Part 14

With such facts as these before us, it is easy to see that the urgency of the employers’ demands for child labor is an important factor in the problem. Underlying all other causes is the fundamental fact that the exploitation of the children is in the interests of the employing class. It may be urged that it is necessary for children to begin work at an early age because the work they do cannot be done by men or women, but the contention is wholly unsupported by facts. There is no work done by boys in the glass factories which men could not do; no skill or training is required to enable one to do the work done by breaker boys in the coal-mines; the work done by children in the textile mills could be done equally well by adults. The fact that in some cases adults are employed to do the work which in other cases is done by children, is sufficient proof that child labor is not resorted to because it is inevitable and necessary, but on account of its cheapness.

It does not, of course, necessarily follow that low-priced labor is really cheap labor; it may prove to be just as uneconomical to employ such labor as to buy poor raw materials merely because they are low-priced. The quantitative measure is no more satisfactory as a standard of value when applied to labor than when applied to other things. Thomas Brassey, the famous English engineer and contractor, used to declare that the cost of carrying out great works in different countries did not vary according to the wages paid, and that his experience had been that in countries where wages were highest the rate of profit was also highest. Very similar testimony has been given by many large employers of labor, and the point seems to be fairly well established. It is said, for instance, that the cost of erecting large buildings does not differ very much in the great capitals of the world, though the rate of wages differs enormously, and that in America, where wages in the building trades are much higher than anywhere else in the world, the labor cost is really less than elsewhere.[145] In view of this economic fact, it has been urged that child labor is not cheap labor, except in a false and uneconomic sense, that it is inefficient, and that it would be to the interest of the employers themselves to employ adult labor instead.

Doubtless this argument has been used in the true propagandist spirit of appealing to as many interests as possible, and proving the sweet reasonableness of the demand for the abolition of child labor, but I am inclined to doubt its value. We may, I think, trust the employers to look after their own interests. It is true that if you put an underpaid and underfed Italian laborer at a dollar a day to work, and alongside put a decently fed American laborer at double that wage, you will probably find the labor of the latter the more profitable; just as cheap, miserably paid coolie labor is the most expensive of all. But I do not think it follows that adult labor would be cheaper than child labor to the employer. Most child labor is made possible by machinery and conditioned by it, and adult labor would be conditioned by it in the same manner. There is very little scope for individual differences to manifest themselves where the machine is the controlling power. In other industries, such as glass manufacture, where machinery plays a relatively unimportant part as yet, the labor of the boys is conditioned by the speed of the men they serve. The men, urged on by the piecework system, work at their utmost limit of speed, and the boys must keep pace with them. It is unlikely that if men were employed to do the work now done by the “snappers-up,” they would be able to increase the speed of the glass-blowers, the only way in which their labor could prove cheaper. On the contrary, there is every reason to suppose that men would not consent to be driven as boys are driven. I have gathered from glass-blowers themselves that they are very often as much opposed to the introduction of adult helpers as are their employers, for the reason that they believe adults would not serve them with the same speed as boys. For these reasons, and many others into which it is impossible to enter here, I am convinced that little good will result from a propaganda aiming to show the employers that their economic interests would be best served by the abolition of child labor.

In a similar way it has been urged, with ample evidence of its truth, that the employment of children retards the introduction of mechanical devices and their fullest development.[146] This is perfectly true, not only of child labor, but of almost all forms of labor that are unhealthful or degrading. There is absolutely no need of human street sweepers, exposed in all weathers and constantly inhaling foul, disease-laden dust, any more than there is need of little boys working in the glass factories, carrying red-hot bottles to the ovens. In each case machinery has been invented to do the work, and it is used to a small extent. If these occupations, and scores of others, were absolutely prohibited, and the prohibitory law rigidly enforced, streets would still be swept, but by mechanical sweepers, and bottles would still be taken to the annealing ovens, but by mechanical means. The world will probably, let us hope, never become the paradise dreamed of by the German dreamer, Etzler, who believed that all the work of the world would be done by machinery in the future, and human labor become altogether unnecessary.[147] But there is no doubt that much of the work which to-day degrades body, brain, and soul could be done just as well by mechanical agents. Not, however, through sermonizing or appealing to the employers will these mechanical devices be generally adopted to take the place of the life-destroying labor of boys and girls; but by making it increasingly difficult, and finally impossible, for them to employ child labor at all.

