census does not cover this point, and only one Southern state of the group under consideration—North Carolina—makes any provision for collecting and publishing industrial and labor statistics. Close approximation to the facts of the general conditions, however, is not very difficult. It appears from the latest report of Commissioner Lacy, of the North Carolina Bureau of Labor, that about 7,600 children under fourteen years of age were employed in 261 mills in that state. The Federal census bulletins on manufactures, now being issued, show the total number of employees in the cotton manufacturing industry in the five Southern states where any important amount of cotton manufacturing exists; and for North Carolina the total in 1900 was 30,273 operatives. In other words, more than one-third of the total number of operatives in the cotton mills of that state are children under fourteen years of age. In South Carolina the total number of operatives in 1900 was 30,201, in Georgia 18,348, in Alabama 8,332, in Mississippi 1,675, the total for the five states being 88,829. Estimating the same proportion of child labor throughout the entire group (and this is entirely legitimate, since North Carolina conditions are even better than in some other manufacturing sections in the South), it would appear that there are more than 22,000 children under fourteen years of age in the cotton mills of these states. On this basis, it is a conservative estimate to say that at least eight or ten thousand of these children are under twelve, while the lower extreme of the age limit is down even to the almost unbelievable point of six years; the fact being well established that children as young as six to eight and nine years are to-day working in some of the Southern mills.

Remember, along with this, the fact just observed in the case of our Northern states and European countries, where legislation on child labor exists, that fourteen years is very nearly the average age under which factory labor is prohibited altogether. In other words, the absence of any restrictions in the South means that fully one-third of all the operatives are younger than the age standard established by the forces of humanitarian opinion and wise statesmanship throughout the larger part of Christendom.

The amounts earned by the children in Southern mills would not be necessary to the support of the families under any proper system of factory regulation. The economics of the situation would inevitably take care of that. If the labor of the children is not available, the mills must employ older help, and in order to get such help must pay wages sufficient to maintain the families, including the children. This is how the matter has adjusted itself wherever child labor has been restricted, and of economic necessity it must be so. The difference in labor expense involved has never yet been sufficient to hamper industrial activity or drive capital away from any industrial section, and, so long as competing groups are not permitted to gain a permanent advantage by the wholesale use of child labor, it never will.

The lack of restrictions on child labor makes possible also that semi-barbarous institution of night work. Where all the family work by turns in the mill, the results are shockingly demoralizing. Just as a side-light on one phase of this system, let me quote a paragraph from a discussion of factory evils in the South, just published this month, by Rev. J. A. Baldwin, of Charlotte, N. C., a special student of these problems. Where part of the family work by day and part by night, he says:

“The mother has to get up at 4:30 in the morning to get breakfast for the day hands, so they can be at the mill at six; then the night hands come and eat about seven. She has to have dinner for the day hands strictly at twelve. The night hands get up and eat from four to five, so as to be ready to go to work for the night at six; she also gives them a lunch to be eaten at midnight. Then the day hands get out at six and have supper about seven. Besides this, there is house-cleaning, washing and ironing, sewing, and often the care of little children.... The mills usually run sixty-six hours per week at night; that is, the operatives work twelve hours from Monday night to Friday night inclusive, and on Saturday get up about two o’clock (before they have had enough sleep) to go to work at three. They then work till nine, at night. As a matter of fact it is usually ten or eleven when they get out.

“Night work is much worse in summer than in the winter. In the winter they go to bed, cover up and sleep soundly. In summer it is difficult to sleep on account of light, heat, flies and noise. In summer, while they usually go to bed, it is a very familiar sight to see them lying across the bed with their work-clothes on, or on a pallet in the passage or on the porch. Their sleep is fitful and unsatisfying, and they never feel bright and fresh from the beginning to the end of the week. They furnish the most favorable conditions for the development of physical, intellectual and spiritual disease germs.”

