Chapter V: Blossoms and Babies 263 (6)

The messenger boys and the American District Telegraph boys are frequently found in the worst resorts of the “red-light” districts of our cities. In New York there are hundreds of such boys, ranging in age from twelve to fifteen, who know many of the prostitutes of the Tenderloin by name. Sad to relate, boys like to be employed in the “red-light” districts. They like it, not because they are bad or depraved, but for the very natural reason that they make more money there, receiving larger and more numerous tips. They are called upon for many services by the habitués of these haunts of the vicious and the profligate. They are sent out to place bets; to take notes to and from houses of ill-fame; or to buy liquor, cigarettes, candy, and even gloves, shoes, corsets, and other articles of wearing apparel for the “ladies.” Not only are tips abundant, but there are many opportunities for graft of which the boys avail themselves. A lad is sent, for instance, for a bottle of whiskey. He is told to get a certain brand at a neighboring hotel, but he knows where he can get the same brand for 50 per cent of the hotel price, and, naturally, he goes there for it and pockets the difference in price. That is one form of messengers’ graft. Another is overcharging for his services and pocketing the surplus, or keeping the change from a “ten-spot” or a “fiver,” when, as often happens, the “sports” are either too reckless to bother about such trifles or too drunk to remember. From sources such as these the messenger boy in a district like the Tenderloin will often make several dollars a day.[136]

A whole series of temptations confronts the messenger boy. He smokes, drinks, gambles, and, very often, patronizes the lowest class of cheap brothels. In answering calls from houses of ill-repute messengers cannot avoid being witnesses of scenes of licentiousness more or less frequently. By presents of money, fruit, candy, cigarettes, and even liquor, the women make friends of the boys, who quickly learn all the foul slang of the brothels.[137] The conversation of a group of messengers in such a district will often reveal the most astounding intimacy with the grossest things of the underworld. That in their adolescence, the transition from boyhood to manhood, fraught as it is with its own inherent perils, they should be thrown into such an environment and exposed to such temptations is an evil which cannot possibly be overemphasized. The penal code of New York declares the sending of minors to carry messages to or from a house of ill-fame to be a misdemeanor, but the law is a dead letter. It cannot possibly be enforced, and its repeal would probably be a good thing. While it may be urged that the mere existence of such a law has a certain moral value as a condemnation of such a dangerous employment for boys, it is exceedingly doubtful if that good is sufficient to counterbalance the harm which comes from the non-enforcement of the law.

I have dwelt mainly upon the grosser vices associated with street employment, as with employment in factories and mines, because it is a phase of the subject about which too little is known. I need scarcely say, however, that these vices are not the only ones to which serious attention should be given. Crime naturally results from such conditions. Of 600 boys committed to the New York Juvenile Asylum by the courts, 125 were newsboys who had been committed for various offences ranging from ungovernableness and disorderly conduct to grand larceny.[138] Mr. Nibecker, Superintendent of the House of Refuge at Glen Mills, near Philadelphia, was asked, “Have you, in disproportionate numbers, boys who formerly were engaged in some one particular occupation?” He replied promptly, “Yes, district messengers.”[139] It seems to be the almost unanimous opinion of probation officers and other competent authorities in our large cities that messenger boys and newsboys furnish an exceedingly large proportion of cases of juvenile delinquency. I wrote to six probation officers in as many large cities asking them to give me their opinions as to the classes of occupation which seem to have the largest number of juvenile delinquents. Their replies are summarized in the following schedule:—

OCCUPATIONS OF JUVENILE DELINQUENTS IN SIX LARGE CITIES, SHOWING THE
RELATIVE NUMBER OF EACH OCCUPATION

═══════╤═══════════════╤═══════════════╤═══════════════╤═══════════════
REPORT │ A │ B │ C │ D
───────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────
1 │Messenger boys │Newsboys │Factory boys │Miscellaneous
2 │Newsboys │Messenger boys │Factory boys │Truants
3 │Newsboys │Messenger boys │Truants │Factory boys
4 │Messenger boys │Factory boys │Newsboys │Miscellaneous
5 │Messenger boys │Newsboys │Truants │Miscellaneous
6 │Factory boys │Truants │Messenger boys │Newsboys
═══════╧═══════════════╧═══════════════╧═══════════════╧═══════════════

In six smaller cities, where the number of factory workers is much larger in proportion than in the great cities, and the number of newsboys and messengers is much smaller, the results were somewhat different. The following schedule is interesting as a summary of the replies received from these towns:—

OCCUPATIONS OF JUVENILE DELINQUENTS IN SIX TOWNS OF LESS THAN 100,000
INHABITANTS, SHOWING THE RELATIVE NUMBER OF EACH OCCUPATION[E]

═══════╤═══════════════╤═══════════════╤═══════════════╤═══════════════
REPORT │ A │ B │ C │ D
───────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────
1 │Mine boys │Truants │Messenger boys │Miscellaneous
2 │Glass-house │Other factory │Miscellaneous │Truants
│ boys │ boys │ │
3 │Mill boys │Messenger boys │Truants │Miscellaneous
4 │Mill boys │Mine boys │Truants │Miscellaneous
5 │Mill boys │Truants │Newsboys │Miscellaneous
6 │Mine boys │Messenger boys │Miscellaneous │Truants
═══════╧═══════════════╧═══════════════╧═══════════════╧═══════════════

