A vivid summary of the situation was made in March, 1917, in the Final Report of the Departmental Committee on Juvenile Education with Special Reference to Employment after the War, which gave a depressing picture of the effect of the war on working boys and girls.
Upon this educational and industrial chaos has come the war to aggravate conditions that could hardly be made graver, and to emphasize a problem that needed no emphasis. Many children have been withdrawn at an even earlier age than usual from day schools, and the attendances at those evening schools which have not been closed show a lamentable shrinkage. We are not prepared to say that much of the work which is now being done by juveniles in munition factories and elsewhere is in itself inferior to the work which most of them would have been doing in normal times, but there can be no doubt that many of the tendencies adversely affecting the development of character and efficiency have incidentally been accentuated.... Parental control, so far as it formerly existed, has been relaxed, largely through the absence of fathers of families from their homes. Wages have been exceptionally high, and although this has led to an improved standard of living, it has also, in ill-regulated households, induced habits of foolish and mischievous extravagance. Even the ordinary discipline of the workshop has in varying degrees given way; while the withdrawal of influences making for the social improvement of boys and girls has in many districts been followed by noticeable deterioration in behavior and morality. Gambling has increased. Excessive hours of strenuous labor have overtaxed the powers of young people; while many have taken advantage of the extraordinary demand for juvenile labor to change even more rapidly than usual from one blind alley employment to another.
Among boy and girl munition workers evidences of a breakdown in health were perhaps not general, but in a good many cases children working at night or long hours were found to show signs of exhaustion. In the 1915 report of the chief inspector of factories the principal lady inspector stated:
Miss Constance Smith has been much impressed by the marked difference in outward effect produced by night employment on adult and adolescent workers. “Very young girls show almost immediately, in my experience, symptoms of lassitude, exhaustion and impaired vitality under the influence of employment at night.” A very strong similar impression was made on me by the appearance of large numbers of young boys who had been working at munitions for a long time on alternate day and night shifts.
The special investigator of the “health of male munition workers” noted that 51 per cent of the 900 boys in one large factory complained of sleepiness and weariness on the night shift. “It is contrary to the laws of nature for young children—for such many of these are—to be able to turn night into day without feeling an effect.... On the night shifts, boys do not tolerate well long hours. It has to be borne in mind that the average age of the boys examined would certainly not exceed 15 years, and it makes one consider very seriously the future of the rising generation.”
The same inquiry brought out the unfavorable effects of long daily hours of work on young boys. While among all the 1,500 boys examined “no very gross degree of ill health was prevalent,” 10.6 per cent of those working more than 60 hours weekly, and only 6.7 per cent of those working less than 60 hours, were not in “good” physical condition. “This difference is a serious one.” In the heavy trades “the effect upon the boys was commencing to show itself. Many though little more than fourteen were working twelve hour shifts and doing heavy work. The boys in these shops manipulate heavy pieces of steel at a temperature of 900° F. They struck me as being considerably overworked; they looked dull and spiritless, and conversation with them gave the impression that they were languid. In fact, all the boys in this group were working far too hard.”
The investigator contrasted with the poor condition of many boy munition workers the “healthy and intelligent appearance” of the boys in one factory where comparatively short hours, no night work and free Saturday afternoons and Sundays gave them time for outdoor play. “On the other hand, many of the boys I examined at other factories are showing definite signs of the wear and tear to which they are subjected. Pale, anemic, dull and expressionless, their conditions would excite great commiseration. Conditions outside the factory contribute their share and if the war is to continue for a long time and these boys remain subject to conditions such as described, the effect upon their general health will be difficult to remedy.”
As with women, long periods spent in transit, insufficient sleep and overcrowded homes, in addition to excessive hours of factory work, often affected the health of working boys and girls. “While engaged for twelve hours per day in the factory,” it was said of boy munition makers, “they spend in a large number of cases from two and one-half hours to four hours traveling to and from their homes.... These hours, added to the working hours, leave very little time for meals at home, recreation or sleep.”[248] Many boys and girls failed to get enough sleep because of “the temptations of the cinema and the amusements of the street.” In many cases, even when wages were high, the Health of Munition Workers Committee found that three persons occupied a single bed and four or five shared a room. The following cases were given as typical. A boy of fourteen, earning about 19s. ($4.56) weekly, slept in the same bed with two young men, while two young girls occupied another bed in the same room. A boy of sixteen, with wages averaging 22s. ($5.28) a week shared a bed with another boy, while another boy and a girl slept in the same room.
The deterioration in character among working boys was apparently even more marked than the decline in health. According to Mr. Leeson juvenile delinquency was 34 per cent greater during the three months ending February, 1916, than for a similar period in the previous year. In Manchester, the increase was 56 per cent; in Edinburgh it was 46 per cent. The delinquency of boys twelve and thirteen, the ages for which most of the school exemptions were issued, had increased in greater proportion than that of any other age group. In the London police district and ten large cities the number of children convicted by Juvenile Courts increased from 11,176 in 1914 to 16,283 in 1917.
“When every allowance has been made for the inclination of each generation to despair of the next,” said the special Committee on Juvenile Employment during the War, “it is difficult to resist the conclusion that a strain has been put upon the character of boys and girls between fourteen and eighteen which might have corrupted the integrity of Washington, and undermined the energy of Samuel Smiles. The story of a boy who met his father’s attempt to assert parental authority with the retort, ‘Wait to talk till you have earned as much as I have,’ is hardly a caricature of the immense accession both of earnings and of importance which has come, sometimes to their misfortune, to lads of sixteen and seventeen.”