The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1885-08-23
YOUTHFUL BREAD.WINNERS.
How the Busy Little Fingers of Count
less Children Are Kept at Work.
The Making of Paper ,Collars-Work in the
Cigar FactOries-Eleven Hours Day
for Two Dollars Week.
Correspondence Of the indianapolis Journal.

Correspondence Of the Indian polls Journal.
New YORK, Aug. 21.-At the annual meeting
of the Trades Assembly Of New York, Jan. 16.
1884, request was made by unanimous consent
that the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor
Statistics make an official investigation into the
subject of the employment of the labor Of chill
dren of that State" The inquiry pursued in
accordance with the suggestion found a wide
field before it. The general fact of the lin this
country modern substitution of low priced child
labor for the services of adult workmen in
almost every business where such system is in
any department practicable, is we'll enough I'M
derstood. But the extent to which children of
fourteen twelve, ten, or even eight years old
are employed, the influence of such early work
upon their physical development, the opportu-
mites for education offered and the relation of
child labor to the social and industrial prosperity
of the commonwealth these matters have never
enjoyed thorough ventilation.
The result of the Commissioners work as en-
bodied in the annual report of the bureau are
valuable but incomplete Defects in the law
giving him and his agents at best doubtful
right to enter upon the premises of manufacto-
ries without free consent cut short inspection OF
VIC tenement mouse eSCdDNSnmentS Oh new 1ofh,
and prevented the bureau from obtaining evil
dence and statistics of character that would
have been of great value in the investigation.
Enough has been DONE however, to establish
the fact that the compulsory education law Of
New York has not met the expectations of its
trainers. 1t is to all intents and purposes a dead
letter. and the system of child labor exists in
this State in some of its worst forms
According to the last report of the State Su-
perintendent of Public Instruction there were in
the State of New York 1855, 100 children of
school age. Of this number the names of 104l-
089 were found upon the books of the public
schools. The average daily attendance in these
schools was $685. 142. This means, on the face of
it, that GA, oil of the children, whose
expenses for a common school education
paid by the State Of New York, were
not found in the school rooms during the off.
cial year upon which this report is founded.
1t means that the average daily absence from
these scho0lrooms was l, 101, 958. Giving the
best possible coloring to this state of things,
making scant allowance for the number of
children entered more than once upon the
registers, according as they left school, returned
different schools, etc, and swelling a generous
estimate of boys and girls in private academies
and select schools, these figures still point to an
immense array of uneducated children growing
up in the street or the workshop. The school
facilities and school supervision of Albany
supposed to compare Tavorably with those of the
other cities Of the State. Out of 50 655 children
of school age 13.9l4 registered in all schools;
11,840 sittings are provided, the average daily
attendance never rising above 5000. In Brook
lyn the common schools supposed to be
crowded. Sixty-nine is about the average
number of pupils to every teacher employed; 155
would be the average if ali children of school
age attended. The average daily attendance in
the Brooklyn schools is q per cent. of the chill
dren Of school age
Most of these absentee children have been
swept out into the struggle for existence. There
are scores of employments in Brooklyn at which
they are picking up by eleven and twelve hours
of daily work ST. so to So per week They are in
dry goods stores, shoe stores. hat stores; they
make cigars, pack tobacco and snuff they drive
wagons, post bills, scrape paint, help carpenters
they are tinsmths engravers, office boys, mes
sengers, and errand hovs, and light porters; they
work in type foundrcs, at screws, in black
smiths shops, in barber shops, at paper stands
they make artificial flowers work at hair run
sewing machines; they tend stands and cry fruit
and vegetables Irvine factories, feather factories
pocket book factories, collar factories and hun
dreds Of other industries employ great numbers
of the city children. Button manufacturers
cloth printers, paper box makers aud fringed
card manufacturers advertise for small girls"
Cigar factories have acquired the worst repu
tation for overworking young children In the
factories Of both Brooklyn and New York agents
Of the Bureau of Labor Statistics report finding
children only four years old, sometimes half a
dozen of that age in room. Eight-year olds are
plenty, and from that age they range I'D to
fifteen years. Girls and boys of twelve earn
about s. week. At fourteen they are worth
So About 10 per cent. of the cigar workers are
children, employed mostly at ''strppng" In
1882, while the bill was pending to prohibit the
manufacture of cigars in tenement-houses, some
Of the New York establishment were compared
to the BLACK hole of Calcutta. and they have not
improved since. On Sixteenth street. Thirty
eighth street. Thirty ninth street, Fiftv-fourh
street, Fifty-ninth street, and in Avenue D.
there are notorious tenements, packed sixteen to
twenty families III house, living, sleeping
cooking, and making cigars in single room
keeping children at work until they fall aeep on
the floor late in the evening. In the tenements
controlled by Silverthau & Co. East Thirty-sxth
street. Joseph & Co.. East Sixty-thrd street;
Ascn & Co., Fifth street; Lewis, Lichtenstein e
Co., East Forty-fourth street, and Keyman
Brothers, East Fifty-ninth street. children are
found ten years of age, born of Italian. Bohe-
milan and Hungarian parents, but in this coun-
try, who have never learned word of English
They could not go 10 school if their parents
allowed them time for attendance.
Tailoring is another tenement house industry
employing good deal OF child labor. In New
York it is largely given over to the Roumanian
and Polish Jews in the Hester-street neighbour
hood who set children of ten and twelve at work
upon heavy seams that look impossible for their
slender fingers In Brooklyn such work is done
in the Sixteenth ward, where the writer not
long since came upon a girl of thirteen busy
over her Singer sewing machine From o'clock
in the morning she worked until 9, sometimes
10 at night Her sister, child of seven, worked
at pulling bastng threads About twenty ma.
chimes were kept busy in this tenement, and the
child was employed by the piece two coats for
a cent. She earned from 81. % to So week, bat
it kept her busy all day long.
Wholesale candy shops employ numbers of
little girls eleven and twelve years Old many of
them Italians. Tn the 'cruller bakeries are to
he seen some of the worst phases of child labor
Agents from the Bureau of Labor Statistics re-
nort the nlaces filled with smoke from haated