These facts, and other facts of a like nature, are only indicative of the ill effects of child labor upon the morals of the children. In some cases the moral peril lies in the nature of the work itself, while in others it lies, not in the work, but in the conditions by which it is surrounded. In the Chicago Stock Yards, for example, judging by what I saw there, I should say that in most, if not all, of the departments the work itself is degrading and brutalizing, and that no person under eighteen years of age ought to be permitted to work in them. In large laundries little girls are very commonly employed as “sorters.” Their work is to sort out the soiled clothes as they come in and to classify them. While such work must be disagreeable and unwholesome for a young girl, there is nothing necessarily demoralizing about it. But when such little girls are compelled to work with men and women of the coarsest and most illiterate type, as they frequently are, and to listen to constant conversation charged with foul suggestions, it becomes a soul-destroying occupation. At its best, even when all possible efforts are made to keep the place of employment pure and above reproach—and I know that there are many such places—still the whole tendency of child labor is in the direction of a lower moral standard. The feeling of independence caused by the ability to earn wages, the relaxation of parental authority, with the result that the children roam the streets at night or frequent places of amusement of questionable character; the ruthless destruction of the bloom of youthful innocence and the forced consciousness of life properly belonging to adult years—these are inevitably associated with child labor.

X

These are some of the ills which child labor inflicts upon the children themselves, ills which do not end with their childhood days but curse and blight all their after years. The child who is forced to be a man too soon, forced too early to enter the industrial strife of the world, ceases to _be_ a man too soon, ceases to be _fit_ for the industrial strife. When the strength is sapped in childhood there is an absence of strength in manhood and womanhood; Ruskin’s words are profoundly true, that “to be a man too soon is to be a small man.” We are to-day using up the vitality of children; soon they will be men and women, without the vitality and strength necessary to maintain themselves and their dependants. When we exploit the immature strength of little children, we prepare recruits for the miserable army of the unfit and unemployable, whose lot is a shameful and debasing poverty.

This wrong to helpless childhood carries with it, therefore, a certain and dreadful retribution. It is not possible to injure a child without injuring society. Whatever burden society lays, or permits to be laid, upon the shoulders of its children, it must ultimately bear upon its own. Society’s interest in the child may be well expressed in a slight paraphrase of the words of Jesus, “Whatsoever is done to one of the least of these little ones is done unto me.” It is in that spirit that the advocates of child-labor legislation would have the nation forbid the exploitation, literally the exhaustion, of children by self-interested employers. For the abuse of childhood by individual antisocial interests, society as a whole must pay the penalty. If we neglect the children of to-day, and sap their strength so that they become weaklings, we must bear the burden of their failures when they fail and fall:—

“There is a sacred Something on all ways—
Something that watches through the Universe;
One that remembers, reckons and repays,
Giving us love for love, and curse for curse.”

It is a well-known fact that the competition of children with their elders entails serious consequences of a twofold nature,—first, in the displacement of adults, and, second, in the lowering of their wage standards. There are few things more tragic in the modern industrial system than the sight of children working while their fathers can find no other employment than to carry dinners to them. I know that many persons are always ready to suggest that the fathers like this unnatural arrangement, that they prefer to live upon the earnings of their little ones, and there are, no doubt, cases in which this is true. But in the majority of cases it is not true. Every one who is at all familiar with the lives of the workers must realize that when applied indiscriminately to the mass of those who find themselves in that condition of dependence upon their children’s labor, this view is a gross libel. Some months ago, I stood outside of a large clothing factory in Rochester, N.Y. Upon the front of the building, as upon several others in the street, there hung a painted sign, such as I have seen there many times, bearing the inscription, “Small Girls Wanted.” While I stood there two men passed by and I heard one of them say to the other: “That’s fourteen places we’ve seen they want kids to-day, Bill, but we’ve tramped round all week an’ never got sight of a job.” I have known many earnest, industrious men to be weeks at a time seeking employment while their children could get places without difficulty. The displacement of adult workers by their children is a stern and sad feature of the competition of the labor market, which no amount of cynicism can dispose of.

A brief study of the returns published in the bulletins and reports of the various bureaus of labor and the labor unions will show that child labor tends to lower the wages of adult workers. Where the competition of children is a factor wages are invariably lowest. Two or three years ago I was associated in a small way with an agitation carried on by the members of the Cigarmakers’ Union in Pennsylvania against the “Cigar Trust.” One of the principal issues in that agitation was the employment of young children. The labor unions have always opposed child labor, for the reason that they know from experience how its employment tends to displace adult labor and to reduce wages. In the case of the cigarmakers’ agitation the chief grievance was the fact that children were making for $2 and $2.50 per thousand the same class of cigars as the men were paid from $7.50 to $8 per thousand for making.[140] The men worked under fairly decent, human conditions, but the conditions under which the children worked were positively inhuman. That such competition as that, if extensive, must result in the gradual displacement of men and the employment of children, accompanied by the reduction of the wages of the men fortunate enough to be allowed to remain at work, is, I think, self-evident. In their turn the unemployment of adults and the lowering of wages are fruitful sources of poverty, and force the employment of many children.