The children of factory families in the South to-day have no protection against this. Night work for women and children ought to be absolutely prohibited. It is, almost everywhere else, even in Russia. This would practically force either the employment of men only in night work, or else its abolition altogether. I would not deny that there may sometimes be good economic reasons for night work, at least in rush times, but it should be done by men if at all, never by women and children.

Nobody is urging any step that threatens to destroy Southern mill profits, but it must be insisted that there is another way to secure profits than the way of using child labor. Scientific improvement of industrial methods is the only sure and safe road to permanent prosperity, and it would not seem that the South has much to fear when the great bulk of the most prosperous industry in Christendom is being conducted under more or less advanced forms of factory regulation. Furthermore, nobody need or ought to urge legislation as the remedy on the ground that Southern manufacturers are all indifferent and inhumane. Legislation is urged simply because it is the most uniform and least costly method the South could of its own accord adopt. Southern manufacturers are no more types of hardhearted callousness than are manufacturers anywhere; they have all been opposed to factory legislation at one time or another, under the influence of mistaken economic doctrines. I do not know, but would risk it, that scores of Southern manufacturers would be glad to see these evils abolished in their own mills if they could do it without immediate competitive disadvantage with all the rest. Here comes in the advantage of legislation, that by establishing the same conditions and opportunities for all, it imposes no special relative handicap on any.

Moreover, and here is one of the saddest features of all, the fathers, sometimes even the mothers, are among the worst offenders in this whole matter. I have seen cases, and there are others in abundance, where the wife and children practically earn the family living in the mill, while the father thoughtfully carries in the dinner-pail at noon, perhaps working a little on odd days when he gets tired of loafing. We cannot altogether blame the manufacturers when these people are fairly urging them to take on the children in the mills; and we need to remember also that to most of these unfortunate people factory life is a distinct improvement over the log-cabin, salt pork and peach brandy, white-trash and Georgia-cracker type of life from which many of them were sifted out when the mills came. The manufacturer knows this, and it is not surprising that he should even think himself something of a philanthropist, just in furnishing mill jobs on almost any terms. He does not see as yet that when these people drift down into the factory centres they become industrial, social and political factors in an altogether new and more serious sense than they ever could be while burrowing in the mountain sides.

To have practically all of the next generation of factory operatives growing up stunted in body and mind, and nearly all of them illiterates, in a section of the country where the general average of illiteracy is already appalling, is a matter of the gravest concern. Southern manufacturers sooner or later will have to recognize this fact, and its impending consequences. According to the 1900 census statistics just appearing, the proportion of illiteracy among males of voting age, white and black together, was, in Alabama 33.7 per cent, in Georgia 31.6 per cent, in Mississippi 33.8 per cent, in North Carolina 29.4 per cent, in South Carolina 35.1 per cent; as compared, for instance, with 6.4 per cent in Massachusetts, 6.8 per cent in Connecticut, 9.2 per cent in Rhode Island, 5.9 per cent in New York, 6.9 per cent in New Jersey, 7.7 per cent in Pennsylvania. The South simply cannot afford to permit the processes to go on that are adding fresh groups every year to its grand total of illiterate and unfit citizens. In the face of the present situation, if a new race of degenerates, brought up in exhausting toil, dense ignorance, and exposed to all the temptations of an unprotected environment, is to be developed now in the fast-growing centres of the new South, they are certain to form a social and civic and economic menace to the community.

This will be true not only of the South; the matter is coming to have a national significance. Within the limits of any one interdependent industrial group, like the United States, there must be at least some general approach to uniformity in the working conditions of the laborers, by given lines of industries. Differences in competitive success must come from differences in managing ability, quality of plant, or natural environment, not from different standards of decency in the use of labor. If long hours and child labor become the fixed conditions of success, the whole field of competing industry must eventually come down to that basis. A competitive influence which works for the undermining of higher standards of living, wherever established, is a matter of universal concern. In a democracy, no condition is safe which offers a competitive advantage to anything that leads toward ignorant, inferior citizenship. It is not safe anywhere, whether in Southern mill villages or Northern city slums, because to make degradation profitable in any quarter sets the current of tendency that way, with demoralizing effect.

