Part 13

In a report upon the physical conditions of child workers in Pennsylvania, the Rev. Peter Roberts has discussed at some length the moral dangers of factory employment for children. He quotes an Allentown physician as saying, “No vice was unknown to many of the girls of fifteen working in the factories of the city;” and another physician in the same city said, “There are more unhappy homes, ruined lives, blasted hopes, and diseased bodies in Allentown than any other city of its size, because of the factories there.” Another physician, in Lancaster, is quoted as saying that he had “treated boys of ten years old and upwards for venereal affections which they had contracted.”[134] In upwards of a score of factory towns I have had very similar testimony given to me by physicians and others. The proprietor of a large drug store in a New England factory town told me that he had never known a place where the demand for cheap remedies for venereal diseases was so great, and _that many of those who bought them were boys under fifteen_.

Nor is it only in factories that these grosser forms of immorality flourish. They are even more prevalent among the children of the street trades, newsboys, bootblacks, messengers, and the like. The proportion of newsboys who suffer from venereal diseases is alarmingly great. The Superintendent of the John Worthy School of Chicago, Mr. Sloan, asserts that “One-third of all the newsboys who come to the John Worthy School have venereal disease, and that 10 per cent of the remaining newsboys at present in the Bridewell are, according to the physicians’ diagnosis, suffering from similar diseases.”[135] The newsboys who come to the school are, according to Mr. Sloan, on an average one-third below the ordinary standard of physical development, a condition which will be readily understood by those who know the ways of the newsboys of our great cities—their irregular habits, scant feeding, sexual excesses, secret vices, sleeping in hallways, basements, stables, and quiet corners. With such a low physical standard the ravages of venereal diseases are tremendously increased.

The messenger boys and the American District Telegraph boys are frequently found in the worst resorts of the “red-light” districts of our cities. In New York there are hundreds of such boys, ranging in age from twelve to fifteen, who know many of the prostitutes of the Tenderloin by name. Sad to relate, boys like to be employed in the “red-light” districts. They like it, not because they are bad or depraved, but for the very natural reason that they make more money there, receiving larger and more numerous tips. They are called upon for many services by the habitués of these haunts of the vicious and the profligate. They are sent out to place bets; to take notes to and from houses of ill-fame; or to buy liquor, cigarettes, candy, and even gloves, shoes, corsets, and other articles of wearing apparel for the “ladies.” Not only are tips abundant, but there are many opportunities for graft of which the boys avail themselves. A lad is sent, for instance, for a bottle of whiskey. He is told to get a certain brand at a neighboring hotel, but he knows where he can get the same brand for 50 per cent of the hotel price, and, naturally, he goes there for it and pockets the difference in price. That is one form of messengers’ graft. Another is overcharging for his services and pocketing the surplus, or keeping the change from a “ten-spot” or a “fiver,” when, as often happens, the “sports” are either too reckless to bother about such trifles or too drunk to remember. From sources such as these the messenger boy in a district like the Tenderloin will often make several dollars a day.[136]

A whole series of temptations confronts the messenger boy. He smokes, drinks, gambles, and, very often, patronizes the lowest class of cheap brothels. In answering calls from houses of ill-repute messengers cannot avoid being witnesses of scenes of licentiousness more or less frequently. By presents of money, fruit, candy, cigarettes, and even liquor, the women make friends of the boys, who quickly learn all the foul slang of the brothels.[137] The conversation of a group of messengers in such a district will often reveal the most astounding intimacy with the grossest things of the underworld. That in their adolescence, the transition from boyhood to manhood, fraught as it is with its own inherent perils, they should be thrown into such an environment and exposed to such temptations is an evil which cannot possibly be overemphasized. The penal code of New York declares the sending of minors to carry messages to or from a house of ill-fame to be a misdemeanor, but the law is a dead letter. It cannot possibly be enforced, and its repeal would probably be a good thing. While it may be urged that the mere existence of such a law has a certain moral value as a condemnation of such a dangerous employment for boys, it is exceedingly doubtful if that good is sufficient to counterbalance the harm which comes from the non-enforcement of the law.