These are some of the most obvious immediate economic consequences of child labor, simple facts which we can readily grasp. But there are other, subtler and less obvious, economic consequences of even greater importance, so vast that their magnitude cannot be measured nor even guessed. It is impossible to conceive how much we lose through the lessened productive capacity of those who have been prematurely exploited, and even if that were possible, we should still have to face the stupendous problem of determining how much of our expenditure for the relief of poverty, caring for the diseased and crippled, and the expensive maintenance of a large criminal class in prisons and reformatories, has been rendered necessary by that same fundamental cause. It is an awful, bewildering problem, this ultimate economic cost of child labor to society. If it were proposed to saddle the bulk of these expenditures for the relief of the necessitous and the maintenance of the diseased, maimed, and criminal classes upon the industries in which their energies were used up, their bodies maimed, or their moral natures perverted and destroyed, there would be a great outcry. Yet, it would be much more reasonable and just than the present system, which permits the physical, mental, and moral ruin to be carried on in the selfish and sordid interests of a class, and the imposition of the resulting burden of misery and failure upon the shoulders of society as a whole.

XI

What are the reasons for the employment of children? It is almost needless to argue that child labor is socially unnecessary, that the labor of little boys and girls is not required in order that wealth sufficient for the needs of society may be produced. If such a claim were made, it would be an all-sufficing reply to point to the great army of unemployed men in our midst, and to say that the last man must be employed before the employment of the first child can be justified. When there is not an unemployed man, when there is not a man employed in useless, unproductive, and wasteful labor, if there is then a shortage of the things necessary for social maintenance, child labor may be necessary and justifiable. Under any other conditions than these it is unjustifiable and brutally wrong. In the primitive struggle with the hostile forces of nature, such struggles as pioneers have had in all lands before the deserts could be made to yield harvests of fruit and grain, the labor of wives and children has been necessary to supplement that of husbands and fathers. But what would be thought of the men, under such conditions, if they forced their wives and children to work while they idled, ate, and slept? Yet that is, essentially, the practice of modern industrial society. Here is a great country with natural resources unparalleled in human experience for their richness and variety; here labor is so productive, and inventive genius so highly developed, that wealth overflows our granaries and warehouses, and forces us to seek foreign markets for its disposal. The children employed in our factories are not employed because it would otherwise be impossible to produce the necessities of life for the nation. The little five-year-old girl seen by Miss Addams working at night in a Southern cotton mill was not so employed because it was necessary in order that the American people might have enough cotton goods to supply their needs. On the contrary, she was making sheeting for the Chinese Army![141] Not that she or those by whom she was employed had any interest in the Chinese Army, but because there was a prospective profit for the manufacturer in the making of sheeting for sale to China for the use of her soldiers. The manufacturer would just as readily have sacrificed little American girls in the manufacture of beads for Hottentots, or gilt idols for poor Hindoo ryots, if the profit were equal.

A “KINDERGARTEN” TOBACCO FACTORY IN PHILADELPHIA
]

That is the root of the child-labor evil; it has no social justification and exists only for the sordid gain of profit-seekers. It is not difficult, therefore, to understand the manufacturers’ interest in child labor, or their opposition to all efforts to legislate against it. Cheap production is the maxim of success in industry, and a plentiful supply of cheap labor is a powerful contributor to that end. The principal items in productive cost are the raw material and the labor necessary, the relative importance of each depending upon the nature of the industry itself. Now, it is obviously to the interest of the manufacturer, as manufacturer, to get both raw material and labor-power as cheaply as possible, whether the industry in which he is interested is governed by competitive, or monopolistic, or any intermediate conditions. If competition rules, cheapness is vitally important to him, since if he can get an advantage over his competitors in that respect he can undersell them, while if he fails to get his supplies of labor and raw material as cheaply as his competitors, he will be undersold. If, on the other hand, monopoly conditions prevail, it is still an important interest to secure them as cheaply as possible, thereby increasing his profit.

It is an axiom of commercial economy that supply follows demand, and it is certain that the constant demand for the cheap, tractable labor of children has had much to do with the creation of the supply. At bottom the employers, or, rather, the system of production for profit, must be held responsible for child labor. There are evidences of this on every hand. We see manufacturers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania getting children from orphan asylums, regardless of their physical, mental, and moral ruin, merely because it _pays_ them. When the glass-blowers of Minotola, N.J., went on strike, in 1902, the child-labor question was one of their most important issues. The exposures made of the frightful enslavement of little children attracted widespread attention. There is very little in the history of the English factory system which excels in horror the conditions which existed in that little South Jersey town at the beginning of the twentieth century.[142] When the proprietor of the factory was asked about the employment of young boys ten and eleven years of age, many of whom often fell asleep and were awakened by the men pouring water over them, and at least two of whom died from overexhaustion, he said: “If two men apply to me for work and one has one or two or three children and the other has none, I take the man with children. I need the boys.” In actual practice this meant that no man could get work as a glass-blower unless he was able to bring boys with him. A regular padrone system was developed in consequence of this: the glass-blowers, determined to keep their own boys out of the factories if possible, secured children from orphan asylums, or took the little boys of Italian immigrants, boarded them, and paid the parents a regular weekly sum.

