FACTORY CHILDREN.
In our educational movements, we early opened Night-schools for the poor children. During the winter of 1870-71, we had some eleven in operation, reaching a most interesting class of children—those working hard from eight to ten hours a day, and then coming with passionate eagerness for schooling in the evening.
The experience gained in these schools still further developed the fact, already known to us, of the great numbers of children of tender years in New York employed in factories, shops, trades, and other regular occupations. A child put at hard work in this way, is, as is well known, stunted in growth or enfeebled in health. He fails also to get what is considered as indispensable in this country for the safety of the State, a common-school education. He grows up weak in body and ignorant or untrained in mind. The parent or relative wants his wages, and insists on his laboring in a factory when he ought to be in an infant-school. The employer is in the habit of getting labor where he can find it, and does not much consider whether he is allowing his little employes the time and leisure sufficient for preparing themselves for life. He excuses himself, too, by the plea that the child would be half-starved or thrown on the Poor-house but for this employment.
The universal experience is, that neither the benevolence of the manufacturer nor the conscience of the parent will prevent the steady employment of children of tender years in factory work, provided sufficient wages be offered. Probably, if the employer were approached by a reasonable person, and it was represented what a wrong he was doing to so young a laborer, or the parent were warned of his responsibility to educate a child he had brought into the world, they would both agree to the reasonableness of the position, and attempt to reform their ways. But the necessities of capital on the one side, and the wants of poverty on the other, soon put the children again at the loom, the machine, and the bench, and the result is—masses of little ones, bent and wan with early trial, and growing up mere machines of labor. England has found the evil terrible, and, during the past ten or fifteen years, has been legislating incessantly against it; protecting helpless infancy from the tyranny of capital and the greed of poverty, and securing a fair growth of body and mind for the children of the laboring poor.
There is something extremely touching in these Night-schools, in the eagerness of the needy boys and girls who have been toiling all day, to pick up a morsel of knowledge or gain a practical mental accomplishment. Their occupations are legion. The following are extracts from a recent report of one of our visitors on this subject. At the Crosby-street School, he says:—
"There were some hundred children; their occupations were as follows: They put up insect-powder, drive wagons, tend oyster-saloons; are tinsmiths, engravers, office-boys, in type-founderies, at screws, in blacksmith-shops; make cigars, polish, work at packing tobacco, in barber-shops, at paper-stands; are cashboys, light porters, make artificial flowers, work at hair; are errand-boys, make ink, are in Singer's sewing-machine factory, and printing-offices; some post bills, some are paint-scrapers, some peddlers; they pack snuff, attend poultry-stands at market, in shoe-stores and hat-stores, tend stands, and help painters and carpenters.
"At the Fifth-ward School (No. 141 Hudson Street), were fifty boys and girls. One of them, speaking of her occupation, said: 'I work at feathers, cutting the feathers from cock's tails. It is a very busy time now. They took in forty new hands today. I get three dollars and fifty cents a week; next week I'll get more. I go to work at eight o'clock and leave off at six. The feathers are cut from the stem, then steamed, and curled, and packed. They are sent then to Paris, but more South and West.' One boy said he worked at twisting twine; another drove a 'hoisting-horse,' another blacked boots, etc.
"At the Eleventh-ward School, foot of East Eleventh Street, there was an interesting class of boys and girls under thirteen years of age. One boy said he was employed during the day in making chains of beads, and says that a number of the boys and girls present are in the same business. Another said he worked at coloring maps. Another blows an organ for a music-teacher.
"At the Lord School, No. 207 Greenwich Street, the occupations of the girls were working in hair, striping tobacco, crochet, folding paper collars, house-work, tending baby, putting up papers in drug-store, etc, etc."
In making but a brief survey of the employment of children outside of our schools, we discover that there are from one thousand five hundred to two thousand children, under fifteen years of age, employed in a single branch—the manufacture of paper collars—while of those between fifteen and twenty years, the number reaches some eight thousand. In tobacco-factories in New York, Brooklyn, and the neighborhood, our agents found children only four years of age—sometimes half a dozen in a single room. Others were eight years of age, and ranged from that age up to fifteen years. Girls and boys of twelve to fourteen years earn from four dollars to five dollars a week. One little girl they saw, tending a machine, so small that she had to stand upon a box eighteen inches high to enable her to reach her work. In one room they found fifty children; some little girls, only eight years of age, earning three dollars per week. In another, there were children of eight and old women of sixty, working together. In the "unbinding cellar" they found fifteen boys under fifteen years. Twine-factories, ink-factories, feather, pocket-book, and artificial-flower manufacture, and hundreds of other occupations, reveal the same state of things.