I have dwelt mainly upon the grosser vices associated with street employment, as with employment in factories and mines, because it is a phase of the subject about which too little is known. I need scarcely say, however, that these vices are not the only ones to which serious attention should be given. Crime naturally results from such conditions. Of 600 boys committed to the New York Juvenile Asylum by the courts, 125 were newsboys who had been committed for various offences ranging from ungovernableness and disorderly conduct to grand larceny.[138] Mr. Nibecker, Superintendent of the House of Refuge at Glen Mills, near Philadelphia, was asked, “Have you, in disproportionate numbers, boys who formerly were engaged in some one particular occupation?” He replied promptly, “Yes, district messengers.”[139] It seems to be the almost unanimous opinion of probation officers and other competent authorities in our large cities that messenger boys and newsboys furnish an exceedingly large proportion of cases of juvenile delinquency. I wrote to six probation officers in as many large cities asking them to give me their opinions as to the classes of occupation which seem to have the largest number of juvenile delinquents. Their replies are summarized in the following schedule:—

OCCUPATIONS OF JUVENILE DELINQUENTS IN SIX LARGE CITIES, SHOWING THE RELATIVE NUMBER OF EACH OCCUPATION

═══════╤═══════════════╤═══════════════╤═══════════════╤═══════════════ REPORT │ A │ B │ C │ D ───────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼─────────────── 1 │Messenger boys │Newsboys │Factory boys │Miscellaneous 2 │Newsboys │Messenger boys │Factory boys │Truants 3 │Newsboys │Messenger boys │Truants │Factory boys 4 │Messenger boys │Factory boys │Newsboys │Miscellaneous 5 │Messenger boys │Newsboys │Truants │Miscellaneous 6 │Factory boys │Truants │Messenger boys │Newsboys ═══════╧═══════════════╧═══════════════╧═══════════════╧═══════════════

In six smaller cities, where the number of factory workers is much larger in proportion than in the great cities, and the number of newsboys and messengers is much smaller, the results were somewhat different. The following schedule is interesting as a summary of the replies received from these towns:—

OCCUPATIONS OF JUVENILE DELINQUENTS IN SIX TOWNS OF LESS THAN 100,000 INHABITANTS, SHOWING THE RELATIVE NUMBER OF EACH OCCUPATION[E]

═══════╤═══════════════╤═══════════════╤═══════════════╤═══════════════ REPORT │ A │ B │ C │ D ───────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼─────────────── 1 │Mine boys │Truants │Messenger boys │Miscellaneous 2 │Glass-house │Other factory │Miscellaneous │Truants │ boys │ boys │ │ 3 │Mill boys │Messenger boys │Truants │Miscellaneous 4 │Mill boys │Mine boys │Truants │Miscellaneous 5 │Mill boys │Truants │Newsboys │Miscellaneous 6 │Mine boys │Messenger boys │Miscellaneous │Truants ═══════╧═══════════════╧═══════════════╧═══════════════╧═══════════════

These facts, and other facts of a like nature, are only indicative of the ill effects of child labor upon the morals of the children. In some cases the moral peril lies in the nature of the work itself, while in others it lies, not in the work, but in the conditions by which it is surrounded. In the Chicago Stock Yards, for example, judging by what I saw there, I should say that in most, if not all, of the departments the work itself is degrading and brutalizing, and that no person under eighteen years of age ought to be permitted to work in them. In large laundries little girls are very commonly employed as “sorters.” Their work is to sort out the soiled clothes as they come in and to classify them. While such work must be disagreeable and unwholesome for a young girl, there is nothing necessarily demoralizing about it. But when such little girls are compelled to work with men and women of the coarsest and most illiterate type, as they frequently are, and to listen to constant conversation charged with foul suggestions, it becomes a soul-destroying occupation. At its best, even when all possible efforts are made to keep the place of employment pure and above reproach—and I know that there are many such places—still the whole tendency of child labor is in the direction of a lower moral standard. The feeling of independence caused by the ability to earn wages, the relaxation of parental authority, with the result that the children roam the streets at night or frequent places of amusement of questionable character; the ruthless destruction of the bloom of youthful innocence and the forced consciousness of life properly belonging to adult years—these are inevitably associated with child labor.

X

These are some of the ills which child labor inflicts upon the children themselves, ills which do not end with their childhood days but curse and blight all their after years. The child who is forced to be a man too soon, forced too early to enter the industrial strife of the world, ceases to _be_ a man too soon, ceases to be _fit_ for the industrial strife. When the strength is sapped in childhood there is an absence of strength in manhood and womanhood; Ruskin’s words are profoundly true, that “to be a man too soon is to be a small man.” We are to-day using up the vitality of children; soon they will be men and women, without the vitality and strength necessary to maintain themselves and their dependants. When we exploit the immature strength of little children, we prepare recruits for the miserable army of the unfit and unemployable, whose lot is a shameful and debasing poverty.

