The great West. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1889-18??, 1891-11-13
AsLlrTLE WHITE SLAVE.

A LITTLE WHITE SLAVE.
Pathetic Description Of the Life Of the
Child In tho MIL
Ruby Laurie had been two years in
the MILL although the law OF the COM
monwealth said she could not,be EN-.
ployed there under fourteen years of
age. A convenient lie has been told
the mill owners did not ask embar-
RAISING questions, and SO two years
were gained by her parents in her
years of toll. She had never been a
robust child. but the two years of con-
finement had depleted her still further.
and to-day she hardly felt able to stand
on her feet at all. She feared that
she should drop down in a faint as size
had done once or twice, and as girls
did every day in some part Of the mill.
But she exerted all her will to over
come her weakness, and struggled on.
In the meantime, her mother, neglect
ing the few household duties she
usually performed sat gossiping
with slip-shod neighbor in the
alley around the corner. Her two
boys had been sent to another factory
for the day even before Ruby was
started. To see that they were on
time and to cook some easy, unappe-
tizing dish for their dinner was her
days work. Once in while she
washed out few shabby garments.
Still more rarely she scrubbed out the
family room. But for the duties of a
housekeeper she had no taste, and of
the real requirements of a healthful
family life she had no knowledge. She
had been a mill girl herself all her
early years and like the most of her
class had been spoiled for domestic
life. She had worked in the mills
even after her marriage until the
cheaper fashion of child labor had
come in, and she could get no employ
ment there. Now she idled away her
days in that shiftless fashion so COM
mon to women of her class, and saw
no harm in allowing her children to
be sent to the mills as soon as the
mills would take them.
While she sat on the neighbours
doorstep, John Laurie, her husband,
sat in the nearest grog-shop playing
cards with group of idlers like him
self. He was one of the vast army of
the unemployed. The mill towns are
full of them. The closeness of COM
petition causes the mill owners to
seek the cheapest form of labor, and
in this way the mills are filled with
children, while their parents spend
their time in idleness. We have in
this country now a million wage-earn-
ing children and a million adults un-
employed. This frightful reversal of
the social order is seen at it's worst in
the large manufacturing cities.
YEARLY went the hours at the mill.
The llstless faces OF the little girls
grew haggard. All of them were ill
fed at home, some went hungry. Shift
less mothers neglected to get meals
ready on time, and some came to their
work in the morning with nothing
better than a crust of bread to sup
port them through long forenoon.
The best cared for were far from
healthy: the worst were pitiful to be-
hold. In some homes there was rough
plenty, even wasted. Where the
mother was efficient there was some
comfort. Where the father was in
temperate there was horrible eXtremi-
ty. Where the mother was intemper-
ate, there was the desolation of death.
All kinds were represented here. The
heartless cupidity of the corporation,
the sordid minds of some parents and
the helpless improvidence of others,
had brought about state OF things
wherein nature was reversed, where the
child toiled that the parent might be
idle; where the mature strength of
men and women was Slapped by idle
ness. while the immature bodies of
children were dwarfed and destroyed
by excessive toll. There can be but
one result of such social order, and
that-disaster. TO believe the disas-
ter already come you had only to visit
the great Morton mill on the day of
which l write and take note of the
little army of children held there in
such cruel captivity.
At six o'clock they came pouring
out of the factories by the hundred.
Boys and girls, none over fifteen years
of age. Many of them but ten. The
all benevolent law said boys should
not work until twelve, but parents and
bosses conspired to make the law a
dead letter. Indeed, most of the laws
upon this subject are carefully framed
to be avoided. From a story of mill
life, by Hattie Tying Griswold, in the
Union Signal.
The Original Calamity Howler.
The very first calamity howl ever