In the mills of the South it is frequently made a condition of the employment of married men or women that all their children shall be bound to work in the same mills. The following is one of the rules posted in a South Carolina cotton mill:—

“All children, members of a family, above twelve years of age, shall
work regularly in the mill, and shall not be excused from service
therein without the consent of the superintendent for good
cause.”[143]

Many times I have heard fathers and mothers—in the North as well as in the South—say that they did not want their children to work, that they could have done without the children’s wages and kept them at school a little longer, or apprenticed them to better employment, but that they were compelled to send them into the mills to work, or lose their own places. Even more eloquent as evidencing the keen demand of the manufacturers for child labor is the fact to which Mr. McKelway calls attention, that, in response to their demand, cotton-mill machinery is being made with adjustable legs to suit small child workers. Mr. McKelway rightly contrasts this with the experience in India when the first cotton mills were erected there. Then, for the first time, it was found necessary to manufacture spinning frames high enough from the floor to accommodate adult workers.[144]

With such facts as these before us, it is easy to see that the urgency of the employers’ demands for child labor is an important factor in the problem. Underlying all other causes is the fundamental fact that the exploitation of the children is in the interests of the employing class. It may be urged that it is necessary for children to begin work at an early age because the work they do cannot be done by men or women, but the contention is wholly unsupported by facts. There is no work done by boys in the glass factories which men could not do; no skill or training is required to enable one to do the work done by breaker boys in the coal-mines; the work done by children in the textile mills could be done equally well by adults. The fact that in some cases adults are employed to do the work which in other cases is done by children, is sufficient proof that child labor is not resorted to because it is inevitable and necessary, but on account of its cheapness.

It does not, of course, necessarily follow that low-priced labor is really cheap labor; it may prove to be just as uneconomical to employ such labor as to buy poor raw materials merely because they are low-priced. The quantitative measure is no more satisfactory as a standard of value when applied to labor than when applied to other things. Thomas Brassey, the famous English engineer and contractor, used to declare that the cost of carrying out great works in different countries did not vary according to the wages paid, and that his experience had been that in countries where wages were highest the rate of profit was also highest. Very similar testimony has been given by many large employers of labor, and the point seems to be fairly well established. It is said, for instance, that the cost of erecting large buildings does not differ very much in the great capitals of the world, though the rate of wages differs enormously, and that in America, where wages in the building trades are much higher than anywhere else in the world, the labor cost is really less than elsewhere.[145] In view of this economic fact, it has been urged that child labor is not cheap labor, except in a false and uneconomic sense, that it is inefficient, and that it would be to the interest of the employers themselves to employ adult labor instead.

Doubtless this argument has been used in the true propagandist spirit of appealing to as many interests as possible, and proving the sweet reasonableness of the demand for the abolition of child labor, but I am inclined to doubt its value. We may, I think, trust the employers to look after their own interests. It is true that if you put an underpaid and underfed Italian laborer at a dollar a day to work, and alongside put a decently fed American laborer at double that wage, you will probably find the labor of the latter the more profitable; just as cheap, miserably paid coolie labor is the most expensive of all. But I do not think it follows that adult labor would be cheaper than child labor to the employer. Most child labor is made possible by machinery and conditioned by it, and adult labor would be conditioned by it in the same manner. There is very little scope for individual differences to manifest themselves where the machine is the controlling power. In other industries, such as glass manufacture, where machinery plays a relatively unimportant part as yet, the labor of the boys is conditioned by the speed of the men they serve. The men, urged on by the piecework system, work at their utmost limit of speed, and the boys must keep pace with them. It is unlikely that if men were employed to do the work now done by the “snappers-up,” they would be able to increase the speed of the glass-blowers, the only way in which their labor could prove cheaper. On the contrary, there is every reason to suppose that men would not consent to be driven as boys are driven. I have gathered from glass-blowers themselves that they are very often as much opposed to the introduction of adult helpers as are their employers, for the reason that they believe adults would not serve them with the same speed as boys. For these reasons, and many others into which it is impossible to enter here, I am convinced that little good will result from a propaganda aiming to show the employers that their economic interests would be best served by the abolition of child labor.

In a similar way it has been urged, with ample evidence of its truth, that the employment of children retards the introduction of mechanical devices and their fullest development.[146] This is perfectly true, not only of child labor, but of almost all forms of labor that are unhealthful or degrading. There is absolutely no need of human street sweepers, exposed in all weathers and constantly inhaling foul, disease-laden dust, any more than there is need of little boys working in the glass factories, carrying red-hot bottles to the ovens. In each case machinery has been invented to do the work, and it is used to a small extent. If these occupations, and scores of others, were absolutely prohibited, and the prohibitory law rigidly enforced, streets would still be swept, but by mechanical sweepers, and bottles would still be taken to the annealing ovens, but by mechanical means. The world will probably, let us hope, never become the paradise dreamed of by the German dreamer, Etzler, who believed that all the work of the world would be done by machinery in the future, and human labor become altogether unnecessary.[147] But there is no doubt that much of the work which to-day degrades body, brain, and soul could be done just as well by mechanical agents. Not, however, through sermonizing or appealing to the employers will these mechanical devices be generally adopted to take the place of the life-destroying labor of boys and girls; but by making it increasingly difficult, and finally impossible, for them to employ child labor at all.

