“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.