Not long ago I was in a glass factory where the “carrying-in boys” had been displaced by automatic machinery. As I watched the machine doing the work I had been accustomed to seeing little boys perform, I asked the manager of the factory why it had been introduced. His answer was simple and direct, “Why, because it had become too difficult to get boys.” A few days later I went into another factory where boys were, as usual, employed in doing the work. I asked the owner of the factory why he did not use machinery instead of employing boys. “Because it is not practicable,” he replied. “We must have boys and can’t do without them.” When I told him that I had seen the work done by machinery with perfect satisfaction, he laughed. “Yes, that is true, but I still say that it is not a practicable proposal,” he rejoined. “I mean that it is not a practical business proposition. I am not interested in machinery, as machinery, and if I can get all the boys I want, at wages making their labor no more expensive than the cost of running machinery, why should I tie up two or three thousand dollars of my capital to install machines? So long as I can get boys enough, I don’t want to bother with machines.” Then I asked: “What would you do if you could not get boys—if their employment was forbidden, and the law strictly enforced?” His reply was suggestive. “Why, then machinery would be the only thing; then it would be a practical business proposition,” he said.

I have given this manufacturer’s opinion, as nearly as possible in his own words, because it is an admirably clear statement of what I believe to be the natural attitude of the employing class upon a grave question. All that stands in the way of a general use of machinery to do the work now performed at such an enormous cost in human life and happiness, is the temporary inconvenience of the employers from having to tie up some of their capital. Just as the woollen manufacturers in England, as soon as they were debarred from employing children, adopted the piecing machine,[148] so the employers of America to-day would have no difficulty about securing machinery, much of it already invented, if the employment of children should be forbidden. But, generally speaking, they will not of themselves make the change.

XII

It is less easy to understand the problem of child labor in its relation to parental responsibility. It is continually asked: “Why do parents send their little ones to work at such an early age? Is it possible that there are so many parents who are so indifferent to the welfare of their children that they send them to work, and surround them with perils and evil influences, or are there other, deeper reasons? Are the parents helpless to save their little ones?” These are questions which have never yet been satisfactorily answered; they deal with a phase of the problem which has never been fully investigated, notwithstanding that it is of vital importance.

As already noted, when the manufacturers of England sought first to get child workers for the cotton and woollen mills, they found the parents arrayed against them, defending their children. For a long time no self-respecting father or mother would allow a child to go to the factories to work, and it remained for many years a brand of social disgrace to have one’s children so employed. Not until their pride was conquered by poverty, not until they were subjugated by hunger and compelled to surrender and accept the inevitable, did the parents send their children into the factories. It was poverty, bitter poverty, which led the first “free” child into the mills to economic servitude, and I am disposed to think that poverty is still the main reason why parents send their children to body-and-soul-destroying toil.

Many of those whose work for the enactment of legislation to protect the children from the ills of premature labor entitles them to lasting honor and gratitude, have shown an inclination to minimize the extent to which poverty is responsible for child labor. The opponents of child-labor legislation have so strongly insisted upon the hardships which would follow if parents were deprived of their children’s earnings, and have so eloquently pleaded the cause of the “poor widowed mothers,” as almost to make the employment of children appear as a philanthropic enterprise. Very often, it seems to me, the advocates of child-labor legislation, in their eagerness to refute their critics, have resorted to arguments which rest upon exceedingly slight foundations of fact, and, in this case especially, laid insufficient stress upon the logical answer. The more closely the problem is scrutinized and investigated, the larger the influence of poverty will appear, I think. At the same time, it is well to remember that poverty is not the only cause by any means. There are many other causes, some closely associated with poverty, others only remotely or not at all. Ignorance, cupidity, indifference, feverish ambition to “get on,”—these are a few of the many other causes which might be named.