Not long ago I was in a glass factory where the “carrying-in boys” had been displaced by automatic machinery. As I watched the machine doing the work I had been accustomed to seeing little boys perform, I asked the manager of the factory why it had been introduced. His answer was simple and direct, “Why, because it had become too difficult to get boys.” A few days later I went into another factory where boys were, as usual, employed in doing the work. I asked the owner of the factory why he did not use machinery instead of employing boys. “Because it is not practicable,” he replied. “We must have boys and can’t do without them.” When I told him that I had seen the work done by machinery with perfect satisfaction, he laughed. “Yes, that is true, but I still say that it is not a practicable proposal,” he rejoined. “I mean that it is not a practical business proposition. I am not interested in machinery, as machinery, and if I can get all the boys I want, at wages making their labor no more expensive than the cost of running machinery, why should I tie up two or three thousand dollars of my capital to install machines? So long as I can get boys enough, I don’t want to bother with machines.” Then I asked: “What would you do if you could not get boys—if their employment was forbidden, and the law strictly enforced?” His reply was suggestive. “Why, then machinery would be the only thing; then it would be a practical business proposition,” he said.

A GLASS FACTORY AT NIGHT
]

I have given this manufacturer’s opinion, as nearly as possible in his own words, because it is an admirably clear statement of what I believe to be the natural attitude of the employing class upon a grave question. All that stands in the way of a general use of machinery to do the work now performed at such an enormous cost in human life and happiness, is the temporary inconvenience of the employers from having to tie up some of their capital. Just as the woollen manufacturers in England, as soon as they were debarred from employing children, adopted the piecing machine,[148] so the employers of America to-day would have no difficulty about securing machinery, much of it already invented, if the employment of children should be forbidden. But, generally speaking, they will not of themselves make the change.

XII

It is less easy to understand the problem of child labor in its relation to parental responsibility. It is continually asked: “Why do parents send their little ones to work at such an early age? Is it possible that there are so many parents who are so indifferent to the welfare of their children that they send them to work, and surround them with perils and evil influences, or are there other, deeper reasons? Are the parents helpless to save their little ones?” These are questions which have never yet been satisfactorily answered; they deal with a phase of the problem which has never been fully investigated, notwithstanding that it is of vital importance.

As already noted, when the manufacturers of England sought first to get child workers for the cotton and woollen mills, they found the parents arrayed against them, defending their children. For a long time no self-respecting father or mother would allow a child to go to the factories to work, and it remained for many years a brand of social disgrace to have one’s children so employed. Not until their pride was conquered by poverty, not until they were subjugated by hunger and compelled to surrender and accept the inevitable, did the parents send their children into the factories. It was poverty, bitter poverty, which led the first “free” child into the mills to economic servitude, and I am disposed to think that poverty is still the main reason why parents send their children to body-and-soul-destroying toil.

Many of those whose work for the enactment of legislation to protect the children from the ills of premature labor entitles them to lasting honor and gratitude, have shown an inclination to minimize the extent to which poverty is responsible for child labor. The opponents of child-labor legislation have so strongly insisted upon the hardships which would follow if parents were deprived of their children’s earnings, and have so eloquently pleaded the cause of the “poor widowed mothers,” as almost to make the employment of children appear as a philanthropic enterprise. Very often, it seems to me, the advocates of child-labor legislation, in their eagerness to refute their critics, have resorted to arguments which rest upon exceedingly slight foundations of fact, and, in this case especially, laid insufficient stress upon the logical answer. The more closely the problem is scrutinized and investigated, the larger the influence of poverty will appear, I think. At the same time, it is well to remember that poverty is not the only cause by any means. There are many other causes, some closely associated with poverty, others only remotely or not at all. Ignorance, cupidity, indifference, feverish ambition to “get on,”—these are a few of the many other causes which might be named.

It is declared, then, that actual inquiry has shown that the claim that the earnings of the children are necessary to the support of the family, and that widows and others would suffer serious poverty if their children under fifteen were not permitted to work, is “rarely if ever justified.” Mrs. Frederick Nathan, of the Consumers’ League of the City of New York, whose splendid devotion to the cause of social righteousness lends weight to her words, expresses this view with admirable clearness. She says: “Whenever preventive measures for child labor are enacted or enforced, there is always a wail heard to the effect that the child’s labor is absolutely requisite for the living expenses of the family. Yet, upon investigation, this statement is rarely corroborated. In Illinois, there was recently enacted a law prohibiting children under sixteen from working more than eight hours a day, or after 7 P.M. Thousands of diminutive toilers were discharged. Then a cry of hardship went up in behalf of hundreds of families. Philanthropic women undertook an investigation, supposing they would find a number of cases in which the wages of the working child were absolutely necessary to the family income. To their amazement they found only three families in Chicago, and five in the remainder of the state, where this was true. In every other case it was discovered that either the parent or older children could support the family, or some relative was willing to assist until the child reached the legal age.”[149]

Where there are so many coöperating causes, it would be easy to overestimate the importance of any one, and correspondingly easy to underestimate it. How the investigations in Illinois were conducted, what standards were adopted by the investigators, I do not know, and cannot, therefore, in the absence of specified data, express an opinion upon the validity of the conclusions drawn. Frankly, however, I distrust them. Not long since I heard of a case in which a “philanthropic lady investigator” decided that the wages of a child of thirteen were not necessary to the maintenance of the family, because she “had a father in regular employment.” It did not, apparently, occur to her that $9 a week was too little to support decently a family of six persons.

