The weekly examiner., 1901-06-15
THE INFANT ROLLERS
CHILD LABOR IN THE COTTON FAC
 TORIES OF THE SOUTH.

lOnlEO UT IT1C OOOl lI1s Twelve Hundred Them I'm the State of AIabama-What Irene Ash
 by Saw on Her Investigation of i Labor Conditions In Southern Mills. Miss Irene NJ. Ashby, the young Eng fish woman who has reputation as a | labor statistician and lecturer, says of
 her recent Investigation in parts of the i south; -Four months ago accepted a
 commission from Samuel Gompers, l president of the American Federation | of Labor, to ag1tate the subject of child | labor with view to getting the law
 limiting the evil through the legislature
 of Alabama. Although 1 return with l the news of present defeat, I believe 1 that my mission has helped to give an
 other blow to that slowly dying cause
 of building commercial success on the
 ruin of little children.
 1 ''There is no question more vital to the interests of workers throughout
 America at the present time than that
 of the employment of young children in
 the so called lighter factory industries
 of the south. The unorganized male worker is the first instrument, whereby w corporation, being just a machine for
 making money, works automatically,
 without respect to the present or future l good of the human element in that | wealth making of the community | wherein they dwell. Still more effective l as an aid in this direction is the wom-
 an, for even when, organized there are
 reasons, social and physical, why she is
 less certain quantity than the man and therefore more easily underpaid. Deadliest of all is the child.
 Wherever an industry appears in
 which it is possible for child to work the grown people are made subsidiary and the child and young person arc | used at cheap rates, giving for the mo- ment an enormous incentive to the in- 1 vestment of capital, which will receive quick returns from the purchase of la
 bor at low rate. The cheapening of labor in one part of the market in the | long run causes a cut down in wages
 everywhere in that particular trade. The reduced spending power on the 1 part of one great section of workers re- | coils on other trades.
 Briefly, the general situation is as l follows: The manufacture of cotton | goods is recent throughout the entire | south. It is almost new in Alabama. There are some 43 mills in the state,
 where there has been regular boom in
 cotton mills during the last few years. When a city gets prosperous, the in- habitants clamor for one, and in sever al places they are going up as quickly as they can be built.
 "While in many places the mills are
 hailed with delight by the people, there
 are already mutterings that they are
 creating misery and wretchedness on the one side as quickly as they, are
 making big dividends on the other, and some business men are actually saying that the trade of a city is injured rath-
 CT than helped by the vicinity of mill.
 '"The human material for the indus try is as raw as the cotton. Families come in from the little isolated farms and cabins, very poor and very prolific. A few cents seem to them fortune.
 Where they come from they have sell dom seen money, and their next years cotton bales are often mortgaged ahead for this years food. Entirely ignorant of industrial life, they are willing to take low wages for what sounds like light work without consideration of the novel demands of rent, food, fire, lights and clothes in a village or city.
 s'In the 25 mills of which I have sta tistics there are 6,125 operatives, about 400 being children under 12 years of age. On the same basis of calculation there are about 900 in the state, an esti- mate below rather than above the actu- al number, as 1 only corrected the man. agers' statements in cases where was able to count personally a larger num- Der than they told me. To these must be added the children who come in to help tbeir elder brothers and sisters who are not counted or paid as work CTS, although they often do full days work for the fun of it. This would ] bring the number nearer 200.
 "No difference is made between hours l by night or by day of the children and | grown up people. These hours are from 1 12 to 121a day, averaging 66 week, | with but one half hour or 40 minutes | break for meals. Mills which run at | night generally work 12 hours, some | times with no break at all.
 "One's indignation at such a wrong l to childhood rises to fever heat when | we learn that these 1,2O0 little white | slaves, worse off than the negro child | in days of slavery, who, being wGrth | some hundreds of dollars. was allowed l to develop into healthy animal are sacrificed to commercial superstition and not even to a real or fancied ne cessity of the industry. Huge fortunes were made in England and the north at the beginning of the trade by the employment of children, and it is the superstition that this can be done again which is responsible for the employ ment of these children
 Out of Il practical superintendents to whom talked, several being from