This wrong to helpless childhood carries with it, therefore, a certain and dreadful retribution. It is not possible to injure a child without injuring society. Whatever burden society lays, or permits to be laid, upon the shoulders of its children, it must ultimately bear upon its own. Society’s interest in the child may be well expressed in a slight paraphrase of the words of Jesus, “Whatsoever is done to one of the least of these little ones is done unto me.” It is in that spirit that the advocates of child-labor legislation would have the nation forbid the exploitation, literally the exhaustion, of children by self-interested employers. For the abuse of childhood by individual antisocial interests, society as a whole must pay the penalty. If we neglect the children of to-day, and sap their strength so that they become weaklings, we must bear the burden of their failures when they fail and fall:—

“There is a sacred Something on all ways— Something that watches through the Universe; One that remembers, reckons and repays, Giving us love for love, and curse for curse.”

It is a well-known fact that the competition of children with their elders entails serious consequences of a twofold nature,—first, in the displacement of adults, and, second, in the lowering of their wage standards. There are few things more tragic in the modern industrial system than the sight of children working while their fathers can find no other employment than to carry dinners to them. I know that many persons are always ready to suggest that the fathers like this unnatural arrangement, that they prefer to live upon the earnings of their little ones, and there are, no doubt, cases in which this is true. But in the majority of cases it is not true. Every one who is at all familiar with the lives of the workers must realize that when applied indiscriminately to the mass of those who find themselves in that condition of dependence upon their children’s labor, this view is a gross libel. Some months ago, I stood outside of a large clothing factory in Rochester, N.Y. Upon the front of the building, as upon several others in the street, there hung a painted sign, such as I have seen there many times, bearing the inscription, “Small Girls Wanted.” While I stood there two men passed by and I heard one of them say to the other: “That’s fourteen places we’ve seen they want kids to-day, Bill, but we’ve tramped round all week an’ never got sight of a job.” I have known many earnest, industrious men to be weeks at a time seeking employment while their children could get places without difficulty. The displacement of adult workers by their children is a stern and sad feature of the competition of the labor market, which no amount of cynicism can dispose of.

A brief study of the returns published in the bulletins and reports of the various bureaus of labor and the labor unions will show that child labor tends to lower the wages of adult workers. Where the competition of children is a factor wages are invariably lowest. Two or three years ago I was associated in a small way with an agitation carried on by the members of the Cigarmakers’ Union in Pennsylvania against the “Cigar Trust.” One of the principal issues in that agitation was the employment of young children. The labor unions have always opposed child labor, for the reason that they know from experience how its employment tends to displace adult labor and to reduce wages. In the case of the cigarmakers’ agitation the chief grievance was the fact that children were making for $2 and $2.50 per thousand the same class of cigars as the men were paid from $7.50 to $8 per thousand for making.[140] The men worked under fairly decent, human conditions, but the conditions under which the children worked were positively inhuman. That such competition as that, if extensive, must result in the gradual displacement of men and the employment of children, accompanied by the reduction of the wages of the men fortunate enough to be allowed to remain at work, is, I think, self-evident. In their turn the unemployment of adults and the lowering of wages are fruitful sources of poverty, and force the employment of many children.

These are some of the most obvious immediate economic consequences of child labor, simple facts which we can readily grasp. But there are other, subtler and less obvious, economic consequences of even greater importance, so vast that their magnitude cannot be measured nor even guessed. It is impossible to conceive how much we lose through the lessened productive capacity of those who have been prematurely exploited, and even if that were possible, we should still have to face the stupendous problem of determining how much of our expenditure for the relief of poverty, caring for the diseased and crippled, and the expensive maintenance of a large criminal class in prisons and reformatories, has been rendered necessary by that same fundamental cause. It is an awful, bewildering problem, this ultimate economic cost of child labor to society. If it were proposed to saddle the bulk of these expenditures for the relief of the necessitous and the maintenance of the diseased, maimed, and criminal classes upon the industries in which their energies were used up, their bodies maimed, or their moral natures perverted and destroyed, there would be a great outcry. Yet, it would be much more reasonable and just than the present system, which permits the physical, mental, and moral ruin to be carried on in the selfish and sordid interests of a class, and the imposition of the resulting burden of misery and failure upon the shoulders of society as a whole.

