The Children of the Poor

by Jacob A. Riis

SHINE, SIR?

And she adds: “Wages have steadily decreased. Among the women who earned the whole or part of the income the finishing of pantaloons was the most common occupation. For this work in 1881 they received ten to fifteen cents per pair; for the same work in 1891 three to five, at the most ten cents per pair. When the women have paid the express charges to and from the factory there is little margin left for profit. The women doing this work claim that wages are reduced because of the influx of Italian women.” The rent has not fallen, however, and the need of every member of the family contributing by his or her work to its keep is greater than ever. The average total wages of 160 families whom the doctor personally treated and interrogated during the year was $5.99 per week, while the average rent was $8.62¾. The list included twenty-three different occupations and trades. The maximum wages was $19, earned by three persons in one family; the minimum $1.50, by a woman finishing pantaloons and living in one room for which she paid $4 a month rent! In nearly every instance observed by Dr. Daniel, the children’s wages, when there were working children, was the greater share of the family income. A specimen instance is that of a woman with a consumptive husband, who is under her treatment. The wife washes and goes out by the day, when she can get such work to do. The three children, aged eleven, seven, and five years, not counting the baby for a wonder, work at home covering wooden buttons with silk at four cents a gross. The oldest goes to school, but works with the rest evenings and on Saturday and Sunday, when the mother does the finishing. Their combined earnings are from $3 to $6 a week, the children earning two-thirds. The rent is $8 a month.

The doctor’s observations throw a bright side-light upon the economic home conditions that lie at the root of this problem of child labor in the factories. With that I have not done. Taking the Factory Inspector’s report for 1890, the last at that time available, I found that in that year his deputies got around to 2,147 of the 11,000 workshops (the number given in the report) in the Second district, which is that portion of New York south of Twenty-third Street. In other words, they visited less than one-fifth of them all. They found 1,102 boys and 1,954 girls under sixteen at work; 3,485 boys under eighteen, and 12,701 girls under twenty-one, as nearly as I could make the footings. The figures alone are instructive, as showing the preponderance of girls in the shops. The report, speaking of the State as a whole, congratulates the community upon the alleged fact “that the policy of employing very young children in manufactories has been practically abolished.” It states that “since the enactment of the law the sentiment among employers has become nearly unanimous in favor of its stringent enforcement,” and that it “has had the further important effect of preventing newly arrived non-English speaking foreigners from forcing their children into factories before they learned the language of the country,” these being “now compelled to send their children to school, for a time at least, until they can qualify under the law.” Further, “the system of requiring sworn certificates, giving the name, date, and place of birth of all children under sixteen years of age ... has resulted in causing parents to be very cautious about making untrue statements of the ages of their children.” The deputies “are aware of the various subterfuges which have been tried in order to evade the law and put children at labor before the legal time,” and the Factory Inspector is “happy to say that they are not often imposed upon by such tactics.”

Without wading through nearly seventy pages of small print it was not possible to glean from the report how many of the “under sixteen” workers were really under fourteen, or so adjudged. A summary of what has been accomplished since 1886 showed that 1,614 children under fourteen were discharged by the Inspector in the Second District in that time, and that 415 were discharged because they could not read or write simple sentences in the English language. The “number of working children who could not read and write English” was in 1890 alone 252, according to the report, or more than one-half of the whole number discharged in the four years, which does not look as if the law had had much effect in that way, at least in New York city. I determined to see for myself what were the facts.

I visited a number of factories, in a few instances accompanied by the deputy factory inspector, more frequently alone. Where it was difficult to gain admission I watched at the door when the employees were going to or coming from work, finding that on the whole the better plan, as affording a fairer view of the children and a better opportunity to judge of their age than when they sat at their work-benches. I found many shops in which there were scarcely any children, some from which they had been driven, so I was informed by the inspectors. But where manufacturers were willing to employ their labor—and this I believe to be quite generally the case where children’s labor can be made to pay—I found the age certificate serving as an excellent protection for the employer, never for the child. I found the law considered as a good joke by some conscienceless men, who hardly took the trouble to see that the certificates were filled out properly; loudly commended by others whom it enabled, at the expense of a little perjury in which they had no hand, to fill up their shops with cheap labor, with perfect security to themselves. The bookkeeper in an establishment of the conscienceless kind told me with glee how a boy who had been bounced there three times in one year, upon his return each time had presented a sworn certificate giving a different age. He was fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen years old upon the records of the shop, until the inspectors caught him one day and proved him only thirteen. I found boys at work, posing as seventeen, who had been so recorded in the same shop three full years, and were thirteen at most. As seventeen-year freaks they could have made more money in a dime museum than at the work-bench, only the museum would have required something more convincing than the certificate that satisfied the shop. Some of these boys were working at power-presses and doing other work beyond their years. An examination of their teeth often disproved their stories as to their age. It was not always possible to make this test, for the children seemed to see something funny in it, and laughed and giggled so, especially the girls, as to make it difficult to get a good look. Some of the girls, generally those with decayed teeth,[9] would pout and refuse to show them. These were usually American girls, that is to say, they were born here. The greater number of the child-workers I questioned were foreigners, and our birth returns could have given no clue to them. The few natives were alert and on the defensive from the moment they divined my purpose. They easily defeated it by giving a false address.

