The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-08-28
SOMETHING ABOUT
 LABOR OF CHILDREN.


 Nothing is so difficult to handle as the plummit line which sounds the undercur- rents of popular feeling. Who but wo- man and a mother can gauge the ocean of pity that sweeps over the idea of the unremitted daily labor of small children! Who but a statesman and patriot can measure. the varied industrial and com mercial currents now turning Southward? { When these two currents meet, as they do in the case of the Alabama cotton mills, careful must be the pilots who would gauge the depths and shadows and steer us safely to our desired haven.
 The millmen and the children must not be antagonized; their interests are inter- woven not only by threads of cotton, but by irnperishable laws of nature. Reg ulated by. proper legislation, mill labor ---3f white people is the hope of the South The millmen guided and governed by laws like those of England and other Christian lands. may become the best and most helpful friends of southern children.
 If dotted all over Alabama we had cot ton mills and near every mill textile school and if the law kept children un- der F in the school for a part of the year and permitted them to work in the mill a small part and older children the greatest part of the year. it would not be long before popular feeling alike with common
  and the schools. Then would Alabama distance in the near future her industrial competitors among her sister States, and rank ere long with Massachusetts in the wealth-producing power of her citi- zens.
 One of the best things for the South is the cotton mill; the other thing which Will better this best is the skilled labor or our own people caught young and put in textile schools. Therefore I would speak word for the combination of the mill and the training school to make' sure and abiding the mutual gain of the millmen and the children. and to fix the prestige of Alabama. Adult labor sufficiently paid to maintain the families of workmen will be as profitable for the mills ultimately as it is for the operatives now.
 We club women must put our whole energies, our minds, our souls and all our available means to getting training for the children. Alabama dotted with mills and a textile school by every mill where the children were taught to bring 10 a finished shape the local and specific products harvested in that neighoorhood would mean more for us than any of our arithmeticS can calculate-mHre even than we can dream.
 Anyone famiilr with the facts and with physiological laws is obliged to ac- knowledge that some work is better than all idleness for children, and a small amount of carefully supervised work all ternated with study and play is not harmful to children T. years old. Anyone who has seen the squalor and hamilton of the "poor white trash of Alabama God for give us that this .erm names the class) with the distinctive and re- pulsive sallowness handed down by gem erations of ill-fed. 'uncleanly ancestors any man or woman native to Alabama and loyal to her soil must see in even present conditions of mill labor q step even if an undirected or misdirectad step towards better things.
 The serious mistake some of us are making is to think that there arc onfy two Slternatives-wo ork that at tYs or idle ness that paralyzes young souls and bod ies. These are not the alternatives r. We can but wake up and do our whole duty by the children, we will put those We take out of the mills into industrial schools. The millmen will not oppose leg islation which will protect and increase their future skilled operatives.
 We must have training schools Tho millmen in many instances would them- selves furnish the site adjacent to the mill and would contribute to the maintc- nance of a school for children where par