The Elements of Child-protection

by Sigmund Engel

Regulation of Women’s Labour.—Night labour for women is in some cases forbidden, in others allowed under certain restrictions. The employment of women in mines and in certain other extremely dangerous occupations is forbidden. The employment of women for a certain number of weeks after childbirth is also forbidden. From various sides we hear a proposal that women should be permitted to work as half-timers—that is, for half the working day. It is suggested, to secure continuity of work, that the women should work (during the daytime only) in two shifts, half the women employees during the morning, the other half during the afternoon. The advocates of this proposal suggest that the women on the morning shift could attend to their domestic duties in the afternoon, and, conversely, that those on the afternoon shift could attend to their domestic duties in the morning, and that the supervision and care of the children could be mutually arranged by the members of the two shifts. Most of the advocates of this system propose merely its introduction as an optional measure—that is to say, that women who wish to work the whole day should not be forbidden to do so; and they also propose that it should be applicable in the case of married women only. In any case, we cannot expect great things from any such system.

Reform of Apprenticeship.—To-day much thought is given to the question of the reform of apprenticeship, which indeed stands greatly in need of reform. The technical education of the present day is extremely defective. The smaller employers are unable to give proper instruction, because they lack both time and capacity. The training of the apprentices in the larger factories is also scrappy, because the division of labour is of such a kind that none of the employees have time to give to the instruction of apprentices, and these latter therefore receive no more than a partial technical education. Moreover, the owners of the larger factories are unwilling to receive apprentices, because, if they do this, their factories are subjected to a number of additional inconvenient regulations. The apprentice no longer belongs, as in former times, to the master’s family, and no longer receives his education there; indeed, many masters do not even provide board and lodging for their apprentices, and in that case the latter are apt to be greatly neglected. It is obvious that great stress must be laid upon the technical education of apprentices. But no importance can be attached to the argument that through a proper education of the apprentices an improvement would be effected in the conditions of the lesser industries. What is necessary is that the State should provide technical schools, and itself undertake in these the education of apprentices. In some countries quite a number of such technical schools have been founded, but, owing to the great cost of these schools, the complete abolition of the system of the nominal instruction of apprentices at the hands of their masters is not at present to be expected. Homes of technical instruction for girls are also greatly needed, and do already exist in many places. But such homes must on no account be under the management of the Church, nor must they be dominated in any degree by the so-called religious spirit. Their sole object is to provide for these learners board and lodging on the same scale as they would have if they were in service, and to provide them with opportunities of seeking employment during their free time. A further crying need is the organisation, not of apprentices only, but of the younger workmen and workwomen generally. The organisation of the workers is the most effective means for the prevention of their ill-treatment at the hands of their employers.

The general attitude of socialists and trade-unionists towards apprenticeship is the following: Many trade-unions insist that in collective bargains between workpeople and their employers there should be stipulations as to the maximum number of apprentices to be employed by each individual master; before the contracts of apprenticeship are signed, the unions call the attention of the relatives of the proposed apprentice to the unfavourable position occupied by the apprentices in certain branches of industry, and warn the relatives against certain employers who are well known to treat their apprentices badly; some unions found their own technical schools. No attention whatever need be paid to the objection that such activities on the part of trade-unions tend towards the revival of the old guild system.

Enforcement of such Regulations.—To secure a really effective protection for women’s labour and child-labour, it is necessary that women and children should be protected in all branches of labour, including agriculture and domestic service. If the protection and regulation are limited to certain branches of labour, the inevitable result is that women and children are driven out of the protected and regulated, into the unprotected and unregulated trades. (This was the experience in Germany, for example, as a sequel of the law passed in the year 1891.) It is, above all, necessary that home industry should be regulated, as, in default of this, no satisfactory results can be expected. It is further essential that all children should be protected, regardless of the relationship they may bear to the employer. Employers related to the children they employ must be subject to regulation just as much as others, for it is well known that relatives who have once begun to exploit their own children tend to become the most inconsiderate of all those who overdrive youthful workers.

In the larger workshops, and in factories, the requisite strict and continuous regulation of all the circumstances which might affect children unfavourably is rendered fairly easy, owing to the fact that the number of such large establishments is comparatively small. But the stringency and reality of the supervision still leave much to be desired, owing to the great influence possessed by wealthy property owners. In almost every country, year after year, the factory inspectors report that the regulations for the protection of children working in factories are evaded, and yet the local authorities are powerless to remedy these abuses. Where children work in their own families, or in small workshops, the conditions are always less favourable, owing to the close and intimate relationship that obtains in these cases between child and employer. Inasmuch as the number of families engaged in home industries and employed at small workshops runs into millions, and in view of the circumstance previously mentioned, that the protection of child home-workers involves an interference with parental authority, regulation is here a much more difficult matter.

The executive authorities to which is entrusted the enforcement of these protective regulations are: medical practitioners, factory inspectors, local governing bodies, police, and school teachers. It is essential that the part played by the medical practitioner should be largely extended. Permission for a child to undertake wage-labour should depend absolutely upon the permission of a certifying physician; the doctors should examine all the workplaces with an eye to their hygienic requirements; and from time to time they should examine the female and youthful employees, to make sure that their work is not injurious to their health. But we are still far from the adoption of these simple and yet essential measures. The rôle of the factory inspectors is especially important, because the enforcement of regulations for the protection of labour is one of their principal and specific duties. In many of the States of the American Union, in France, in England, and in many of the federated States of the German Empire, there already exist female factory inspectors. The school teachers play an important part in regulation. They are constantly in contact with the children, know their special circumstances, are in a position to note abnormalities as they appear, and readily ascertain the causes of such abnormalities. Above all, is their rôle an important one in relation to the control of domestic industry.

