It is this short working life of the father, with the declining wage for years before it actually ends, that makes child labor an essential factor in the solving of the problem of the textile family. Without the help of the child the father cannot support the family and lay aside enough to insure his own and his wife’s future. His wage, and the wear and tear he suffers, make it impossible. The child must help.
If the children prove healthy, if they “turn out well,” if work is continuous, the little home may be secured and the modest little dream may come true. But suppose that a weaver, rushing into the cold air at the end of his ten-hour day, is chilled and has pneumonia—it happens often enough. Suppose an uncovered gear or belt catches him in an incautious moment and crushes a limb or takes his scalp, or a carelessly handled machine nips off a finger—it happens all the time. Carelessness? More often it is that the limit of human endurance has been passed. Fatigue has ceased to be normal and has become abnormal—his mind is dulled—his nerve deadened—his muscles do not respond. The wonder is that in the shrieking, devilish uproar of the factory, a tired man can keep up his habit of caution as steadily as most of them do. Suppose that, standing through the hot summer in the poisoned air of a dry closet, he falls ill of a fever. Or, if he escapes all these things, suppose that the factory goes on short time—thousands of operatives all over New England have had their weekly wages cut in half in the last three years by short time. Or, suppose that, which has happened repeatedly in Rhode Island, he is obliged by some intolerable condition to strike and have no wage—what happens then? That happens which is more disastrous to the family than even child labor—the wife must go into the factory. So narrow is the margin in the best of times that an illness, a shut down, disturbs the budget so that only the combined exertion of all the members of the family can save it. The mothers go into the factory, and the homes gradually go to pieces. After her ten hours at spindle or loom the woman hurries to a cold, unkempt house, which she must make comfortable and cheerful if it is to be so. Is it strange that the homes of the factory mothers are generally untidy, the food poor, the children neglected? How can it be otherwise? Her limit of endurance, of ambition, of joy, even of desire of life, has been passed. More appalling, she sees her ability to work falling off. Almost universally, women who have worked ten years in a factory have the patent-medicine habit—they are “so tired” they “take something.” Is it surprising that a few of them finally discover that they can get from beer or whiskey the same temporary strength at less cost? The surprise is not that many drink, but that more do not.
Now the hope of this factory mother lies in her child, since she, like her husband, is bound to wear out at a comparatively early age. And what chance has she to bear a healthy child? They give you heartbreaking figures of infant mortality in Rhode Island, and everywhere one goes what one sees and hears confirms their truthfulness. The district nurses talk to you of “bottle babies,” the factory mother being, as a rule, so poorly nourished and so overworked that she cannot nurse her child. Moreover, she cannot care for it. She must return as soon as possible to the factory. The doctor’s bill is heavy. “He” is having a hard time, the mill is running short. The baby is left to an older child if there be one, or, if there is none, it perhaps goes to one of the human institutions of the factory town—the “old woman.” The old woman may not be over 50, but the factory has got all it can out of her and the factory community utilizes her by giving her its young children to care for, paying perhaps $2.00 a week. The old woman may have borne children, but she has never had an opportunity to learn to care for them properly. She is often so deaf she cannot hear them cry and she is too poor to buy them proper food, and to boot, she may be a tippler. Unless husky beyond all probability, or saved by some lucky chance—a district nurse or a sister or some other good angel—the baby dies. One should go to the cemetery to see how many die. There is nothing more pitiful in all this beautiful world than the interminable rows of little graves in the cemeteries of the factory towns.
In recent years the problems of the operative have been complicated by the soaring cost of living. Almost everything he buys is higher in price, or if he insists on a standard price, the article is poorer in quality. Take the very protected articles from which Rhode Island draws her wealth. All these 68,000 textile workers must have clothes. The price of women’s all-wool dress goods increased in Providence, the centre of the industry between 1891 and 1907, over 33 per cent. There was an increase in practically all the cotton-warp goods varying from 4 to 40 per cent. Underwear in which there was any mixture of wool cost a fourth more in 1907 than sixteen years before. Cotton underwear was reported as stationary in price, though since 1907 it has risen. Bleached muslin used for shirtings was 34 per cent dearer in 1907 than in 1891. Cotton thread was 10 per cent dearer. All linens were higher, though of course the textile operatives cannot buy much linen. That is, their own industries are taking out of them the increase in wages which this same period has seen!
