Your vote and how to use it

by Gertrude Foster Brown

Experiments have been made in combining the work that the boy does night and morning on the farm, with the school work. Under proper guidance, the chores that the boy has to do at home can be made a means of education. For example: a pupil who assists at home in the milking might be required to keep a daily record of each cow, with the fluctuations in the yield of milk, due to weather and food. This combining of the necessary home work with the instruction of the school has been made a success in some of the Western States, where county superintendents supervise the home-school work and make it of the greatest possible educational value.

Rural school terms are usually shorter than city terms, and irregular attendance is more frequent. Only 68 per cent. of the pupils enrolled in rural schools attend daily, while in cities the percentage is 80. The absences of girls are caused largely by housework.

The results of child labor in the country are seen in the high percentage of rejections from military service on account of physical defects in men from rural districts, and the larger percentage of illiteracy in country communities compared with that in cities. Better and more adequate education for the thousands of children on the farms of the State is one of our immediate needs.

It is the right of every child to be given enough education to give him a good start in life. The child-labor problem is largely a school problem. Keep the children in school, and there will be no child labor.

War and Children: The war has brought a new demand for the labor of children, and new evidence of the serious consequences of using this labor. In England and France, juvenile delinquency due to the breaking down of educational facilities, and the exploitation of children in shops and factories, has increased to a point where both nations are aroused by a new national danger. To meet the sudden great need for munitions, and the speeding up of all industry, children of all ages, and women of all classes, went into the factories. In England, it is estimated that 200,000 children from eleven to thirteen years of age left school to go to work. Abnormally high wages were paid them. With fathers at the front and mothers away from home in munition factories, these children roamed the streets after their work was done, with pockets filled with money to spend, and no one to exercise a restraining hand.

Streets are unlighted, the police force has been decreased, churches, schools, and settlement work are interrupted. Is it any wonder that since the war began juvenile delinquency has increased 46 per cent. in Edinburgh, 56 per cent. in Manchester, and thefts 50 per cent.?

The same demand for child labor has begun to be manifest in this country. The United States is being called on to feed the world, and to make supplies of all kinds for our allies, besides the tremendous need of supplies for our own armies. Millions of men are being drawn from the ranks of producers, and have become consumers. The world is consuming and destroying on a scale never known before in history. The demand for more and more labor is becoming ever more insistent.

In spite of the warnings which have come to us from England and France, of the necessity of guarding against the exploitation of our children during the war, New York State was one of the first to try to break down the restrictions built up during many years of the past with such infinite labor.

The Brown bills, which passed the Legislature last winter, were a frank attempt to utilize the labor of children. They made it possible, at the discretion of the State Labor Commission, to abrogate every law that has been passed in New York State to safeguard its children. One bill would have made it possible to utilize the labor of children unlimited hours, seven days in the week, including night labor. This was vetoed by the Governor. The other, which makes possible the suspension of the compulsory education law, in order that children may work on the farms, has become a law. Other attempts will undoubtedly be made to exploit children.

It will require unceasing vigilance on the part of the people of the State to see that measures detrimental to children shall not be successful. Attempts are being made to remove the limit of hours, and to abolish the requirement that children between fourteen and sixteen shall have working papers. Such measures mean that the physical examination now required would not be made, and that the necessity of furnishing proof of the age of the applicant would be eliminated. The first would permit weak, sickly children to go to work in the factories, and the second would encourage the employment of children under fourteen.