That is why it is not meddlesome interference for American citizens not of the South to have a concern about this matter, from the broad standpoint of national welfare. The real test-point of permanent progress and prosperity, affecting the nation as well as the South, is not the size of profits in Southern mills in the next five years, large as we hope they may be through all proper means; but it is the quality of Southern citizenship in the next five generations. That citizenship is now in the making, and now is the time of times to safeguard its development. Such action will be good economics, good morals, good humanity. For the South, it is an inspiring opportunity.

CHILD LABOR IN NEW JERSEY

By HUGH F. FOX

President New Jersey State Board of Children’s Guardians

For the discussion of child labor in New Jersey there are no official data in which reliance can be placed. The reports of the State Bureau of Factory Inspection are conclusive evidence of the incompetence of the inspector and his deputies. The State Charities Aid Association has recently analyzed the report of the Bureau for the year ending October 27, 1900, and has published the results in the New Jersey _Review of Charities and Corrections_,[16] and it is shown that out of a total of 6,014 factories and bakeshops which were discovered by the Bureau, no less than 1,543 were not visited at all, and yet the department reports favorably on 5,862, indicating that 1,391 were reported favorably, but not visited. According to the 1900 census, however, there were in New Jersey 8,308 factories proper (excluding hand trades), and 1,485 clothing establishments, excluding families working in the tenements. The factory inspectors also report on 1,185 bakeries, so that there appears to have been a total of 10,978 establishments which it was the duty of the inspectors to visit.

The factory inspectors found 5,968 children under sixteen in the 6,014 establishments which they reported; an average of about one child to each establishment. Of these they ordered only fifty-nine children discharged during the year. The census reports an average of 8,042 children under sixteen, employed in manufacturing establishments alone, during the year. Attention should be directed, in this connection, to the difference between the duties of a census taker and a factory inspector. The former furnishes a blank schedule to the manufacturer, which he fills out at his own discretion, without any verification on the part of the census taker. In short, the census agent takes what is given him by the employer, and his interest in the matter is entirely perfunctory. The factory inspector is, however, supposed to make his own investigation and get his own evidence, though it is generally believed that in many cases he contents himself with a visit to the office only and a polite exchange of social amenities with the employer. While the factory inspector is expected to take a personal interest in his figures, it involves a lot of extra work for him and serious trouble for the employer, if the latter is so thoughtless as to inconvenience him by entering into embarrassing particulars in regard to children. In some instances it is reported that the inspector apprises the factory owner of his intended visit beforehand, the children being given a holiday in honor of the occasion.

The New Jersey laws prohibit the employment of boys under twelve and girls under fourteen, “in any factory, workshop, mine or establishment where the manufacture of any goods whatever is carried on.” Children between the ages of twelve and fifteen must have attended school for twelve consecutive weeks (or two terms of six consecutive weeks each) within the twelve months immediately preceding their employment. Children under fifteen must procure a certificate from their teachers giving full particulars as to attendance, etc. The report of the Department of Factory Inspection does not indicate how many of the 5,968 children, under sixteen, are over the age of fifteen, but of the total number of children, only 1,343 were required to produce school certificates. It seems hardly possible that 4,625 of the children employed were over fifteen years of age.

The inspectors have the power to prohibit overcrowding in factories and workshops, and to demand a certificate of physical fitness from some regular practicing physician in the case of minors who may seem physically unable to work. Apparently this gives the inspectors power to prohibit the employment of any girl under eighteen, or boy under twenty-one, who cannot obtain such a certificate, but it is evident from the report of 1900 that this power has not been exercised.

