The democrat. [volume] (Weston, W. Va.) 1868-1874, 1871-03-27
How Children are Manned in New York

How Children are Manned in New York.
In addition to the outrage of sacrific-
ing the health and educational interests
of children by keeping them at mechani-
cal drudgery nearly all their waking
hours, certain kinds oil labor they perform
are absolutely dangerous to life and
limb. At the evening schools We heard
of girls who, while working in twine
manufactures, had lost one and two
Joints of their fingers. The principal in
one school stated that last winter she had
ten girls who had lost the initial finger
from the right hand, and therefore could
not be taught to write. One child, who
learned to write with the left hand, came
to school afterwards with the initial finger
OF that hand also gone. 1t was taken of
in the twisting machinery at a Irvine
factory.
Determined to see this terrible ma
chine, We learned the address of the
largest Irvine establishment in the city,
and away up town, nearly to Central
Park, we went one bitter cold day, so
cold that to keep our courage up it need
ed the reflection that little girls, thinly
clad, struggle through such weather all
winter long, plunge into it from hot
work-rooms and with vitality consumed
by labor in impure air.
We found about three hundred persons
at work, two hundred Of them being
children under fifteen years of age, and
nearly all girls, who spin, wind, and
twist the flax.
We were shown very picturesque
machine for hacking the flax, tended by
ten sturdy little boys OF twelve or thir-
teen years of age, five on each end.
They were mounted upon a platform to
enable them to reach and change the
clamps which held the flax. This mon
ster machine. which supersedes the small
hackers upon which our grand-mothers
dressed their flax, requires to be fed at
either end continuously, and it works
with the regularity and remorselessness
of fate. Not discovering this popularity
at first, and observing the boys working
for dear life, and we remarked to the
proprietor "These boys seem to be
trying to show off before you. "No, v
he replied, "the machine keeps them at
it."
"Isit not better for them than run
ming through the streets ?" asked the
proprietor.
"Better than that, yes, but how are
they to be educated ?"
"They nearly all go to evening
schools"
Studying in the evening after working
like this all day No wonder they fall
asleep over their lessons.
This tread-mill OF machine made me
forget for moment the terrible twlsters
we came to see. Only for moment
Descending to the next floor we find a
few women at work, and a few boys, but
nearly all girls, of various ages, and
engaged in many different labors, but all
of one complexion-sooty, grimy, dusty,
faxy ; all were dressed in coarse skirt
of hemp, often ragged and tattered.
They ran from one corner OF the room
to another, carrying heavy boxes and
armfuls of bobbins.
Here are the dreadful twisting ma
chimes, very disappointingi in appearance,
seeming to be only long rows OF spindles
stretching from one end of the room to
the other, with nothing peculiarly dan
gerous about them. The proprietor is
anxious to confirm the impression caused
by their harmless disappearance.
"A few girls" he says, "have had
their fingers huri in these machines but
# was always in cases where they forgot
or neglected their work to talk or play.
The twisters are not more dangerous
than other machines at which children
work"
/ asked a little girl who had lost the
fourth finger of her right hand how it
happened, and she replied:
lit was the rule that we go to help
the others, and l went to help girl,
and she kept twisting the Irvine so" CIV
ing her hand great flourish. "But
nv little finger always did stick out from
the others, and it got caught among the
fax and / knew it would take my hand
off and I ierked it out with all my
might, and only lost half the finger; Il
/ had been slow, my hand would have
been taken of. " =,
This is the simple story OF girl o.
twelve wears. She was trying to initiate