It is declared, then, that actual inquiry has shown that the claim that the earnings of the children are necessary to the support of the family, and that widows and others would suffer serious poverty if their children under fifteen were not permitted to work, is “rarely if ever justified.” Mrs. Frederick Nathan, of the Consumers’ League of the City of New York, whose splendid devotion to the cause of social righteousness lends weight to her words, expresses this view with admirable clearness. She says: “Whenever preventive measures for child labor are enacted or enforced, there is always a wail heard to the effect that the child’s labor is absolutely requisite for the living expenses of the family. Yet, upon investigation, this statement is rarely corroborated. In Illinois, there was recently enacted a law prohibiting children under sixteen from working more than eight hours a day, or after 7 P.M. Thousands of diminutive toilers were discharged. Then a cry of hardship went up in behalf of hundreds of families. Philanthropic women undertook an investigation, supposing they would find a number of cases in which the wages of the working child were absolutely necessary to the family income. To their amazement they found only three families in Chicago, and five in the remainder of the state, where this was true. In every other case it was discovered that either the parent or older children could support the family, or some relative was willing to assist until the child reached the legal age.”[149]

Where there are so many coöperating causes, it would be easy to overestimate the importance of any one, and correspondingly easy to underestimate it. How the investigations in Illinois were conducted, what standards were adopted by the investigators, I do not know, and cannot, therefore, in the absence of specified data, express an opinion upon the validity of the conclusions drawn. Frankly, however, I distrust them. Not long since I heard of a case in which a “philanthropic lady investigator” decided that the wages of a child of thirteen were not necessary to the maintenance of the family, because she “had a father in regular employment.” It did not, apparently, occur to her that $9 a week was too little to support decently a family of six persons.

Whatever the nature of the Illinois investigation, I am certain that in my own experience the proportion of cases in which there is actual dependence upon what the children earn is very much larger. It must not be forgotten in discussing this question that although a child may earn only $1.50 a week, that sum may mean a great deal to the family. It may mean the difference between living in a comparatively good house on a decent street and going to a foul tenement in a bad neighborhood. It may mean the difference between coal and no coal in winter, or ice and no ice in summer. As a poor woman said to me quite recently, “Joe only earns thirty cents a day, but that thirty cents means supper for all five in the family.” The investigations of Mr. Nichols in the coal-mining and textile-manufacturing towns,[150] of Mr. Kellogg Durland,[151] and, particularly, the inquiries made in New Jersey concerning the immediate effects of the Child Labor Law of 1904,[152] all tend to show that the dependence of families upon children’s earnings is much greater than the Illinois figures would indicate. I venture the opinion that there is not a Settlement worker in America who has studied this problem whose experience would confirm the optimism of the Illinois investigators. I am certain that within a radius of three blocks from the little Settlement in which this is written, and with which I am at present most familiar, there are more families known to be absolutely dependent upon the earnings of young children than were found in the whole State of Illinois, according to the report quoted. I know of at least twice as many such families as were found in Illinois living in this little city with its population of about sixty thousand as against the nearly 5,000,000 in Illinois. Settlement workers in various parts of the country have, without exception, declared the Illinois report to be absolutely at variance with their experience.

In the hope that I might be able to gather sufficient accurate data to warrant some fairly definite conclusions upon this point, I spent several weeks making careful personal investigations into the matter in four states, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. I made inquiries into 213 cases, first getting the children’s stories and then carefully investigating them. The results are clearly set forth in the accompanying schedule, but explanation of a few points may be helpful to the reader.

In choosing a wage standard to represent the primary poverty line, I somewhat arbitrarily fixed upon $10 per week. In either of the four states named, such a wage must mean poverty and lead to the employment of children at the earliest possible moment. Intemperance appears in four cases, but that does not mean that it did not enter into other cases at all. In the four cases noted the fathers were earning from $12 to $18 per week, and while it is possible that with such wages they might be honestly and honorably poor, since even $18 is not a very princely wage, it is a fact that their expenditures upon drink constituted the real cause of the poverty which forced their children to work. On the other hand, I do not suppose that all the cases of child labor due to the primary poverty of their families are noted. In the last column several cases are given of children who were “sick when attending school,” or who “could not get on at school.” For reasons given in an earlier chapter, I am inclined to believe that these cases would have to be transferred to the other column if it were only possible to investigate them more fully.