The law prohibits the employment of any child under sixteen “at any work dangerous to health, without a certificate of fitness from a reputable physician.” The meaning of this is somewhat ambiguous. Is the physician to certify to the condition of the child or the healthiness of the occupation? Who is to decide as to whether the work is dangerous to health? The questions are, however, entirely speculative, since the factory inspectors have done nothing to indicate any anxiety to put the matter to the test. It does not seem to have occurred to the inspectors that their power to set a standard of physical fitness for children really removes their chief difficulty. At a recent hearing before Governor Murphy, Inspector Ward pleaded that there were many difficulties in the way of enforcing the laws, his department being confronted with sworn affidavits of parents that their children were over the minimum age of twelve years, while the children themselves are taught with threats never to admit that they are under twelve years old. The test of physical fitness is really much more important than that of age, and the power to apply it gives the factory inspector the whip-hand over both the child’s parent and the employer. It seems strange, however, that nothing has been done in this country to define fully the dangerous trades or occupations. The British Parliament appointed a committee some years ago on “Dangerous Trades and Diseases of Occupations.”[17] The report of this committee established the fact that lead poisoning is rampant in the potteries, that phosphorus necrosis is common in the match factories, and that naphtha fumes in rubber-manufacturing results frequently in premature aging and paralysis. Among other specially unhealthy occupations may be mentioned glass-making, printing, cutlery, silk-mills, hats, pearl buttons and tobacco. What Mrs. Kelley said in 1896, at the National Conference of Charities and Correction, is equally true to-day:

“The physical condition of working children has never received attention, so far as I know, in any systematic way. There are some desultory provisions in the New York and Illinois factory laws which show there is a dim consciousness in the law-making mind that children may be put at work beyond their strength, unless there is supervision of them by some state officer. But these provisions are so loosely drawn that they are nugatory. The Illinois inspectors are urging upon the Legislature the necessity of adding to the staff a physician who shall give her whole time to the care of the children. There is, at present, no such material available as such a physician could furnish, upon the condition of the children, except the records of measurements made by two volunteer physicians for the inspectors, in 1893 and 1894, covering about 200 children, taken from the factories and workshops of Chicago. These records, published in the Factory Inspectors’ Report for 1894, are startling in the proportion which they show of undersized, rachitic, consumptive children at work. They are, however, so limited in number that their principal value lies in indicating the wide field open for investigating the working child as compared with the school child. What they show, comparatively, is that the stature of the working child is far less, upon the average, than that of the city school child. The child study of the past ten years bears out the assertion that stature in children is indicative of general development, physical and mental.”

The New Jersey Factory Inspectors have the power to call upon the public authorities to furnish truant officers, who are required to act under their direction. But this law is also a dead letter. So too is another law which was passed to regulate the sweat-shop evil, and provides that “No person, firm or corporation shall hire or employ any person to work in any room or rooms, apartment or apartments, in any tenement or dwelling-house, or building in the area of a tenement or dwelling-house, at making, in whole or in part, any coats, vests, trousers, knee pants, overalls, cloaks, furs, fur trimmings, fur garments, shirts, purses, feathers, artificial flowers or cigars, unless such person, firm or corporation first shall have obtained a written permit from the factory and workshop inspectors, ... which permit may be revoked at any time that the health of the community or of those employed as aforesaid may require it, and that such permit shall not be granted until due and satisfactory inspection of the premises affected shall have been made by the said inspector.” By a recent act, overcrowding in tenements or rented rooms is punishable at a fine of $25.00. Each adult must have 300 cubic feet of air; each child under twelve, 150 feet.