Whatever the nature of the Illinois investigation, I am certain that in my own experience the proportion of cases in which there is actual dependence upon what the children earn is very much larger. It must not be forgotten in discussing this question that although a child may earn only $1.50 a week, that sum may mean a great deal to the family. It may mean the difference between living in a comparatively good house on a decent street and going to a foul tenement in a bad neighborhood. It may mean the difference between coal and no coal in winter, or ice and no ice in summer. As a poor woman said to me quite recently, “Joe only earns thirty cents a day, but that thirty cents means supper for all five in the family.” The investigations of Mr. Nichols in the coal-mining and textile-manufacturing towns,[150] of Mr. Kellogg Durland,[151] and, particularly, the inquiries made in New Jersey concerning the immediate effects of the Child Labor Law of 1904,[152] all tend to show that the dependence of families upon children’s earnings is much greater than the Illinois figures would indicate. I venture the opinion that there is not a Settlement worker in America who has studied this problem whose experience would confirm the optimism of the Illinois investigators. I am certain that within a radius of three blocks from the little Settlement in which this is written, and with which I am at present most familiar, there are more families known to be absolutely dependent upon the earnings of young children than were found in the whole State of Illinois, according to the report quoted. I know of at least twice as many such families as were found in Illinois living in this little city with its population of about sixty thousand as against the nearly 5,000,000 in Illinois. Settlement workers in various parts of the country have, without exception, declared the Illinois report to be absolutely at variance with their experience.

In the hope that I might be able to gather sufficient accurate data to warrant some fairly definite conclusions upon this point, I spent several weeks making careful personal investigations into the matter in four states, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. I made inquiries into 213 cases, first getting the children’s stories and then carefully investigating them. The results are clearly set forth in the accompanying schedule, but explanation of a few points may be helpful to the reader.

In choosing a wage standard to represent the primary poverty line, I somewhat arbitrarily fixed upon $10 per week. In either of the four states named, such a wage must mean poverty and lead to the employment of children at the earliest possible moment. Intemperance appears in four cases, but that does not mean that it did not enter into other cases at all. In the four cases noted the fathers were earning from $12 to $18 per week, and while it is possible that with such wages they might be honestly and honorably poor, since even $18 is not a very princely wage, it is a fact that their expenditures upon drink constituted the real cause of the poverty which forced their children to work. On the other hand, I do not suppose that all the cases of child labor due to the primary poverty of their families are noted. In the last column several cases are given of children who were “sick when attending school,” or who “could not get on at school.” For reasons given in an earlier chapter, I am inclined to believe that these cases would have to be transferred to the other column if it were only possible to investigate them more fully.

TABLE SHOWING REASONS FOR THE EMPLOYMENT OF 213 CHILDREN

═══════════╤═══════════════════╤═══════════════════╤═══════════════════
No. of │ Occupations[F] │Reasons given which│Reasons given Other
Children │ │ indicate Primary │ than Apparent
│ │ Poverty │ Primary Poverty
───────────┼───────────────────┼───────────────────┼───────────────────
Boys, 34.│Glass factory │Wages of father 9│Parents saving 8
│ Workers.[G] │ less than $10 │ money to buy
│ │ per week │ their homes,
│ │ │ etc.
│ │Father sick or 5│Children working 2
│ │ injured │ to keep father
│ │ │ who is able to
│ │ │ work but won’t
│ │Father dead 2│
│ │Father 1│
│ │ unemployed │
│ │Father in prison 1│Not determined 6
───────────┼───────────────────┼───────────────────┼───────────────────
Boys, 23.│Textile mill │Wages of father 14│Tired of school 13
│ workers. │ less than $10 │
│ │ per week │
Girls, 57.│ │Father 6│Discouraged by 6
│ │ unemployed │ being “put
│ │ │ back” at
│ │ │ school every
│ │ │ time family
│ │ │ moved
│ │Father dead 5│Parents saving 5
│ │ │ the money
│ │Father sick or 6│Because 9
│ │ injured │ companions
│ │ │ went to work
│ │Father deserted 2│To get better 4
│ │ family │ clothes
│ │Father drunkard 1│Not determined 9
───────────┼───────────────────┼───────────────────┼───────────────────
Boys, 33.│Cigarette, │Father’s wage 14│Because friends 6
│ cigar, and │ less than $10 │ worked
│ tobacco │ per week │
│ workers. │ │
Girls, 22.│ │Father dead 3│Tired of school 5
│ │Father sick or 4│Parents saving 4
│ │ injured │ money
│ │Father 4│To get better 3
│ │ unemployed │ clothes
│ │Father drunkard 3│Sick while at 2
│ │ │ school
│ │ │Not determined 7
───────────┼───────────────────┼───────────────────┼───────────────────
Boys, 18.│Delivery wagon 4│Wages of father 15│Couldn’t get on 6
│ boys │ less than $10 │ at school
│ │ per week │
Girls, 26.│Match packers 12│Father dead 2│To get better 4
│ │ │ clothes
│Candy factory 10│Father sick or 4│Because friends 3
│ girls │ injured │ went to work
│Wire factory 7│Father 2│Sick while at 3
│ workers │ unemployed │ school
│Rubber factory 11│Father deserted 2│Not determined 3
│ workers │ family │
───────────┼───────────────────┼───────────────────┼───────────────────
Boys, 108.│ │Low wages 52│School 30
│ │ │ difficulties
Girls, 105.│ │Unemployment 13│Because friends 18
│ │ │ went to work
│ │Father’s death 12│To get better 11
│ │ │ clothes
│ │Father’s 19│To enable 17
│ │ sickness │ parents to
│ │ │ save
│ │Father’s 4│Sickness of 5
│ │ desertion of │ child while at
│ │ family │ school
│ │Father’s 4│Father’s 2
│ │ intemperance │ laziness
│ │Father in prison 1│Not determined 25
───────────┼───────────────────┼───────────────────┼───────────────────
Total, 213.│ │Total, 105 = 49.30%│Total, 108 = 50.70%
═══════════╧═══════════════════╧═══════════════════╧═══════════════════

