In answer to these arguments, the following points have to be considered:—(a) When the children grow up, they will be influenced by the general drift from the country towards the towns, and whereas they will probably have learned no skilled trade in the country, the great majority of them will fall into the ranks of the unskilled labourers. (b) From the hygienic standpoint, it is important to remember that the town population is more intelligent, and that in towns medical aid is more readily available. Unquestionably, in the country, the only foster-parents available would be agricultural labourers and other manual labourers. In any case, this question cannot be decided on general principles, but only on a consideration of the needs of the individual case, with especial reference to the question whether the child shows an inclination towards agricultural work or manufacturing industry.
Subsidiary Aims of the Care of Foundlings.—The care of foundlings is utilised by the civil order for the attainment of its ends. This system renders possible the upbringing of submissive proletarians, immunised against socialist ideas, who can be enlisted in the reserve army of labour. From the very earliest times the existence of foundling hospitals has been justified on the ground that through their instrumentality persons were brought up who could devote their time, their working powers, and their life wholly to the State. In the beginning of the nineteenth century, children under the care of the English Poor Law were hired out to the factory owners. In Germany, among the arguments for the introduction of coercive reformatory education, it was pointed out that by this means cheaper labour could be provided for those agricultural districts in which labour was scarce. In Hungary, where a few years ago modern laws for child-protection were passed, it is constantly pointed out as the task of child-protection to bring up the children as “good patriots.” For this reason children are boarded out with “patriotic” foster-parents only, and in districts where a strong Hungarian nationalist feeling prevails, boarded-out children are hardly ever to be found. In the history of this institution, we encounter again and again the idea that foundlings should be brought up as soldiers, sailors, or colonial pioneers. Napoleon the First wished to make use of foundlings for recruiting the army, and especially for the marines. He did much to secure that in every arrondissement in France, foundling hospitals with turn-tables should be instituted; and he even arranged for the foundation of such institutions in the various countries he conquered. Quite recently the idea has once more recurred to utilise foundling hospitals and orphan asylums as recruiting grounds for the army and the navy, and with this end in view to combine these institutions with military and naval training schools.
For the attainment of these ends, the civil order has laid down the principle that from the first the children shall be brought up with an eye to the conditions awaiting them in the future—hard work, deprivation, and poverty. But this principle is only partially sound. Undoubtedly the child must be habituated to regular work, for only in this way will work be other than distasteful. But the child should be taught in such a way as to safeguard it from the lot of the great mass of unskilled labourers. The standard of life of boarded-out children should be a good one; for only if the child has been accustomed to such a standard, will it be spurred, after it had become independent, to secure the same standard by its own exertions. In the case of boarded-out children who have already begun to work for wages, the attempt on the part of employers to pay them at a specially low rate must be strenuously resisted. The reason given in such cases by the employers, that these children need much more attention than other young workpeople, is invalid. The wage in such cases should be the standard wage of the district for other workers doing the same class of work, as otherwise the young people feel exploited and oppressed. The rightful aim is thus to lift foundlings out of the lower strata into the higher strata of wage-labour.
The Tendency of Evolution.—(a) Baby-farming is distinguished from the care of foundlings only by the fact that in the former the children are entrusted to foster-parents by their relatives instead of by the local authorities. (b) The various systems for the care of foundlings tend to become continually more similar. The general tendency in every case is to have recourse to a system of family care supervised by the same administrative authority. (c) There is a tendency to assimilate the upbringing of neglected and of criminal children, and to adopt for both the same methods of family care and the same kind of supervision. (d) The same remarks apply in the case of children who have become legally liable to a coercive reformatory education. (e) In course of time the supervision of the foster-parents—indifferently whether the children committed to their care are materially or morally neglected or criminal children, and whether they are boarded out by the children’s relatives or by the local authorities—comes to be exercised by the same administrative authority and in accordance with the same principles.
To-day, baby-farming represents the first stage of evolution, the Latin system for the care of foundlings the second, the Germanic system the third, coercive reformatory education the fourth, the education of criminal children the fifth. In a comparatively short time all the different branches of child-protection will come to stand at the same level, and in so far as they relate to children neglected by their relatives, in whatever manner, they will all take the same form of family care, under a unified centralised control, and supervised locally by the same administrative authority.
[CHAPTER IV]
WOMEN’S LABOUR AND CHILD-LABOUR
History of Child-Labour.—During the Middle Ages child-labour seems not to have been very general. At the time of the guilds, improper utilisation of the working powers of children and young persons was hardly possible. Night work was unknown, and the working conditions were strictly regulated by the guilds. In the statutes of the guilds, there is no reference to child-labour; whereas, had such labour been at all common, its regulation would have been inevitable. We find, for example, in the statutes precise rules as to production, as to the sale of the finished products, as to the hours of work, as to the number of craftsmen to be employed by the individual masters, &c. As the guilds became mean-spirited, the condition of the apprentices became worse.
With the development of manufacturing industry and the growth of machine production, handicraftmanship lost its dominant position. In consequence of the industrial revolution, the guilds perished, the principle of freedom of contract was established, and in accordance with this principle the working powers of the cheapest of all objects of exploitation, children, were utilised. But the first phase of the development of capitalism was the most dangerous one, not only for youthful, but also for adult workers. In England, for example, it was towards the end of the eighteenth century that the conditions as regards child-labour were at their worst. The factory owners hired children from the workhouses and orphan asylums. These latter institutions were far from the factories, and for this reason no official supervision of the children was possible, and their care was left entirely in the hands of the factory owners. The condition of these orphan children, similarly with that of the other youthful workers, mocks every attempt at description. The most heartrending tortures were customary. They were tormented with the utmost refinement of cruelty; chained, flogged, starved to emaciation, and driven to suicide. All this is easily comprehensible. The aim of the factory owner was to utilise as rapidly as possible the opportunity resulting from the replacement of hand-labour by machine-labour, to utilise it to gain wealth for himself before machine-labour became general; he therefore procured his labour at the cheapest possible price, and exploited the working powers of his employees to the utmost limits. Before the days of capitalism, night work was unknown, and, moreover, was quite unnecessary. But with the growth of capitalist production, there came into existence a number of industries which were carried on continuously night and day, if only for the reason that any interruption of the process of production would cause a great curtailment of profit. Night work is extremely injurious in its effects, it undermines the health (sleep during the day does not adequately compensate for loss of sleep during the night), morality, and the family life of the worker (who has no time to occupy himself with his family). All these dangers are even more serious in the case of women and children.