20. The shortening of the working day.
21. Effect of the World War upon relations between labor and capital.
CHAPTER XIX
HEALTH IN INDUSTRY
197. INDUSTRY AND HEALTH.—Wherever the Industrial Revolution has progressed beyond the initial stages, there has been an enormous increase in wealth and prosperity. At the same time, serious evils have accompanied the transition from a relatively simple agricultural stage to a stage dominated by the factory system. The tendency toward overcrowding in rapidly growing cities, the difficulties of maintaining a normal family life where mother or children are employed in factories, and the danger of overstrain, accident and disease in industrial pursuits, all these factors render very important the problem of health in industry.
Though health in industry is only one phase of the general problem of health, it will be impossible here to exhaust even that one phase. We shall accordingly confine ourselves to the discussion of three questions: first, child labor; second, the employment of women in industrial pursuits; and third, the insurance of our industrial population against accident, sickness, old age and unemployment.
198. CHILD LABOR: EXTENT AND CAUSES.—There are in this country more than two million children between the ages of ten and fifteen, engaged in gainful occupations. In all sections of the country large numbers of children are found in agriculture, this industry generally being beyond the scope of child labor laws. The employment of children in factories, mines, quarries, mills, and shops, on the other hand, is now considerably restricted by law. This is true of all parts of the country. However, child labor is still of wide extent in the United States, due to the large number of children found in agriculture, domestic service, street trades, stores, messenger service, and tenement homework.
Of the immediate causes of child labor one of the most important is the poverty of the parents. Where the parents are themselves day laborers, it is often considered necessary or desirable to increase the family earnings by putting the children to work.
From the standpoint of the employer child labor is rendered possible and even desirable by the development of types of work easily performed by small children. In many cases the tendency of parents to put young children to work is encouraged by the lax administration of school attendance laws. This tendency has also been encouraged by the indifference of the public to the evil effects of child labor.
199. EFFECTS OF CHILD LABOR.—Students of the problem of child labor unanimously condemn the practice of habitually employing young children outside the home. Where poorly paid children compete with men and women, they serve either to displace adults, or, by competition, to lower the wages of adults.