Men and Things

by Henry A. Atkinson

Nearly all the unemployable men who gather in our cities, who sleep on the park benches in good weather, eat wherever they can, and in cold weather fill up the municipal lodging houses or sleep upon the floors of the police stations, are physically unfit because they were forced to go to work at too early an age. The number of these men who are the victims of child labor is remarkable. A student of social conditions, who made a study of the problem of unemployment in this country in the winter of 1913–14 said, “We are coming to see the rank folly of putting children in at one end of the industrial hopper, grinding them up, and taking inefficient, no-account men out at the other end. We have thousands of children in the country doing work that they ought not to do, and hundreds of thousands of men who can get nothing to do. We are not only faced with the problem to-day, but we are projecting the problem into to-morrow.”

An accurate study of the life of the cotton-mill operators shows that the death-rate is so high that the inference is justified that work in the mill has an unfortunate influence upon those who follow it. Approximately half of the deaths of the operatives between fifteen and forty-five years of age are due to tuberculosis. Some years ago a book was published in defense of child labor in the South. The contention was that the workers in the cotton-mill were the most healthful of any people in the community. A report made by the United States government on the conditions in the mills shows that beyond any doubt the mill is a hazardous place for an adult, to say nothing of the child. In Massachusetts, according to reports quoted by Florence I. Taylor of the National Committee on Child Labor, it was found that the average fourteen-year-old mill boy was decidedly below standard in weight and height; and that the sixteen-year-old boys did not show a normal gain in height over the fifteen-year-old boys, and actually decreased two and a half pounds in average weight. “It was evident from the physical examination alone,” said the report, “that there were boys whose interests from the point of view of physical welfare called for further attention after being permitted to go to work, whatever the work for which an employment certificate might be issued.”

In the printing trades, in the paint shops, in glass works, in coal-mines, in fact, in every place where children are employed, we find the physical effects all bad. The undeveloped boy or girl is more susceptible to diseases that are inherent in the several businesses themselves. For instance, lead attacks a child worker more quickly than it would an adult. The fumes inhaled and the substances breathed in affect the child, and owing to the demands put upon his physical strength by his growing body it is difficult for nature to throw off the bad effects of these poisons.

Child Labor and Education. Another evil is the loss of educational opportunities. “There is plenty of time for the children to go to school,” is a common saying among fathers and mothers. “I will send Mary to school next year,” said a farmer in Oklahoma. “She wants to go on with her class. I cannot see that it makes any great difference whether she gets her learning this year or next.” Mary was fourteen years old and we have no record of Mary’s career, but it is quite probable that she never got a chance to go back to school. The school promised to boys and girls who are being used in gainful occupations is like the promise that St. Patrick made to the snakes in Ireland after he had put them all into a box. He promised that he would let them out to-morrow, but to-morrow never came, according to the old Irish legend.

A returning visitor from Russia tells us that the cause of Russia’s collapse is to be found in the ignorance of the people. Only one per cent. of the people are able to read and write. In the midst of this dense ignorance the peasant groups believe everything and nothing; are easily influenced by anything no matter how unsubstantial, passionate, cruel, brutish. No wonder that Russia presents one of the most pitiable spectacles of any nation in the world’s history. There is serious danger that in America we will produce a rural peasantry that is ignorant, and if such should be the case, there will grow up with this ignorance a narrow-minded prejudice against everything that we think is worth while in life. Education is the hope of this nation as well as that of every other nation.

What of Disposition and Character? Child labor has a bad effect on the disposition. It crushes initiative from the group, and while it will develop a type of leadership in the future, the leadership is not that of free, broad-minded Americans, but is self-assertive cheap, tricky, and clannishly shrewd. For instance, I was told that the children attending school in an Arkansas city who came from the mill district were the leaders in all the sports. I asked some of the boys about this, and named to them several who I had been told were leaders. The reply was that these fellows were not leaders but were bullies. “No matter what we play, they want to run everything, and if we do not do what they want us to do, we have a fuss.” The struggle in the mill and the bearing of responsibilities had led the mill boys to rely upon themselves. They knew that they could never get anything unless they got it for themselves and by the most direct and brutal means. In an age when a new emphasis is being put upon cooperation any power that warps the disposition and creates wrong ideals is a real menace.

Robbers of Childhood. “Ketch,” cried a small lad as he turned with the ball in his hand just as he was entering the mill door at the end of the thirty minute noon period of freedom. The boy to whom he had called, and who had been playing ball with him during this period raised his hands preparatory to catching the ball. Then he dropped them to his side and said, “Naw, don’t throw it, else we’ll get fined for not comin’ in on time after the whistle blew.” No time for play! Thirty minutes for lunch and out of that thirty minutes these boys had taken as much as possible for a game of ball. By night they would be so tired that there would be no inclination to play. They would stand around and talk a little, or sit on the front porch for an hour after supper, and then crawl into bed and sleep until aroused by the whistle of the factory early in the morning. This was the life of these children. The only period in their lives when they might have been free was taken away from them and they were made to work in the mills of industry, grinding out the raw materials of civilization which go into the very foundation of our society, and grinding out at the same time the joy of life and the possibilities of ever being able to gain the best that life holds in store for them.

A National Evil. East, west, north, and south we have been robbing children on every hand. California canners deplore the conditions among the child workers in Massachusetts. In Massachusetts those who employ children find excuses for themselves in the laws of the state, and in the traditions of New England, but they have no good thing to say about conditions in the mills of the South. In the South it is easy to find men who are responsible for the children working who see nothing but good evolution of the family from bad rural conditions to a condition of comparative opulence in their mill cities, but who can see nothing good in the child labor as it is found in the coal-mines in Pennsylvania and the beet-fields of the Northwest. In Montana and Nebraska the farmer everywhere will tell you that “Nothing is so good for a child as to work in the beet-fields. It makes a man of him quicker than anything else.”

The Unfinished Task. When the Federal Child Labor Law was passed which prohibited the shipping of any goods in interstate commerce that had been manufactured by child labor, a great many people foolishly thought that the last trench was taken and the final victory won in behalf of the children. Now that this law has been declared unconstitutional we will have to begin the fight for its reenactment in terms that will be in accord with the constitution of the United States. This law was a great advance over anything we have ever had before. While it held, it released thousands of children from toil, but there were still employed in small towns, in villages, and in the rural communities boys and girls in domestic service, as bootblacks, as newsboys, as messenger boys, and at work in stores and local shops. According to the last census in the United States, 1,990,225 children under fifteen years of age are at work at some gainful occupation and 895,976 of these children are thirteen or under. Advanced legislation has been taken in most of the states, but as the standards of such legislation rise in the different states it becomes clear that with the reenactment of the child labor law further steps must be taken for the protection of children against exploitation. For instance, the child labor law can be administered effectively and for the best good of the child only in connection with compulsory education laws. It is futile, and dangerous as well, to take the children out of the mills and leave them in idleness upon the streets. Higher and better health standards must be raised and safeguards thrown about the home and school life of the children. Owen Lovejoy says, “The physical development of children securing employment is quite as important as their age.”