Workmen's advocate. (New Haven, Conn.) 1883-1891, 1890-03-08
CHILD LABOR.

Newspaper remarkable article by Mrs.
Florence Kelley Wischnewetzky, from
which the following extracts are made;
while these things last Underground
lodgings, tenement factories, etc., the
criminal neglect Of all that is sacred
to the childhood of the working class,
children must toll in New York City.
The total abolition of child-labor is one
Of the palliatives which the working
class might obtain tomorrow If 1t were
unanimous in its demand and vigorous
in the enforcement thereof. But there
are hindering influences in the way of
this reform, and it is probable that it
will come along in the wake OF other
more sweeping ones, rather than as
measure by itself. Meanwhile there is
nothing more curious in the psyche
logical manifestations of the day that
now is, than the attitude Of philanthropy
toward the toll of children.
The great subsidized charities of the
city are huge, never resting engines for
the promotion and fostering Of child
labor. The Children's Aid boasts of its
&c., 900 boys and girls furnished as unpaid
"hands" to the farmer of the West
during the past three decades, The
House of Refuge, on RandalIs Island,
is one vast knitting mill, where children
are forced to earn profit for the rich
metropolis. Most shameful of all, per-
hap,, is the infamy of certain sectarian
Homes" which furnished boys at
Thirty dollars head" to the glass
makers of Findlay, Ohio, until the Fac
tory Inspector Of that State published
the traffic in child slaves and cut it
short for Ohio-a proceeding which cost
! him his posltion-but abated never jot
of the fervor of our "humane" export
ers of the children of the poor.
There is no way 80 cheap of Kidding
the tax payer Of the waif and the stray,
the orphan, the truant, as shipping the
luokless wight bodily out of the State.
In some cases, where thrift is used, the
employer can he induced to pay the
travelling expenses, and bonus besides,
for the privilege of grinding out Of q
growing lad, without wages, labor
which no man would consent to under
take. We have seen that the neglect Of
the authorities, the poverty of parents,
the inhuman niggardhness of the great
organized philanthropies work together
to force labor upon little children. But
this is not all. For behind them all is
this ceaseless demand of productive in
dustry for cheaper and cheaper "hands'.
Every new invention which simplities
manufacturing process; every "auto-
matte" or lighter.running device, opens.
the portal to admit to the bastilles Of
childhood new victims, whose sole Of
Tense Is their poverty. The closer the
struggle of competition, the more de-
sirable a commodity is the cheap labor
power of growing boys and girls. And
instead of looking sharp to the COMPETE
ton of the pauper labor of Europe, the
workers of America find themselves
hard pressed by the "pauper labor" of
their own boys and girls.
at Is useless to turn a blind eye to the
situation. Far more manly would it be-
to admit that we have mapped while the
European snail crawled toward the goal
of rational care for the nations children,
until to-day London educates her boys
and girls to the age of fourteen. while
New York turned 10000 applicants from
her schools last year, and spent more
money upon her police than upon her
department of education. The labor
organizations years ago perceived that
children will work for wages in compe-
ttion with men and women until the
strong arm of the law intervenes. And
they demanded the prohibition of child
labor. 1t dawned upon them, too, that
child labor would never be thoroughly
banished from mill and mine and forge
and furnace until every child was safe
in school, and they demanded compul-
sorry education. But nothing came of it
for New York State. We have dead
letter compulsory school law, and one
inspector to $4,000 factories as the net
result of these endeavors.
"Now the organizations realize that
another step must be taken, and their
demand, long since formulated, must be
enforced. The fruit of this discovery is
the formation of the School Conference,
body composed of delegates of labor
organizations, for the purpose of scrutin-
iZlng the schools and the action of the
officials who have the schools in charge.
This body is probably unique in the his.
tory of civilization. At its weekly meet
ing the painter and the carpenter, the
glaZier or iron worker, the bricklayer,
the editor of the labor paper and the
man who sets the types, the delegates
of several scores of labor organizations,
meet to confer upon the scandal that the
father of child in the Twenty second
Ward must have a political pull" be-
fore the boy can be transferred from the
tobacco shop to the primary school; or
that LADY who takes III washing next
door" has led her three little lads to six
different schools, and had them refused
every where; or that smiths boy is
! growing mn in a Darochial school whila
his father Is pronounced atheist; and
the teacher of the mission school near by
| charges two dollars month to over
flow" children from the schools of the
wards for teaching merely reading and