The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-11-20
Child Labor and Labor Union.

Columbia, (S. O. State. ,.,
 The Manufa cturers' Record Of Balti- more, which aims to be the organ or the southern manufacturing interests, IS contendinR strenuously against the move ment in this section for the restrl ctlon of child labor in the cotton mills, ana one of Its principal arguments-t arsulien. 1t can be called-is the circumstance tlat this reform is advocated by the Unlon Textile Workers of America, an organlza- ton affiliated with the Federation or Labor. ,,aA
 That cause must be a poor one which so greatly relies upon prejudice TOT US support We can well understand tnat anything The Manufacturers Record may say against labor unionism will be grate- ful to the manufacturers who themselVes maintain in fact although not always m seeming a close union among themselves as 10 matters of labor and legislation: but it Is too much to expect the southern people generally who are now interesting themselves in this reform to oppose It because 1t is championed by labor or, ganization which our manufacturers hold to be inimical to their interests. A prominent manufacturer of this state once said 10 us that he disapproved or child labor in the cotton mills and would like to see the system abolished, put ne would be hanged if he would consent to anything that the labor unions demand ed. We may venture to affirm that this opinion Is not an isolated one.
 What the respective unions of employ CTS and employed may say or seek in this controversy matters not at all to the hundreds of thousands of intelligent men and women in the South who are in sym pathy with the movement to exclude chli- dren from the textile mills. They know that the labor unions have their selfish interests in the matter and that the cot ton manufacturers in turn have their selfish interests to promote
 The people are not fools, and they can
 tfNvAa NfN discern pretty clearly the motlves under lying union employers and union em- ployes It is not their purpose to be in 1uenced by either. But it Is their purpose and they feel 1t their duty, to promise this reform for larger reasons Of their own
 The question of wages which is in- volved is a small thing If no child un- der 12 should he admitted to cotton mill in South Carolina the gain to the adult labor unonists in wages would De lmma- terial and so would the loss to the em- ploying corporations he immaterial. It seems to have escaped attention that the very figures used by the organs or the manufacturers to show the small employ ment of child labor in our mill consu- tute an argument to prove that such Ia bor could he dispensed with whhout any financial loss worth considering.
 The fact likewise seems to have been overlooked that the more successfnl the efforts to prove that only hahdiul or little children in the South are worked In the mills the less successfu must he the claim that this agitation for the re- striCtion of child labor IS New Eng- land device wherewith to cripple south ern cotton manufacturing. For surely the gain or loss of a few cents day on the labor of few thousand hands need not disturb the prosperity of an industry making such profits as cotton mahu1ac- turing does in the South.
 But the strongest practical argument against all that the trade papers and the manufacturers can say as to the. evil ef- circunnstance that at a time when agita- ton for the reform is at its highest and It's prospects of success are at the bright est new ventures In cotton r1annta ctur- irg rnu'tiplv as never before. In evidence whereof we append a couple of para graphs from a letter written in Spartan