The Chief Medical Officer of the Board of Education also noted a large increase in the number of children employed outside school hours. In June, 1916, twenty “Juvenile Advisory Committees” on vocational guidance for boys and girls leaving school reported an increase in the number of employed school children and only one a decrease. In November, 1917, forty-five out of fifty-seven committees reported an increase. “With a few exceptions,” it was said, “those in close touch with the children express the opinion that the consequences to their health and education have been wholly bad.”[221] In one town 9 per cent, in another 19 per cent and in another 40 per cent of the schoolboys were working outside school hours. The number of “half times,” or children over twelve who alternated between school and work, rose from 69,555 in 1914-1915 to 73,596 in 1916-1917.
Relaxation of Child Labor and
Compulsory Education Laws
Although definite totals are not obtainable, a deplorable increase seems to have taken place during the war in the number of working children between eleven and fourteen who, prior to the war, would have been protected by child labor and compulsory school laws. “The growth in the number of children obtaining complete exemption before fourteen cannot be stated with equal precision,” said the Committee on Juvenile Employment during the War and After, “but evidence drawn from various sources shows that with the increase in the entrants for Labour Certificate Examinations and the general relaxation of local by-laws it has been considerable.”
In 1911, according to official figures, only 148,000 children under fourteen were employed in all Great Britain. In August, 1917, Mr. Fisher said in the House of Commons that “in three years of war some 600,000 children have been withdrawn prematurely from school and become immersed in industry. They are working on munitions, in the fields, and in the mines.”[222] But in October, 1917, the Industrial (War Inquiries) Branch of the Board of Trade, stated that 90,000 boys under fourteen had left school during the war, a figure serious enough, but much smaller than Mr. Fisher’s.
Probably the great majority of the exemptions were for agricultural work. “In this district we are again producing a race of illiterates,” reported one rural area. The exemptions were largely the result of the activity of the farmers’ associations, which had always opposed compulsory education for the children of their farm laborers and which in most cases controlled the local school boards.[223] Farmers of North Wilts recommended that eleven year old children be released from school for work for which women “were not strong enough.” Though probably extra-legal, the exemptions were sanctioned under specified conditions in a circular of the Board of Education to local authorities issued in March, 1915.[224] Children of school age were to be exempted for “light” and “suitable” agricultural employment in cases of special emergency, when no other labor was available. There was to be no general relaxation of standards, and exemptions were to be made in individual cases and for limited periods only.
Even before the publication of this circular, between September 1, 1914, and January 31, 1915, 1,413 children under fourteen, some of them as young as eleven years, were released from school for farm work. Between February 1 and April 30, 1915, 3,811 children were exempted for this purpose. The number holding excuses on January 31. 1916, was 8,026; on May 31 was 15,753, and on October 31 was 14,915. These figures, moreover, showed only the number of children formally excused by special exemption, not the number actually at work. About half the counties made special by-laws lowering the standard of compulsory attendance required before the war. In Wiltshire, for instance, all children of eleven who had reached the fourth standard were not required to attend school, and only those below that grade who were specially excused appeared in the official lists.[225] Then, too, in some places schools were closed at noon or altogether at times of special stress, and in others headmasters were directed to let children of eleven and over leave without record when needed for farm work.[226]
It is noteworthy that the policy of granting exemptions was not uniformly followed throughout the country, since some local authorities refused to relax the attendance laws. Twenty-five county councils reported that no children had been excused between February 1 and April 30, 1915. The policy of exemption was strongly opposed by the agricultural laborers’ union, and by the whole labor party which brought the matter up in the House of Commons in the spring of 1915, but to little effect. It was charged that the farmers were making use of child labor in order to keep down wages, and that the supply of adult labor would be sufficient if proper wages were paid.
The Board of Agriculture advocated relieving the situation by an increased use of women instead of children. “The Board of Agriculture have expressed the opinion that if the women of the country districts and of England generally took the part they might take in agriculture, it would be unnecessary to sacrifice the children under twelve.”[227]
In the spring of 1916 the Board of Education itself admitted that in some areas exemptions had “been granted too freely and without sufficiently careful ascertainment that the conditions ... prescribed by the government ... were fulfilled.”[228] A circular of February 29, 1916, laid down additional restrictions on excusing children from school.[229]
An interesting clause of the circular “suggested that the urgency of the need for the labor of school children may, to a certain extent, be tested by the amount of wages offered, and as a general rule it may be taken that if the labor of a boy of school age is not worth at least six shillings a week to the farmer, the benefit derived from the boy’s employment is not sufficient to compensate for the loss involved by the interruption of the boy’s education.” In an earlier report the board had noted that only one of the twenty school children reported engaged in farm work by one county was receiving as much as 6s. ($1.44) weekly.[230]