I finally picked out a factory close to my office where Italian girls were employed in large numbers, and made it my business to ascertain the real ages of the children. They seemed to me, going and coming, to average twelve or thirteen years. The year before the factory inspector had reported that nearly a hundred girls “under sixteen” were employed there. She had discharged sixty of them as unable to read or write English. I went to see the manufacturers. They were not disposed to help me and fell back on their certificates—no child was employed by them without one—until I told them that my purpose was not to interfere with their business but to prove that a birth-certificate was the only proper warrant for employment of child-labor.

“Why,” said the manufacturer, in his astonishment forgetting that he had just told me his children were all of age, “my dear sir! would you throw them all out of work?”

It was what I expected. I found out eventually that a number of the children attended the evening classes in the Leonard Street Italian School, and there one rainy night I corralled twenty-three of them, all but one officially certified under oath to be fourteen or sixteen. But for the rain I might have found twice the number. The twenty-three I polled, comparing their sworn age with the entry in the school register, which the teachers knew to be correct. This was the result: one was eleven years old and had worked in the factory a year; one, also eleven, had just been engaged and was going for her certificate that night; three were twelve years old, and had worked in the factory from one month to a year; seven were thirteen, and of them three had worked in the shop two years, the others one; nine were fourteen; one of them had been there three years, four others two years, the rest shorter terms; one was fifteen and had worked in the factory three years; the last and tallest was sixteen and had been employed in the one shop four years. She said with a laugh that she had a “certificate of sixteen” when she first went there. Not one of them all was of legal age when she went to work in the shop, under the warrant of her parents’ oath. The majority were not even then legally employed, since of those who had passed fourteen there were several who could not read simple sentences in English intelligibly; yet they had been at work in the factory for months and years. One of the eleven-year workers, who felt insulted somehow, said spitefully that “I needn’t bother, there was lots of other girls in the shop younger than she.” I have no doubt she was right. I should add that the firm was a highly respectable one, and its members of excellent social standing.

I learned incidentally where the convenient certificates came from, at least those that were current in that school. They were issued, the children said, free of charge, by a benevolent undertaker in the ward. I thought at first that it was a bid for business, or real helpfulness. The neighborhood undertaker is often found figuring suggestively as the nearest friend of the poor in his street, when they are in trouble. But I found out afterward that it was politics combined with business. The undertaker was an Irishman and an active organizer of his district. Unpolitical notaries charged twenty-five cents for each certificate. This one made them out for nothing. All they had to do was to call for them. The girls laughed scornfully at the idea of there being anything wrong in the transaction. Their parents swore in a good cause. They needed the money. The end conveniently justified the means in their case. Besides “they merely had to touch the pen.” Evidently, any argument in favor of education could scarcely be expected to have effect upon parents who thus found in their own ignorance a valid defence against an accusing conscience as well as a source of added revenue.

My experience satisfied me that the factory law has had little effect in prohibiting child labor in the factories of New York City, although it may have had some in stimulating attendance at the night schools. The census figures, when they appear, will be able to throw no valuable light on the subject. The certificate lie naturally obstructs the census as it does the factory law. The one thing that is made perfectly clear by even such limited inquiry as I have been able to make, is that a birth certificate should be substituted for the present sworn warrant, if it is intended to make a serious business of the prohibition. In the piles upon piles of these which I saw, I never came across one copy of the birth registry. There are two obstacles to such a change. One is that our birth returns are at present incomplete; the other, that most of the children are not born here. Concerning the first, the Registrar of Vital Statistics estimates that he is registering nearly or quite a thousand births a month less than actually occur in New York; but even that is a great improvement upon the record of a few years ago. The registered birthrate is increasing year by year, and experience has shown that a determination on the part of the Board of Health to prosecute doctors and midwives who neglect their duty brings it up with a rush many hundreds in a few weeks. A wholesome strictness at the Health Office on this point would in a short time make it a reliable guide for the Factory Inspector in the enforcement of the law. The other objection is less serious than it appears at first sight. Immigrants might be required to provide birth certificates from their old homes, where their children are sure to be registered under the stringent laws of European governments. But as a matter of fact that would not often be necessary. They all have passports in which the name and ages of their children are set down. The claim that they had purposely registered them as younger to cheapen transportation, which they would be sure to make, need not be considered seriously. One lie is as good and as easy as another.