Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1889-04-11
Children and Machinery.
rl, c. o,1ic Dar7r1Dlia

The propress of iEvention has alrea I'd,
| zone much to increase the comfort of life
oy cheapening its necessaries and making
many of its lux0ries more generally OBJ
fainable. In the near tutare, when The
folly of legislation TO prevent the cheap
ening OF articles that are Or that oughr
20 be generally used Is recognized, as il
he near future it will be, these benefit:
of invention will be much more general
| felt thar nov.
In the meantime this generation i.
experiencing the evils of ali transifiC1
periods. The last half of the nineteenth
century is above ali ages of history the
age of machinery. Human ingenuity
stimulated by the hope of large rew~rd:
under patent laws, has not only increase
the productive power of machinery ter
and hundred fold, but has so sim plified
| 1t that machinery, every year, grows more
yearly automatic. Il Is not wild speoa-
lation 10 look for ward TO the time VII II
productive machines will be virtually
automata. They are SO nearly so now
that the effect has been dlsastroUs-s
child can run them. In fact children are
running them in increasing numbers
every year. In very many cases already
little physical strength or intelligence is
required to supply the machine with
what it lacks of being en- automatjon
As result children become parts OF
factory machinery and remain so during
the whole OF the childhood that ought
TO be devoted to mental and physical
development.
During the past week the head of the
Federal Labor Bureau published stats
tics showing the great extent of this evil
in the United States. It is not neoessary
TO quote them. The facts are so plain
that they are almost self-evident. When
machine Of great productive power has
been so sim oIified, has been brought so
near TO running itself that child Of 10
years can run it, it is waste to emf loy
greater Intelligence at greater cost than
the machine requires. 1t wastes money,
and moreover il wastes the intelligence
that made the machine. It is inevitable
that economy Of production should en-
deaYor TO check this wastage.
The more serious matter is that IT
wastes the child that it will continue to
do so as q law of production until the
wastage is stopped by law of society.
1t is not choice between cheap goods
and cheap children. It is, on the con
trary, absolutely necessary that children
should not be thus cheapened to supply
the demands of machinery. Tbs en-
ployment of children of tender years in
factories is already crying evil. 1t will
Increase unless checked, and ought to be
checked by laws, not passed TO appease
"workingmen" with an appearance of
interest in them and of sympathy with
their views; but so passed as to be really
effective against a danger that is too
great to be trifed with. Such laws will
not increase the sost of production TO
any appreciate extent, and they will in
the long run result in further cheaper
ing of product by stimulating ingenuity
to make machinery SO much more nearly
automatic than il is now that, though one
child and machine now do the work of
ter men, one man and ten machine s
hereafter will be able TO do hundred
times as much.