Annie, seven years old, is a steady worker. The mother said, for her benefit, of course, “She kin beat me shuckin’, an’ she’s mighty good at housework too, but I mustn’t praise her too much right before her.”
This is only one of the means used to keep the children at work. Another method is to tell the neighbors that Annie can shuck eight pots a day. Then some other child beats the record, and so the interest is kept up, and incidentally the work is done and the family income enlarged. Can we call that motherhood? Compared with real maternity, it is a distorted perversion, a travesty. The baby at Ellis Island little dreams what is in store for him.
Hundreds of these children from four to twelve years of age are regularly employed, often as helpers, for the greater part of the six months if it is a good season. At three and four years of age they play around and help a little, “learnin’ de trade.” At five and six years of age they work more regularly, and at seven and eight years, they put in long hours every working day. This is the regular program for these children day after day, week after week for the six months of their alleged—“outing down South.”
I remarked to one of the village people, “It’s a wonder that these youngsters live through it all.”
“Yes,” she replied, “and when they don’t live through it, there is a corner over in a little cemetery waiting for them, and many of them go there.”
You see, “They’re only Hickeys.”
I suppose the cemetery is one of the “conveniences” that the company does not boast about.
CHILDREN OF THE OYSTER CANNERIES
A young girl who has been shucking six years and earns a dollar a day; a little mother who alternates baby tending and oyster shucking; a ten-year-old worker has no time for school.
The wages of these workers vary according to their locality, and the kind of season they find. The work on the shrimp is better paid than oyster shucking, but it is much more irregular. On the latter families frequently earn ten and fifteen or twenty dollars a week so when there are several children, and the work is steady, there is a great temptation to make them all help. Children of seven years earn about twenty-five cents a day, and at eight and ten years of age often fifty cents a day or more. At twelve and fourteen years they frequently earn as high as a dollar a day and this is adult pay. The fastest adult shucker seldom earns much more than a dollar a day after years of experience. What then is the outlook for children beginning this industry?