The Bottineau pioneer. (Bottineau, N.D.) 1885-1895, 1888-04-19
Labor and Wages.
By James

The necessity Of educating the young and
protecting them from the tyranny of ignor
ance and cupidity is generally acknowledged
By her excellent system Of education,
Prussia is indebted more than to her needle
gun for her victory ever Austria, and to her
consolidating the petty German states into
the powerful German empire. And her
educated soldiers swept all before them in
the Franco-German war. England ye"r>
ago, thanks to the exertions of the Earl o.
Shaftesbury, prohibited the employment OF
children under q certain age, in any works.
The United States has long been famous for
her public schools and her liberal support OF
them. Therefore, we shou d imagine that
the highly ''protected' Pennsylvania labor
er should have exceptional facilities for edu-
eating his family. But alas, the laws
against the employment of children are a
dead letter in the state of Pennsylvania, ex-
cept rs they are to some extent enforced in
the city of Philadelphia by a Children's Pro
~tective Society. Recently in Pennsylvania
papers, without any comment on the illegal
age, was an item recounting the cutting to
pieces Of a child Of eleven in a Reading mill.
by the starting of a machine it had been set
to clean. IT. the coal mining region no one
seems t, pay any attention to the law pro-
hibiting the employment of children under
twelve, and boys Of seven and eight may be
found picking slate in the anthracite coal
breakers, or trimming coke in the bitumin-
Gus regions. As to the work of these little
slate pickers, Mr.. Morgan Jones, formerly a
mine boss in the schuylkill regions, says:
II have witnessed the agony of wives and
mothers, as victim after victim to the perils
that constantly threaten the miner has been
raised from the deadly depths, but the
spectacle of a score or more of boys, aged
before their time, bent and stunted and wan,
working their lives away in the black,
dusty breaker, sweltering aud suffocating in
the summer and chilled to the bone in
winter, vas something that brought per
petual heartache. In a room Of these COL
lierv b~uildings-not more than fifteen feet
square, have seen forty boys at work
picking slate from the coal that passes
swiftly down chutes in m endless stream
They are seated on hemlock boards stretched
across the room in rows. The windows are
always open in winter and summer, in order
that the dust may escape. In winter the
wind whistles through the apartment, and
the Snow beats at the windows md doors
From seven o'clock in the morning unit
darkness compels work to cease, these boys
sit on their benches, With backs bent almos,
double over the running coal, separating tn,
slate from it. To do this requires great dex
terity with the hands and a quick eye. TIL,
slatepickers range from seven to ffteel
years Of age. At fifteen or sixteen they ar.
old enough to enter the mines, and to react
that stage in their career is their only am
bition. If any visitor will take the troubl,
to enter the miners graveyard near by, hi
will not need to be told how many Of thes.
boys never reached the goal of their am
bition. The tonbstones are numerous, BIZ
the great majority hear the names of boy.
under fifteen years Of age-slatepickers wht
have succumbed to the overstrain Of toll tina
has made them old, decrept an intirm lie
fore they had reached the freshness o
youth. Sometimes these hoys live iong dis
t~tances from the oollieries where they ar,