I do not offer this table as conclusive testimony upon the point under discussion. The number of cases investigated is too small to give the results more than suggestive value. Personally, I believe that the cases given are fairly typical, and that is the opinion also of some of the leading authorities upon the subject to whom I have submitted the table. No private investigator can ever hope to investigate a sufficient number of cases to establish anything conclusively in this connection. What is needed most of all is a coöperative investigation under the direction of the leading sociological students of the country until such extensive returns are gathered as will justify more positive conclusions. In the meantime such tables as this can at best only serve to call attention to what _may_ be a general fact.

The table shows more than mere poverty. First of all there is the senseless, feverish, natural ambition of the immigrant to save money, to be rich. “Ma boy getta much mona—I get richa man,” said one of the Italians included in the first line of the fourth column of the foregoing table. How often I have heard that speech! Not always in the broken music of Italian-English, but in the many-toned, curious English of Bohemian, Lithuanian, Scandinavian, Russian, Pole, and Greek—all drawn by the same powerful magnet of wealth—all sacrificing, ignorantly and blindly, the lives of themselves and their children in their fevered quest. In this, as in so many other problems of the republic, the immigration of hundreds of thousands of people of alien races, customs, and speech enters. Whether their admission is wise or unwise is a subject outside the scope of this discussion, but one thing is certain, and as vital as it is true, namely, that hospitality has its obligations and duties. If the nation is to receive these immigrants, the nation must accept the responsibility of protecting them and itself. It must protect the immigrants from the dangers which their ignorance does not permit them to see, and protect itself from having to bear in the near future an Atlantean load; an economic burden which must come to it if these “strangers within the gates” in their ignorance are allowed to barter the manhood of their sons and the womanhood of their daughters for gold.

The virtual breakdown of our school system is one of the gravest problems indicated by the table and enforced by general observation. The children who go to work in factories and mines because they are “tired of school,” or “because they could not learn,” are, it is to be feared, not always but too often, the victims of undernutrition. The school spends all its energies in the vain attempt to educate wasting minds in starving bodies, and then the child, already physically and mentally ruined, goes to the mine or the factory, there to linger on as half-starved plants in arid soil sometimes linger, or to fade away as a summer flower fades in a day. Poverty began the ruin of the child by denying it proper nourishment, and ignorance and greed combine to complete the ruin by sending the child in its weakness forth to labor.

The other reasons for the employment of children shown in the table cannot be discussed separately. The moral contagion of poverty and ignorance, evidenced by the number of those who work, not from necessity, but because their friends work, is not new to those who have studied this and kindred problems. The influence of a single family in lowering the moral and economic standards of a whole street, especially in our smaller towns, is notorious. The pathos of the mothers of families who are worse than widows, with their drunken, dissolute husbands, and the tragedy of little child lives crushed by brutal, selfish, indolent fathers who place the responsibility of maintaining the family upon their young shoulders, are familiar phases of the problem of child labor.

It is a solemn responsibility which the presence of this menacing evil of child labor places upon the nation. It is not only the interests of the children themselves that are menaced; even more important and terrible is the thought that civilization itself is imperilled when children are dwarfed physically, mentally, and morally by hunger, heavy toil, and unwholesome surroundings. If one of the forts along our far-stretching coasts were attacked by an enemy, or if a single square mile of our immense territory were invaded, the nation would rise in patriotic unison, and there would be no lack either of men or money for the defence. Surely, it is not too much to hope that, before long, the nation will realize in the destruction of its future citizens by greed and ignorance a far more serious attack upon the republic than any that could be made by fleets or armed legions. To sap the strength and weaken the moral fibres of the children is to grind the seed corn, to wreck the future for to-day’s fleeting gain.