Public authority is thoroughly aroused on the whole question of child labor in New Jersey, and some interesting facts are coming to light. The trades unions are taking the matter up, in several directions, and the searchlight of the press is trained on several of the leading industries—notably the glass factories of South Jersey, the silk and textile mills of Passaic county, and the various tobacco and cigar factories which are scattered over the state. It is stated that each man employed as a glassblower is required to furnish a boy as a “helper,” and that a combination of the padrone system and veritable child slavery exists. Incidentally it has been developed that many boys have been placed in the families of glassblowers by private child-placing societies and orphan asylums of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. It furnishes a striking argument for the public oversight of child-caring agencies. Here are a few letters from local cigarmakers’ unions:

NO. 101, ELIZABETH.—“We have Mr. Hilson’s machine cigar manufactory
here, employing about 300 or 400 hands, all girls; about one-half of
them are under age; our union has from time to time been obliged to
see the factory inspector to remedy this evil; we informed him about a
week ago that in case he further neglects his duty the Union County
Trades Council and Cigar Makers’ Union would be compelled to see the
Governor. The leading brand they make is the “Hoffman House,” which is
done up in neat boxes, and as you can readily see they are able to
undersell all union goods, as the lowest price for union cigars made
is $8.00 per M., while they can furnish them with the girls working
for them for $2.50 to $3.00.”

NO. 230, MILLVILLE.—“There is no child labor in connection with our
trade in this locality. This being a strong union city we have no use
for the production of child labor in our trade. This union covers
Millville, Vineland, Bridgeton and Salem. No child labor in either
city in connection with this trade; you will find most of the children
employed are employed by the American Tobacco Company or Trust. They
have a factory in Camden, N. J., this being the nearest one to this
city.”

NO. 428, TRENTON.—“There is one place that employs 280, mostly
children from ten years old. We had a committee last week working on
the subject of child labor employed in this place known as the
American Cigar Trust; they say it is safe to say that the ages won’t
average over fourteen. We know for a fact that their children are not
allowed to say a word to one another while at work, if they do they
will be discharged. They claimed at one time to have over 300 at work
and have room and machinery for over a thousand, but don’t seem to get
them as fast as they thought. Our committee reported that some of
these little tots when they came out at night actually fell down from
weakness, but there seems to be no way to stop such work.

“The work that these children do costs the Trust $2.10 per thousand
for making cigars, and the low price for men is $7.50 per thousand;
the average cigarmakers will make 1500 a week of this kind of work,
and three of these children with machinery make six thousand a week.
You can imagine, when the Trust surely get their feet in it, what will
become of cigar-making.”

Many of the children in the glass works and in worsted mills are said to have been employed on “night shifts.” If the children in state reformatories were worked half as hard as the children in the factories, there would be a perfect storm of indignation. There is, however, a general awakening, and the leading papers in Newark, Paterson, Passaic, Hoboken, Jersey City, Trenton, Camden and other cities have taken the matter up vigorously. The Governor has announced his determination to make the inspectors devote their entire time to their duties, in accordance with the law just passed, instead of spending their odd moments only in inspecting factories, as has been the case hitherto. Good results are already apparent, and the new inspectors in Essex and Passaic counties are making a strong effort to enforce the laws. The latter has brought suits against several employers for the recovery of the penalty imposed by the state for employing children illegally. There is ample legislation in New Jersey for the regulation of child labor, though the minimum age for boys should be raised to fourteen, and girls to fifteen. Now that the community is informed of the evil, the Legislature may be counted on to make an adequate appropriation for expenses. There ought to be a lawyer on the staff of the Department of Factory Inspection, and an effort should be made to bring the various State Boards into co-operation in the work. It seems curious that no reference has hitherto been made to child labor in any of the reports of the state and local Boards of Health and of Education; nor does the Bureau of Statistics of Labor and Industries seem to know anything of the subject. The various departments of the government seem to be so afraid of overlapping, that in this, as in other matters, they studiously ignore each other.

The “Lord bill,” which was passed last session, authorizes the Governor to appoint a woman inspector, and strong pressure is being brought upon Governor Murphy to induce him to do so. The State Federation of Labor has been working for the appointment of a woman inspector since 1897. It is felt that the duties of the office involve personal qualities possessed in an eminent degree by many women, and that a good woman inspector would work a revolution in the department.