Objections to the Protective Regulation of the Labour of Women and Children.—Many objections have been advanced, chiefly by the employers of labour, against the protective regulations we have been considering. Most of these objections were first heard in England more than a century ago, at the time of the first legislation for the protection of child-workers; but they are continually and loudly reiterated to-day. They are the following: (a) Arduous physical toil, the work of the proletarians, women’s labour, are merely parts of the struggle for existence with which we have no business to interfere. (b) The work of women and children is indispensable to modern industry, for certain of its processes can be carried out only by women, or by children, as the case may be. (c) The work is not injurious to the health either of women or of children; on the contrary, it does them good. (d) The children ought to be at work, otherwise they are either loafing about the streets or making themselves a nuisance to their parents at home. (e) To abolish women’s labour and child-labour would simply be to deprive them of their means of livelihood. (f) The suppression of women’s labour and child-labour renders it more difficult for national industry to compete with foreign industry; indeed, it threatens the very existence of the national industry. (g) Many advocates of the emancipation of women oppose the protection of women’s labour on the ground that such protection limits women’s right to sell their labour. (h) In regions inhabited by two or more nationalities regarded as being of unequal value, it is thought to be permissible to exploit the labour of the women and children of the reputedly inferior race. (In the United States of America, for example, we are told that the question is not one concerning American children, but one concerning Slavonic and Italian children, which, however hard they may have to work, are yet better off than they would have been in their own fatherland. It is worthy of remark that in the United States of America, especially in the Southern and the Western States, the conditions in the matter of child-labour are much the same as those that obtained in England at the beginning of the nineteenth century.)

These Objections Answered.—(a) The answer to this and to similar arguments was given in our discussion of Darwinism in relation to child-protection. (b) There are no processes for whose performance women and children are indispensable. When, for certain stages of manufacture, women and children are unobtainable, these stages are very well performed by men or by machinery. (c) This is true only when the conditions of work are properly regulated. (d) It is true that certain work may exercise an educative influence; but wage-labour is entirely devoid of moralising and educative influences. When we are told that by putting the child to work it learns to love work, that it becomes thrifty and diligent, that it is restrained from vagabondage, we may answer, that under present conditions wage-labour for children has the very opposite effects. If child-labour in factories and workshops really exerted such an educative influence as the employers pretend, why do they not send their own children to work in the factories, and why do they reserve these advantages for the children of the proletariat? (f) Wherever, in certain branches of industry, woman’s labour and child-labour have been forbidden, as, for example, in England, the following results have been noted. An improvement in working conditions is invariably followed by an increase in the intensity of the work performed, and also by an improvement in its quality. Manufacturing industry does not come to a standstill because, in consequence of regulation, certain processes previously performed by women and children have now to be carried out by machines or by men; on the contrary, as a result of this, the industry becomes more vigorous and more efficient. It does so, first of all, because the latest improvements in technique are perforce adopted when cheap labour can no longer be exploited; in the second place, because the health of the workers, upon which above all the efficiency of the industry depends, is increased. Regulation therefore actually increases the power of a national industry to make headway against foreign competition. We have also to remember that the same objections that we are now considering have been advanced against the protection of adult male labour, and have been shown by experience to be invalid in this case also. This objection commonly makes its appearance in the following form: in many branches of industry the protection of the workers increases the cost of production and lowers the quality of the goods produced; this resulted, for example, when the use in certain processes of lead, mercury, phosphorus, and arsenic was forbidden, and the sequel was that the commodities in question were imported from countries in which such protection of labour did not exist. But this argument is in fact an argument for the internationalisation of the legislative protection of labour. For it involves an admission that the disadvantages of such regulation cease to exist when in a number of competing countries like measures of protection prevail, so that no one of the countries enjoys in this respect any commercial advantage over the others. It is an actual fact that in very recent years the international regulation of women’s labour and child-labour on uniform lines has made enormous advances. The very fact that the protection of women’s labour and child-labour tends to lead ultimately to the adoption of a uniform international code, is an extremely favourable phenomenon, in harmony with the general tendency of evolution. (g) The argument from the side of the advocates for the emancipation of women is fundamentally false. It does not tend towards women’s emancipation to leave women free to seek their own destruction. If the protection of women’s labour leads to injurious results, the only conclusion we can properly draw from this fact is that our regulation must be effected in some other manner, so that these injurious results may no longer occur. (h) The argument about the inferior races is a very dangerous one. The rights of women and children are identical, to whatever nationality they may happen to belong. We might just as well maintain that the exploitation of the labour power of the proletariat is quite justifiable on the ground that the proletariat is of inferior quality to the other classes of society. And if we are told that women and children are better off in the factories and workshops than they are in their own homes, the obvious answer to this is that, in that case, it is absolutely essential that the conditions of their domestic life should be improved.