The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1902-11-16
CHILD LABOR IN MILLS.
This Writer Thinks Cotton Mills a God Send to
Women and Children.

Women and Children.
To the Editor: / would like to have
space enough to give my opinion on the
child labor law which is now being adj
vocated The most of the advocates seem
to be talking something of which they
know very little Those who keep the
thing alive belong to two classes: One
class is composed of those who make a
habit of criticising and finding fault with
everything that those do who are toiling
day and night for the advancement OF
the world and the uplifting of humanity,
but who themselves do very little toward
the progress of the world the bet
terment of mankind except talk. The
other class is composed of the profess
sional politicians with their great, swell
ing heart pushing their vest out eighteen
inches from their backbones and burst
ing with love for the dear women. the
helpless children and the wronged poor
men of North Carolina. OF course there
are a great number of charitable, we'll
meaning people, editors, minister's etc,
many of whom have never sat down in
a factory home or talked to a factory
child, who without giving the matter
much thought, say of course it is wrong
work in mills which is true but what
are they to do? / think it has been
proven that the mill owners do not want
children to work in the mills if they
were the hard-hearted men they are
sometimes pictured it could be proven to
a good business man in ten minutes that
it would not pay to work children in
mills and they are all good business men
hot iS evil
have kept the wheels turning during the
last two years of Pritchard's Prosperity.
1t is surely not the superintendent and
owners who want to work the children for
it is mans nature to want to do his work
easy and any man who has children will
have an idea how easy it is to image
fifty or a hundred of them. Who is it
want the children to work in the mills?
| will answer this question, not as a
mill man who is and has been in the
mill and worked beside these children
and with them. 1t is the children and
their parents who want them to work
| There always has been people who would
have misfortunes of one kind and an
other, and become poor, sometimes I'M
able to support their families. Small
children can help their parents more and
do it easier in a cotton mill than at
anything else open to them. Then there
is cases where the father and husband
is stricken down and dies, leaving his
wife, several children and some debts for
legacy if she can put these children in
mill they can live comfortably and
get some education, one at time but
at no other occupation can they make a
living There are the classes who COM
pose the greater part of the child labor
Of this State. If you will take an aver
lge superintendent and go through his
mill with him and ask him why every
| child you see under twelve is in there,
! you will find that nearly all of them got
| the rules suspended on account of some
! misfortune, and not to run the plant
cheaper as many suppose You may find
too that even that superintendent has
heart before you get through. If you
make a law to keep them out of the
mills they may have to do harder work
o live. as thousands of them are doing
IN our State today. j have seen boys
zen years old driving two horses and
guiding pillow, to which. as far as dwarf
| ng the boy is concerned, rolling doffng
s not to be compared. OF course. regu-
ar, continuing work tends to retard chill
lrens growth physically, but large
number of children in the State practical
have to make their own living and it
wrong to pass a law to keep them out
If the easiest place to make it. The
Presbyterian Standard says: There is
no sense in painting cotton mill as a
sort of earthly paradise for children"
No. neither is there any sense or kind
ness in placing all the blame for the
children having to work for a living on
the cotton mills and driving them out of
the mills to do drudgery or work harder
than mill work. The cotton mills are a
God-send to the women and children In
this State who are in straitened circum-
stances. There is d tendency now to
make a law for everything. There is
such thing as too many laws and gov
crnment control of too many things.
am in favor of just as few laws as we
can get along with II we want to make
n law to help the children what could
do them vastly more good than labor
law would be a law to compel every child
20 so to school six months in the year
from eight to fourteen years of age UNI
less excused by the school board, and
levy Il tax to give us six months public
school in every district in the State.
This will be all that is needed against
child labor and at the same time give us
a great advance in education.
A. SAM. WHITE.