The following tables are given for purposes of comparison with other states. The school census of 1900, taken by the state, gave 457,479 children of school age, the enrollment being 322,575. The number of schoolable children is increasing from 7,000 to 10,000 per year. The “persons of school age” in the Federal census cover all from five to twenty years of age, inclusive. The total of them was 572,917 (282,180 males and 290,737 females). The particulars as to parentage are:

Born of American parents 271,827
Born of foreign parents in United States 226,566
Born in foreign lands 54,837
Born of colored parents 19,693

[U.S. Census, 1900.] _Persons of School Age, 5 to 20 years inclusive, in New Jersey Cities of 25,000 or more._ _(Showing 62.4 per cent of foreign parentage.)_ ─────────────┬───────────┬───────────┬───────────┬──────────┬────────── │ Total. │ Native │ Foreign │ Foreign │ Colored. │ │ Parents. │ Parents. │ Born. │ ─────────────┼───────────┼───────────┼───────────┼──────────┼────────── Atlantic City│ 6,782│ 4,089│ 1,265│ 286│ 1,146 Bayonne │ 10,626│ 2,812│ 6,289│ 1,426│ 100 Camden │ 22,943│ 13,793│ 6,510│ 1,086│ 1,557 Elizabeth │ 16,229│ 5,551│ 8,729│ 1,619│ 331 Hoboken │ 18,699│ 4,463│ 11,956│ 2,258│ 23 Jersey City │ 63,495│ 21,535│ 35,271│ 5,744│ 953 Newark │ 74,897│ 25,210│ 38,797│ 9,114│ 1,789 Passaic │ 9,274│ 1,653│ 3,934│ 3,553│ 134 Paterson │ 33,170│ 8,270│ 18,655│ 5,965│ 286 Trenton │ 22,337│ 10,591│ 8,999│ 2,241│ 508 ─────────────┼───────────┼───────────┼───────────┼──────────┼────────── │ 278,452│ 97,967│ 140,405│ 33,292│ 6,827 ─────────────┴───────────┴───────────┴───────────┴──────────┴──────────

Notes from the Census Bulletins Nos. 88, 89, 135 and 157 for New Jersey (1900):

Total population of New Jersey 1,883,669
This was made up as follows:
Born of American parents 825,973
Born of foreign parents in United States 556,294
Born in foreign lands 430,050
Born of colored parents 71,352

The percentage of the New Jersey population living in cities is 70.6. The states of Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York are the only ones which have a larger percentage of their population in cities. In this connection it is interesting to note that New Jersey ranks sixth in the United States in the value of its manufactured products.

The average number of wage-earners employed by manufacturing establishments in New Jersey during 1900 was 241,582 (12.8 per cent of the total population), of whom 8,042 were children under sixteen years of age.

The greatest number employed at any one time during the year was 307,933, or 16.3 per cent of the total population.

The total number of manufacturing and mechanical establishments in New Jersey was 15,481. Of these, 11,115, or 71.8 per cent, were located in forty-four cities and towns. The urban establishments employed 196,901 wage-earners, or 81.5 per cent of the total number employed. The list of industries includes “hand trades.” Omitting them, the total number of manufactures proper was 8,308.

The manufacture of textiles is the most important industry in the state. Of these the silk factories employed 24,157 wage-earners out of a total of 46,932 engaged in textile work.

Foundry and machine-shop products are second, with 17,918 wage-earners.

Refining and petroleum third, with 8,288.

Tobacco has 3,595, pottery 8,117, tanning 4,178, chemicals 3,048, rubber 2,609, jewelry 2,779, sewing machines 4,701, glass 5,383.

The fifteen leading industries of the State embraced 1,780 establishments, and employed an average of 117,008 wage-earners during the year 1900.