TABLE SHOWING REASONS FOR THE EMPLOYMENT OF 213 CHILDREN

═══════════╤═══════════════════╤═══════════════════╤═══════════════════ No. of │ Occupations[F] │Reasons given which│Reasons given Other Children │ │ indicate Primary │ than Apparent │ │ Poverty │ Primary Poverty ───────────┼───────────────────┼───────────────────┼─────────────────── Boys, 34.│Glass factory │Wages of father 9│Parents saving 8 │ Workers.[G] │ less than $10 │ money to buy │ │ per week │ their homes, │ │ │ etc. │ │Father sick or 5│Children working 2 │ │ injured │ to keep father │ │ │ who is able to │ │ │ work but won’t │ │Father dead 2│ │ │Father 1│ │ │ unemployed │ │ │Father in prison 1│Not determined 6 ───────────┼───────────────────┼───────────────────┼─────────────────── Boys, 23.│Textile mill │Wages of father 14│Tired of school 13 │ workers. │ less than $10 │ │ │ per week │ Girls, 57.│ │Father 6│Discouraged by 6 │ │ unemployed │ being “put │ │ │ back” at │ │ │ school every │ │ │ time family │ │ │ moved │ │Father dead 5│Parents saving 5 │ │ │ the money │ │Father sick or 6│Because 9 │ │ injured │ companions │ │ │ went to work │ │Father deserted 2│To get better 4 │ │ family │ clothes │ │Father drunkard 1│Not determined 9 ───────────┼───────────────────┼───────────────────┼─────────────────── Boys, 33.│Cigarette, │Father’s wage 14│Because friends 6 │ cigar, and │ less than $10 │ worked │ tobacco │ per week │ │ workers. │ │ Girls, 22.│ │Father dead 3│Tired of school 5 │ │Father sick or 4│Parents saving 4 │ │ injured │ money │ │Father 4│To get better 3 │ │ unemployed │ clothes │ │Father drunkard 3│Sick while at 2 │ │ │ school │ │ │Not determined 7 ───────────┼───────────────────┼───────────────────┼─────────────────── Boys, 18.│Delivery wagon 4│Wages of father 15│Couldn’t get on 6 │ boys │ less than $10 │ at school │ │ per week │ Girls, 26.│Match packers 12│Father dead 2│To get better 4 │ │ │ clothes │Candy factory 10│Father sick or 4│Because friends 3 │ girls │ injured │ went to work │Wire factory 7│Father 2│Sick while at 3 │ workers │ unemployed │ school │Rubber factory 11│Father deserted 2│Not determined 3 │ workers │ family │ ───────────┼───────────────────┼───────────────────┼─────────────────── Boys, 108.│ │Low wages 52│School 30 │ │ │ difficulties Girls, 105.│ │Unemployment 13│Because friends 18 │ │ │ went to work │ │Father’s death 12│To get better 11 │ │ │ clothes │ │Father’s 19│To enable 17 │ │ sickness │ parents to │ │ │ save │ │Father’s 4│Sickness of 5 │ │ desertion of │ child while at │ │ family │ school │ │Father’s 4│Father’s 2 │ │ intemperance │ laziness │ │Father in prison 1│Not determined 25 ───────────┼───────────────────┼───────────────────┼─────────────────── Total, 213.│ │Total, 105 = 49.30%│Total, 108 = 50.70% ═══════════╧═══════════════════╧═══════════════════╧═══════════════════

I do not offer this table as conclusive testimony upon the point under discussion. The number of cases investigated is too small to give the results more than suggestive value. Personally, I believe that the cases given are fairly typical, and that is the opinion also of some of the leading authorities upon the subject to whom I have submitted the table. No private investigator can ever hope to investigate a sufficient number of cases to establish anything conclusively in this connection. What is needed most of all is a coöperative investigation under the direction of the leading sociological students of the country until such extensive returns are gathered as will justify more positive conclusions. In the meantime such tables as this can at best only serve to call attention to what _may_ be a general fact.