Are not the conditions so hastily sketched a fairly satisfactory answer to the question with which we started out: Why should not Rhode Island have a stable, settled, home-owning body of American workmen? The hazards are so great, the wage so low, the work so uncertain, that the American workman or the foreigner, after a few years of experience here, will not remain if he can get out. He realizes that the chances are against the operative getting on in the world. What this means is that it is not he who is getting the benefits of the protective duties which Mr. Aldrich says are laid for “our people in the United States.” He is barely getting a living, and getting it under conditions which make life to himself, his wife, and children a constant menace. The tax we pay on textiles never gets beyond the stockholders, who in Rhode Island are usually a family that for generations have run their mills and absorbed the profits—absorbed them so quietly, too, that one knows nothing of what they are save by the deceiving outward signs.
Not only has the average factory owner absorbed the lion’s share of the profits, but he set his face like a flint against spending a cent of the protection he enjoys in humane efforts to make the industry more tolerable. This man, who periodically appears as a suppliant before Congress, praying for a continuation of benefits which cost this whole people dearly, will not, unless driven to it by law and outraged public opinion, protect even the children who work in his mills. It took the hard-fought labor wars of the ’80’s to force from the legislature of the state (then as now held in the hollow of the hands of men who live by the beneficence of this people) a ten-hour law for children, a twelve-year age limit, and proper truant laws. But, the laws passed, no authorities were ever found to enforce them, for the very sufficient reason that all authorities in Rhode Island lived by permission of the mill owners. A Bureau of Industrial Statistics for gathering information and a factory inspector to report on the observance of the laws which labor unions and social agencies had forced from the legislature were finally secured. The first set of inquiries sent out by the Industrial Bureau was treated with contempt by the manufacturers, the Slater Club deciding what questions it would and would not answer!
According to the first of the reports issued only one corporation in the state had its sinks properly trapped, and fever was epidemic. The factories almost invariably were fire-traps, wooden structures with low ceilings, no escapes, and often with heavy wire screens nailed over the windows. The laws governing child labor were generally ignored. And all this was only about twenty years ago. Many improvements have been made since then, but they have been made too often in the face of the open or badly concealed opposition of the average manufacturer, rarely with his sympathetic coöperation. When men refuse coöperation with laws which concern the health and happiness of those whose labor makes their wealth possible, it is because of a stunted social sense. There are other shocking proofs of this defective development in the average Rhode Island textile manufacturer than his attitude toward humane legislation. One of them is the housing of operatives.
Stories of foul, neglected tenements in Rhode Island factory towns, drawn from recent investigation, could be multiplied. They are another of the many good reasons why the textile manufacturer finds it hard to hold labor together. They are another of the many proofs of their unwillingness to pass on to their working-men the protection granted in the name of labor. Take them to task for housing conditions and the general attitude is one of indignation at what they call an invasion of their individual freedom. Why should they build houses for their operatives unless it pays to do so? Why should they protect their operatives from grasping landlords? And if the landlord can make more from a poor tenement than a well kept one, whose business is it? It is his property.
Again these mill owners practically take no responsibility for accidents. They are insured against the claims the injured may make. All that they do is to render first aid. After that the man or woman must look after himself unless fortunate enough to get free hospital treatment. If he gets an indemnity, he must either settle with the insurance company or go to court, where he is almost certain to fair badly. For instance, here are cases taken at random from the records for the September, 1905, session of the Providence County Courts. One is of a girl, “incapable of speaking the language,” who in 1901 lost a hand from unprotected gears and cog wheels, five years later nonsuited with costs to plaintiff!
Here is a boy under fourteen who after two weeks in a mill was ordered to clean the iron cylinder of a carding machine and lost his hand. Four years later he was awarded $1100 and $12.58 costs.