Average number of children under sixteen years, employed in New Jersey manufactories during the year 1900 (U. S. Census Bulletin No. 157):

Boots and shoes 192
Brass wire 65
Bakeries 64
Buttons 71
Carpets 86
Clothing 191
Cotton goods 641
Dyeing and finishing textiles 70
Fireworks 85
Foundry and machine shops 212
Canning 86
Gas and lamp fixtures 181
Glass 850
Hardware 80
Hosiery and knit goods 152
Iron and steel 65
Linen goods 316
Pocket-books 60
Pottery 193
Printing 174
Roofing 74
Shirts 50
Silk 1,199
Stamped ware 119
Surgical appliances 75
Tobacco 183
Woolen goods 187
Worsted goods 456
—————
6,177
Miscellaneous industries 1,865
————— 8,042

Comparison of the reports of the United States Census, and of the New Jersey Factory Inspectors, for the year 1900, in regard to children employed in certain industries in eleven cities in New Jersey:

Census Factory Reports. Inspectors’ Reports. Bayonne—Petroleum 21 0 Camden—Worsted goods 160 113 Elizabeth—Tobacco 0 30 Elizabeth—Clothing and shirts 9 10 Elizabeth—Sewing machines 0 22 Hoboken and Jersey City—Silk 60 60 Hoboken—Clothing 9 0 Jersey City—Clothing 3 0 Jersey City—Electrical apparatus 45 25 Jersey City—Printing 48 16 Jersey City—Soap 42 21 Jersey City—Tobacco 92 87 Jersey City—Boxes 0 44 Newark—Boots and shoes 108 0 Newark—Carpentering 65 0 Newark—Clothing 82 11 Newark—Corsets 34 17 Newark—Foundry and mechanical shops 52 0 Newark—Hardware 75 16 Newark—Jewelry 36 13 Newark—Leather 22 11 Newark—Stamped ware 116 0 Newark—Tobacco 19 35 Newark—Thread 0 100 New Brunswick—Tobacco 29 45 Orange—Hats 27 5 Passaic—Woolen goods 98 15 Paterson—Silk 832 504 Paterson—Foundries 91 0 Trenton—Iron and steel 54 0 Trenton—Potteries 118 204 Trenton—Rubber 28 47 Trenton—Bakeries 19 47

CHILD LABOR IN BELGIUM[18]

By E. DUBOIS

Professor in the University of Ghent

The industrial census of October 31, 1896, of which the complete results have just been published[19], furnishes the most recent and the most complete information regarding the extent of the industrial labor of children and the general conditions under which it exists.

Upon that date, out of a total of 671,596 laborers of all ages and both sexes, employed in the manufactures properly so called, and excluding the domestic workshops, there were 76,147 children less than sixteen years of age working in factories and workshops—that is to say, out of every 100 employees eleven were less than sixteen years of age.

The child labor was found principally:

(1) In the textile industries 11,863.

(2) In the mining industries 10,167, of whom 5,516 are employed in underground labor, and 4,651 in surface labor.

(3) In the manufacture of clothing for men and women 9,674.

(4) In the glass industries 4,429.

Among 4,681 establishments and contractors employing both adults and children, and having at least ten employees: 1,737 (37.1 per cent) employed less than 10 per cent of children along with adults; 1,675 (35.9 Per cent) employed from 11 to 25 per cent of children along with adults; 821 (17.3 per cent) employed from 26 to 50 per cent of children along with adults; 361 (7.9 per cent) employed from 51 to 100 per cent of children along with adults; 87 (1.8 per cent) employed more than 100 per cent of children along with adults.

There are, hence, in eighty-seven establishments more children than adults. These concerns belong chiefly to the textile industries (26), to the tobacco industries (10), books (8), clothing (7), manufacture of chocolate (6). One woolen mill and two dressmakers employ only children.

