You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Sunday September 25, 1904
From The Labor World: Babies Continue Toil in the North and in the South
Yesterday's Duluth
Labor World carries two disturbing reports on child labor in the United States, one from John Mitchell and one from the Bureau of Labor. We begin with the report from John Mitchell,
President of the United Mine Workers of America:
AMAZING NUMBER OF CHILDREN EMPLOYED
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John Mitchell
Writes Strongly About Employment of Little Children.
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Tells Something About the
Harsh and Cruel Treatment Accorded Them.
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John Mitchell says:
There are over 168,000 children employed in the manufacturing industries of the country.
A third of the children engaged in manufacturing are employed in the cotton industry, but many more are employed in tobacco factories, in the manufacture of cigars, paper boxes, picture frames, feathers, neckties, artificial flowers and boots and shoes.
Although the age at which children may begin to work is gradually being raised, the factories in the southern states still employ children of 10 and even eight and seven years.
By means of trades-union activity the number of children engaged in manufacturing in the northern states of the union has gradually been reduced, and the total so engaged throughout the country appears to have been less in 1900 than in 1880.
But the labor force of the cotton and tobacco factories is being constantly recruited from the small children of those regions, and exploitation there is practically unrestricted.
The character of some of these mills, operating at enormous profits and building upon the unmerciful exploitation of children, beggars description.
The children are subjected to the harshest and most brutal tyranny, are compelled to over strain and over exert themselves and to wear out their young lives in the eternal struggle to keep up with the machine.
The effect of this employment of child labor is not only to reduce the wages of adult workers, but absolutely to prevent the possibility of the children themselves growing into sane and healthy people.
Thousands of men who tramp about the country and live off society, instead of for it, are the product of a system of unregulated child labor.
In the factory the spring of the child life snaps and his spirit is completely broken. The outlook upon life of a child 12 to 14 emerging illiterate and listless from five or six years of work at deadening monotonous labor, is hopelessly blank, and it is not to be wondered at that many children with such a past develop into tramps and criminals.
The constant throwing off of these wornout, prematurely aged children is a terrible indictment against a society claiming to be civilized.
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The second article, describes the report, "Child Labor in the United States" by Hannah R. Sewall, which was printed in the May 1904
Bulletin (No. 52) of the Bureau of Labor:
BABY TOILERS USED IN SOUTHERN FACTORIES
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National Labor Bureau Discovers Some
Appalling Conditions In South.
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Laws to Prevent the Employment of Little Children are
Not Enforced.
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Some fresh facts in regard to the employment of child labor in the United States are presented in a report just made by Hannah R. [S]ewall, to Carroll D. Wright, commissioner of labor. Of all the States canvassed it is shown that New York is second in the list in the number of children under 16 years of age employed, Pennsylvania being first in this regard, with 33,135. The number employed in New York at the time of the inquiry was 13,189.
From the report of the special agent of the Bureau of Labor-it appears that there is much laxity in most states in the enforcement of laws intended to prohibit employment of children below a certain age. The limit is 13 in Pennsylvania, but many children below this tender age were found hard at work in manufacturing establishments. Few of the mine operators are complying with the new Pennsylvania State law, which makes the age at the ground 14 instead of 12 years and under ground 16 years instead of 14, as was the case before the anthracite coal strike. The old law did not require a child applying for employment to present an age certificate, and the new law adds nothing to the old requirement in this respect.
Children as young as five years were found working in fruit packing establishments in Southern States. These babies were not under employment strictly speaking. They helped their mothers, older sisters and brothers, but were kept busily engaged in preparing fruit for packing. The children found in the cotton factories of the south were white except a very few in two establishments, but colored children were found employed in tobacco factories.
The special agent reports that few mills and factories provide proper accommodations for women and children employes, and that the latter are quick to pick up evil habits when associated with working men. At a glass factory which the inspector visited many of the boys coming from work were observed to have cigarettes or pipes in their mouths. "They pick that up very soon," the overseer remarked. At a brewery beer was given away not only to the adult employes, but to the boys and girls, the boys receiving one pint and the girls a half pint every noon and evening.
It is reported that the New York law regarding the number of hours children may work each day is not enforced
A good deal of space is given to the Sewall report to conditions that surround children in their places of labor. It was found that in some industries children were brought in contact with chemical poisons through their occupations. In furniture factories boys were employed as varnishers, and thus compelled to breathe turpentine fumes. In a wall-paper factory and in a cloth-printing establishment boys were feeding coloring matter into machines, thus coming in contact with the various poisons in its composition. The whole subject of insanitary conditions in factory labor, arising out of the nature of the industry and the materials used, is reported as one of grave importance as affecting not only the welfare of the children, but of working people of all ages.
The earnings of child labor range from a trifle over $2 to $5 a week. In all the establishments that were canvassed 30 per cent were earning under $4 a week, 21 percent were earning $4 or over a week. The earning of the largest number were $3 or under $4 a week. In Massachusetts alone more that 50 percent of the children earned $4 or over, while in Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama more than 50 percent of the children earned less than $3. Only in New York and New Jersey did more than 50 per cent earn between $3 and $4 a week.
Children at work often appear older than they really are. "They are no longer children after they go to work," a superintendent remarked in speaking of the boys in a glass factory. Much of the work of children, easy in itself, becomes exhausting because performed at a high rate of speed. Managers spur children to rapid work by the adoption of the piece-work system of payment. Possibly the most arduous piece-work that children are engaged upon is that of operating sewing machines in clothing factories. Although employers claimed that they did not employ any children on this work under 16 years of age, girls under that age limit were found so employed.
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SOURCES
The Labor World
(Duluth, Minnesota & Superior, Wisconsin)
-of Sept 24, 1904
http://www.newspapers.com/...
http://www.newspapers.com/...
United States Congressional serial set, Issue 4701
http://books.google.com/...
Note: the report by Sewall is not especially easy to find, hope this helps:
1. Click on book cover (no image available)
2. Click down and down to the link:
Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor No. 52 May 1904
3. Click on "Child Labor in the United States by Hannah R Seawall....485-637"
4. A few more clicks down will get you there!
IMAGES
John Mitchell
http://commons.wikimedia.org/...
Boy with Cans by Lewis Hine (used here to represent child of 1904)
http://reelfoto.blogspot.com/...
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Babies in the Mill-Dorsey Dixon
To their jobs those little ones was strictly forced to go.
Those babies had to be on time through rain and sleet and snow.
Many times when things went wrong their bosses often frowned.
Many times those little ones was kicked and shoved around.
-Dorsey Dixon
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