XI

What are the reasons for the employment of children? It is almost needless to argue that child labor is socially unnecessary, that the labor of little boys and girls is not required in order that wealth sufficient for the needs of society may be produced. If such a claim were made, it would be an all-sufficing reply to point to the great army of unemployed men in our midst, and to say that the last man must be employed before the employment of the first child can be justified. When there is not an unemployed man, when there is not a man employed in useless, unproductive, and wasteful labor, if there is then a shortage of the things necessary for social maintenance, child labor may be necessary and justifiable. Under any other conditions than these it is unjustifiable and brutally wrong. In the primitive struggle with the hostile forces of nature, such struggles as pioneers have had in all lands before the deserts could be made to yield harvests of fruit and grain, the labor of wives and children has been necessary to supplement that of husbands and fathers. But what would be thought of the men, under such conditions, if they forced their wives and children to work while they idled, ate, and slept? Yet that is, essentially, the practice of modern industrial society. Here is a great country with natural resources unparalleled in human experience for their richness and variety; here labor is so productive, and inventive genius so highly developed, that wealth overflows our granaries and warehouses, and forces us to seek foreign markets for its disposal. The children employed in our factories are not employed because it would otherwise be impossible to produce the necessities of life for the nation. The little five-year-old girl seen by Miss Addams working at night in a Southern cotton mill was not so employed because it was necessary in order that the American people might have enough cotton goods to supply their needs. On the contrary, she was making sheeting for the Chinese Army![141] Not that she or those by whom she was employed had any interest in the Chinese Army, but because there was a prospective profit for the manufacturer in the making of sheeting for sale to China for the use of her soldiers. The manufacturer would just as readily have sacrificed little American girls in the manufacture of beads for Hottentots, or gilt idols for poor Hindoo ryots, if the profit were equal.

That is the root of the child-labor evil; it has no social justification and exists only for the sordid gain of profit-seekers. It is not difficult, therefore, to understand the manufacturers’ interest in child labor, or their opposition to all efforts to legislate against it. Cheap production is the maxim of success in industry, and a plentiful supply of cheap labor is a powerful contributor to that end. The principal items in productive cost are the raw material and the labor necessary, the relative importance of each depending upon the nature of the industry itself. Now, it is obviously to the interest of the manufacturer, as manufacturer, to get both raw material and labor-power as cheaply as possible, whether the industry in which he is interested is governed by competitive, or monopolistic, or any intermediate conditions. If competition rules, cheapness is vitally important to him, since if he can get an advantage over his competitors in that respect he can undersell them, while if he fails to get his supplies of labor and raw material as cheaply as his competitors, he will be undersold. If, on the other hand, monopoly conditions prevail, it is still an important interest to secure them as cheaply as possible, thereby increasing his profit.

It is an axiom of commercial economy that supply follows demand, and it is certain that the constant demand for the cheap, tractable labor of children has had much to do with the creation of the supply. At bottom the employers, or, rather, the system of production for profit, must be held responsible for child labor. There are evidences of this on every hand. We see manufacturers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania getting children from orphan asylums, regardless of their physical, mental, and moral ruin, merely because it _pays_ them. When the glass-blowers of Minotola, N.J., went on strike, in 1902, the child-labor question was one of their most important issues. The exposures made of the frightful enslavement of little children attracted widespread attention. There is very little in the history of the English factory system which excels in horror the conditions which existed in that little South Jersey town at the beginning of the twentieth century.[142] When the proprietor of the factory was asked about the employment of young boys ten and eleven years of age, many of whom often fell asleep and were awakened by the men pouring water over them, and at least two of whom died from overexhaustion, he said: “If two men apply to me for work and one has one or two or three children and the other has none, I take the man with children. I need the boys.” In actual practice this meant that no man could get work as a glass-blower unless he was able to bring boys with him. A regular padrone system was developed in consequence of this: the glass-blowers, determined to keep their own boys out of the factories if possible, secured children from orphan asylums, or took the little boys of Italian immigrants, boarded them, and paid the parents a regular weekly sum.

In the mills of the South it is frequently made a condition of the employment of married men or women that all their children shall be bound to work in the same mills. The following is one of the rules posted in a South Carolina cotton mill:—

“All children, members of a family, above twelve years of age, shall work regularly in the mill, and shall not be excused from service therein without the consent of the superintendent for good cause.”[143]

Many times I have heard fathers and mothers—in the North as well as in the South—say that they did not want their children to work, that they could have done without the children’s wages and kept them at school a little longer, or apprenticed them to better employment, but that they were compelled to send them into the mills to work, or lose their own places. Even more eloquent as evidencing the keen demand of the manufacturers for child labor is the fact to which Mr. McKelway calls attention, that, in response to their demand, cotton-mill machinery is being made with adjustable legs to suit small child workers. Mr. McKelway rightly contrasts this with the experience in India when the first cotton mills were erected there. Then, for the first time, it was found necessary to manufacture spinning frames high enough from the floor to accommodate adult workers.[144]