The statistics of the children according to age is as follows:

Number of children aged less than sixteen, 76,147—50,493 boys, 25,654 girls; number of children from fourteen to sixteen, 54,946—36,431 boys, 18,515 girls; number of children from twelve to fourteen, 20,762—13,814 boys, 6,948 girls; number of children less than twelve, 439–248 boys, 191 girls. About one-half of these children less than twelve years old belong to the manufacture of clothing (dressmakers and cutters).

The census has succeeded in determining the length of actual labor (recess deducted), for 61,652 children employed in the industrial establishments, not including the coal mines. Rather more than one-tenth of them (about 7,000) work nine hours and less. One-third (about 21,000) work about ten hours. One-third (about 19,000) work about ten and a half to eleven hours. One-fourth (about 15,000) work more than twelve hours. The days of more than eleven hours are most frequent in the textile and clothing manufactures.

Under the head of time of labor: 61,314 children (38,414 boys and 22,900 girls) work during the day only (92.99 per cent); thirty-six children (boys) work only at night (0.02 per cent), 4,611 children (4,238 boys and 373 girls) work alternately by day and night (6.99 per cent). The majority of these night laborers are employed in the glass industries, viz.: 3,262. Then comes the iron industry with 657 children, and the confectionery factories with 447.

Regarding the coal mines, the duration of labor has been determined for 9,153 children out of 10,167. Among these 9,153 children, 7,772 work during the day only (5,550 boys and 2,222 girls); 4,482 (3,281 boys and 1,201 girls) work ten hours and less; 2,855 (1,900 boys and 955 girls) work ten to ten and a half hours; 308 (246 boys and 62 girls) work ten and a half to eleven hours; 127 (123 boys and 4 girls) work more than eleven hours; 4,827 boys and 9 girls work underground. Working only at night are 1,357 boys (no girls); and in gangs 24 boys. Almost the whole number of the “underground” boys work about ten hours or less, between the descent and the ascent.

One of the great merits of the Belgian industrial census of 1896 is the particular care which was taken in gathering exact statistics regarding the individual wages of the whole of the working population. The statistics of the wages of the Belgian workmen, by their completeness and exactness, are certainly of the best existing to-day. They have succeeded in ascertaining the wages of 70,688 young workpeople (45,577 boys and 25,111 girls).

Number of children working by the day: with wages less than 0.50 fr., 17,229 = 24.37 per cent; 7,511 boys (of which 2,844 receive no pay); 9,718 girls (of which 6,141 receive no pay); from 0.50 to 1.00 fr., 21,192 = 29.98 percent; 12,748 boys and 8,444 girls; from 1 to 1.50 fr., 19,723 = 27.91 percent; 15,090 boys and 4,633 girls; 1.50 fr. and over, 12,544 = 17.74 per cent; 10,228 boys and 2,316 girls.

In round figures one may say that one-fourth of these young employees earn nothing or less than 0.50 fr.; a little more than half earn from 0.50 to 1.50 fr.; and less than one-fifth earn more than 1.50 fr. In fact about two-thirds of the latter earn from 1.50 to 2 fr., and one-third from 2 to 2.50 fr. These percentages relate to the entire number of children, and would be modified somewhat if the boys and girls were considered separately. The figures also show that smaller wages are paid for female than for male labor.

_The Law of December 13, 1889_

The statutes affecting child labor in industrial establishments have been under consideration in Belgium since 1843. At that time an investigation conducted by the government unveiled the unfortunate and often abusive conditions under which child labor was conducted, and a scheme of very remarkable legislation was drawn up by M. Ducpetiaux, chairman of the Investigation Commission.

But this project was premature. Manchesterian ideas were still the prevalent ones in the country and with the government. Reform was still to be waited for, for almost a half century longer, in spite of the repeated efforts of divers groups of enlightened manufacturers, of physicians, of philanthropists. All these united efforts succeeded simply in causing to be introduced into the royal decree of April 28, 1884, containing regulations concerning the working of mines, an article, No. 69, which forbade boys aged less than twelve, and girls less than fourteen, to be allowed to labor in the mines.