Feel good story. In honor of Women’s History Month.
Boys have been often regarded as being bad. My father’s best friend said his whole generation was thought unfit, mentally and physically, in 1939. Two years later they went to war and became the Greatest Generation.
In 1954 the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency had hearings on whether comic books were the cause of the moral decay at the time. But the last time boys were regarded to be as bad as they say they are today was exactly 100 years, in 1924.
Like today, the issue was school. Just 21 years earlier Mother Jones led “The March of the Mill Children” to President Theodore Roosevelt’s summer home (Photo above, left) asking for a 55 hour work week limit so the children, mainly boys, could go to school. An enlightened president, Roosevelt of course declined.
Boys were widely portrayed as bad, such as in the classic The Music Man. In it, huckster Prof. Harold Hill deluded small town parents into coming up with the money for a boys’ band to solve the problem, then skipping town after getting the money.
Ten years later, the children - - two-thirds boys - - were dropping out of school and working in the factory. Helen M. Todd wanted to know why. Miss Todd (Photo above, right) was a nationally known suffragette, leading auto caravans travelling around the country advocating for the right of women to vote. She was an educator and worked with Jane Addams in Chicago at Hull House.
But Helen M. Todd also became an Illinois state factory inspector. She surveyed 800 children working in Chicago factories and asked them: IF your family did not need the money, would you prefer to go to school or work in the factory? Overwhelmingly, the children chose the factory.
When she asked why, one boy’s reply was widely quoted.
“They hits you if ye don’t learn, and they hits you if ye whisper, and they hits you if ye have string in yer pocket, and they hits you if yer seat squeaks, and they hits you if ye scrape yer feet, and they hits you if ye don’t stand up in time, and they hits you if yer late, and they hits you if ye forget the page.”
Miss Todd’s article, “Why Children Work,” was published in 1913 in McClure’s Magazine, a leading magazine of the time.
In early 1924 Helen M. Todd testified before a Congressional committee. She advocated for an end to beating the children in school. She supported ending child labor. Just three months later legislation was proposed. Combined with other forces, action was taken at the federal and state levels on implementing universal high school and eliminating child labor. And most critically, banning the beating of children in the majority of states.
While state legislation took several decades to be fully and formally passed into law, the effect was almost immediate. Helen M. Todd was instrumental in creating the educational system needed to support the emerging Industrial Society of the last century. Thank you Helen M. Todd.