A great Frenchman once said of the alphabet, “These twenty-six letters contain all the good things that ever were, or ever can be, said,—only they need to be arranged.” To complete the truth of this aphorism, he should have included all the bad things as well. And so it is with the children of a nation. Capable of expressing all the good or evil the world has known or may know, it is essentially a matter of arrangement, opportunity, environment. Whether the children of to-day become physical, mental, and moral cretins, or strong men and women, fathers and mothers of virile sons and daughters, depends upon the decision of the nation. If the responsibility of this is fully recognized, and the employment of children under fifteen years of age is forbidden throughout the length and breadth of this great country; if the nation realizes that the demand for the protection of the children is the highest patriotism, and enfolds every child within its strong, protecting arms, then and not till then will it be possible to look with confidence toward the future, unashamed and unafraid.

-----

Footnote E:

“Messenger boys” includes errand boys in stores.

Footnote F:

No inquiry was made among mine workers because, on account of the
large number of boys whose fathers have been killed or permanently
disabled, the data would be less representative. (See Roberts’
_Anthracite Coal Communities_, p. 176.)

Footnote G:

Mostly foreign born or the children of foreign-born parents, Slavs and
Italians. The entire absence of reference to school matters is
suggestive. Most of them never entered a school.

IV
REMEDIAL MEASURES

“But pity will not right the wrong,
Nor doles return the stolen youth;
When tasks are done without a song
And bargains wrung at cost of truth,
’Tis mockery to talk of ruth.”
—DAVID LOWE.

I

Having stated the problem of poverty, as it bears upon the child, as plainly and comprehensively as possible, I would fain leave it without further comment, feeling with Whewell that, “Rightly to propose a problem is no inconsiderable step towards its solution,” and believing that once the facts are known, and their significance understood, reform cannot be long delayed. Beyond the measures briefly suggested in the preceding pages, I would gladly leave the whole subject of remedial action untouched, regarding the purpose of this book as fulfilled in the statement of the problem itself. But when I have submitted the substance of the evidence herein presented to those whose knowledge and experience entitle them to be regarded as experts, or to popular audiences in the form of lectures, they have, with scarcely an exception, expressed the view that the statement of such a problem should be accompanied by some suggestions as to its solution; some indication of social and individual duty, lest the result be heaviness of heart and blackness of despair.

Whoever has seriously contemplated the misery and suffering which, like a poisonous cloud, encompasses modern society, must have experienced doubts and fears for the future, and, like the chastened patriarch of Uz, felt his hope “plucked up like a tree.” So many of the beacons that have shone out over the rough, perilous path of Humanity’s pilgrimage have turned out to be false lights, like the swinging lantern-lights of the old Cornubian wreckers, which lured trusting mariners to head their vessels to destruction upon the rocks, that we sometimes lose faith and despair of the visions of world-ecstasy, the “passionate prefigurings of a world revivified,” with which the seers of the race have beckoned us onward. And such despair blights and starves the soul of progress. When men cease to yearn for, and to believe in, justice, when they no longer aspire to social perfection, when old men cease to dream dreams, and young men to see visions of a nobler world than this economic anarchy, there can be no progress. Beautiful ideals seem to mock us at times, but it is doubtful if ever a beautiful ideal found lodgment in the heart of the humblest man without enriching the world.

If I were asked wherein the hope of the future lies, I should adopt for answer the message of a great rock. Travelling along the Yellowstone River, in the autumn of 1904, I saw an immense rock column, a veritable landmark for many miles, upon which some enthusiast had painted in large red letters, “Socialism is the Hope of the World.” Doubtless some ranchman, dreaming of a future world-righteousness, had conceived the idea of making that great natural obelisk a missionary for the faith he held, just as other enthusiasts had pasted the similar legends I had seen along the trails of the North Dakota prairies. I share that faith and hope, and believe that nothing short of the socialization of the means of life will ever fully and finally solve the problems inhering in our present industrial system, resulting in strife, bitterness, and the denial of human brotherhood. But long, weary years of suffering and struggle stretch between the present and that ideal state of the future. Socialism will, it is to be devoutly hoped, save the world from red ruin and anarchy and make possible a sweeter, nobler heritage for the generations yet unborn. But the most sanguine Socialist must see that it is little short of mockery to talk of the future triumph of his ideal in connection with the problem of relieving present misery and distress, to answer the hunger-cry of to-day with the promise of a coöperative commonwealth in far-off years. All the Socialist parties of the world, with the exception of a few minor and unimportant factions, frankly recognize this and have formulated programmes of palliative measures for the amelioration of present evils. So far as I am aware, no non-Socialist political party has ever included in its programme demands for such measures as the abolition of child labor, the feeding of school children by the municipality, and the maintenance of municipal _crèches_—demands which are included in practically all Socialist programmes. In suggesting only such remedial measures as may be taken by society or individuals within the present social state, and involving no fundamental change in the social structure, I do so, therefore, as one believing in the ultimate necessity of such change, and the right of every child born into the world to equal opportunity and equal share in all the gifts and resources of civilization.

II