The recent startling revelations of non-enforcement of the laws intended to protect young children from exhausting overwork in the glass factories in New Jersey merely intimate what will be found true in every state in which there is not a powerfully organized, compact body of public opinion alert to insist upon the retention of competent officers, the removal of incompetent ones, and the uniform, consistent enforcement of all the provisions of the child labor laws.
To form in every state, among the purchasers of the products of manufacture, a body of alert, enlightened public opinion, keen to watch the officers to whom is entrusted the duty of enforcing child labor laws, rewarding with support and appreciation faithful officials and calling attention to derelictions from duty on the part of the mere politicians among them, this is an important part of the duty of the National Consumers’ League.
CHILD LABOR IN THE DEPARTMENT STORE
By Franklin N. Brewer
General Manager Wanamaker Store, Philadelphia
The topic assigned me, “Child Labor in (so called) Department Stores,” interests us, I take it, from but one point of view: that of the education and development of the child into the man or woman who shall contribute and receive a normal share of the world’s good growth in life, liberty and happiness.
I cannot claim comprehensive thought or research, under this topic, and my paper must be the brief and superficial one of a man whose too short days are full of the work of the builder rather than the study of the architect.
If my coming before you is justified at all, it must be by the simple statement I am able to make of how one establishment,[[15]] a typical one of the class under consideration, is trying to meet its responsibility for its children.
First entrance into the employ of this house is, to the extent possible, with a clear understanding between parent, or guardian, and the employer, that the child’s business career shall continue with the same house, at least until maturity in years and efficiency in some distinct branch of the business shall have been reached.
Following our State law, thirteen years is the minimum age. The smaller boys begin as “cash boys.” Girls are not given this work, positions of less freedom being considered safer for them. The girls up to, usually, seventeen years of age, and the boys, other than cash boys, usually, from sixteen to eighteen, are engaged directly in the general corps of the junior employees—we call it “The Cadet Corps”—and into this corps the cash boys come by promotion. Except at Christmas, the cash boys will average two hundred in number; the cadets four hundred, of whom about one hundred are girls. These six hundred young people are assigned to duty in the various departments and divisions of the business, according to natural aptitude and fitness, and are under the direction of their respective department or section heads; but always, also, and until graduation from the Cadet Corps, they are under the care and discipline of the chief of the corps and a lady assistant. The young people are not lost sight of individually, but are known and studied by the managers with view to advancement according to capacity and natural abilities.