The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1902-10-26
COAL FIELD CHILDREN
THEY WORK IN MINES AND MILLS
WITHOUT INTERFERENCE.
Foreign Parents Do Not See the Ne
cessity of Education and Violate
School Law.


School Law.
Wilkesbarre Letter in New York Evening
Post.
Misery makes circle in the anthracite
region. On your investigation Of the preva-
lence Of child labor you start, say, with
the proposition that parents send their
children to the mines and mills because of
| the presence of poverty. You will end with
the conclusion-many, at any rate, have
done so before-that the cause of the pow
| erty is the extraordinary succession of
| children which are born into the family and
| cannot be taken care of on ordinary wages.
Apparently the difficulty of subsistence
here in the coal fields is no check on popu-
lation. There are families with twelve and
| fourteen children. Miners wages can
scarcely meet in such cases the demand to
| clothe. to feed and to educate, and the
'intolerable and un-American conditions
which Mr.. Mitchell complained of, and
which he charged to the low pay and short
working year imposed by oppressive mine
! owners really cannot be charged so sweep
ingly to one cause. Most Of the mining Ia
borers are European peasants. They come
| from countries where there is a check on
| population. But by comparison the wide,
| roomy new country, with its greater album
dance Of food, undoubtedly removes their
old restraint, and If the fathers earnings
are not sufficient there is opportunity for
| the children themselves to contribute to
| them.
Although the explanation may not be true
that children are reared for the purpose
| OF earning wages, it seems to be a fact that
| parents would rather have money in bank
than use 1t in preparing their offspring for
better fortune than their own. A young
sociological student the other day asked
miner with whom he was made acquainted
why he allowed his boy to go to the coal
breakers instead of to school. "Why should
he waste time going 10 school?" was the
| reply. Wont he have TO go into the mines
| do for him?'
1t was by the wages of daughters in the
silk and hosiery mills that many a strikers
family was enabled TO keep the bank &C.
count intact during the fathers five months
OF idleness. 1t is very often merely to en-
large the bank account, and not to keep
the wolf from the door that girls are sent
to the looms and boys to the breakers.
Money is the thing for which these Poles
Lithuanians, Slovaks, Greeks, Italians and
Spaniards come to the land OF gold They
are as eager for possession as the most
Al u
cuses which a factory inspector recently
was offered by the parents of under-age
girl in mill was that she was not well
enough to go to school!' AS an indication
of their indifference to schooling (and in
cidentally of the spread of the feeling for
unionism) this true tale is related: In
Plymouth mining suburb, there is a pub
lie school. the teacher OF which is the
daughter of an engineer who refused to
leave his post at the call Of the union. AL
though all the breaker boys were idle and
4
meant no loss of money, they were not sent
when school opened because the teacher
was the daughter of 'scab."
UNIONISM AMONG CHILDREN.
Unionism takes early hold upon the chill
dren of labor. 1t gives one a sensation to
hear little girl of twelve years. with
dinner-box in her hand, and the CRIME of
toll on her fingers, talk of the rights of
man and the tyranny of capital Sympathy
thrives in the heart for some human pur-
pose, and he must be wrong somewhere
who does not feel it stir at that. Small
boys on the road, watching another go to
the coal-breaker, though the strike was
not yet off, turn to you and say:
He used to be a friend of ours"
But isn't he now?"
mo. He's 'scab.' No union boy would
play with him after this
| The girls have their own union, the Union
of the Texule Workers of America. or
something to that effect; and although the
union includes in its membership even
| those who are under school age, If they are
employed in silk and hosiery factories, it
does not thereby approve.
| In Pennsylvania there is no law requiring
the registration of births. When a parent
goes to judge to get sworn certificate
which shall declare that a child is more
than thirteen years old, and past the legal
school age. there is not much for the judge
| If the parents are Catholics, he can apply
to their parish priest, who has record of
the birth: But II they are not Catholics
York, which can be consulted In vertical
ton. Besides, many of the judges are more
eager for the quarter of a dollar fee for
the misfortune Of child put too early to
hard work.
Mining laws being separate and different
from factory laws, the inspectors frequently
discover that child they have caused to
be dismissed from a factory because he was
under thirteen, will go to a coal breaker in
stead OF to school, the mining laws allow
ing the employment of children not under
twelve. In mining laws there is no pen
atty for violation of their provisions. either
boys are required in each breaker, the
structure where the coal is sifted and
graded. Naturally the companies would
| prefer to have them old rather than young,
but the pay Is from so cents to 80 cents a
day. and when boy gets to the age of
sixteen or so and sees that those who are
1
mule or tend gate in the mines get more
| than that as days wages he leaves the
| breaker to become shoveler driver, or
; gatekeeper. There are pleasanter jobs, too,
than standing all day, or sitting with bent
back all day, at the edge of a bin where
coal, raising thick dust. comes rolling
down increasingly. They must pick from
il, as 1t rolls, the stone and the slate and
. | other false material. 1t is surely hard and
not healthy work for boys.
WORK FOR THE GIRLS.
Girls were prohibited from working in or
around mines at any age. That left, in a
country where the whole industry was TAX
ing coal from the earth. a quantity of what
government reports called in their cold
way, female labor" without means to en-
ploy itself Learning of it, silk mills and
hosiery mills FASTENED to the region. 1t is
a curious circumstance that almost every
anthracite mining town is also a more or
less important center of the textile indus
| try. There were girls from the large fami-
lies of the miners with empty hands, and a