The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1902-09-13
Children in the Mines.
The Hopeless Life of Youthful Slaves in
Anthracite.

were to end IN victory for the miner
ana the increase of his wages.
Foor as the miner is, the two or three
collars a week that his child can earn
IN the mine do not make enough diff
ference in the family income to com
pensate for the lack of education and
opportunity which offer to the child his
only nope of ever escaping from the
prison of a miners life To a very large
extent, the miner takes his child to the
breaker from choice. The trogIodvte
has the habit of child-stunting. For
the miner there is no other world than
the colliery town, and there is no other
vocation for his child than the coal
black burrow. That the miner can
take this view only goes to prove his
own assertion that his life and environ
Inent are lowering him. The image of
Cod is grimed with the SCOT of the
mine Why shouldn't the lad work in
the breaker?" the miners wives have
said to me. He is strong and healthy,
and if he went to the school he would
be hanging, around most of the after
noon doing nothing. Besides, book
learning won't help him much in the
mine"
O o o
Another indication of the prevail 4nce
OF the child-stunting habit in Anthra-
cite is the appearance in the land dur
ing the last ten years of the stocking
factories, which make market for the
labor of miners little daughters. A con-
siderable percentage of all the hosiery
worn in the United States is produced
IN the enormous mills in the vicinity of
Wllkesbarre. In these mills are en-
ployed thousands of little girls. They
are paid under the piece work system,
n 70
per week. The limit of age at which
girls are allowed to work in Pennsyl-
vania is 13. For every child who earns
a plttance at the stocking loom an af-
ndaVlt is on file in the mill office de-
clarIng she is 13 years old. Yet one
does not have to employ close scrutiny
TO see that very few of the girls are
over 10. They are miners children, the
sisters of boys, who, under a sworn
guarantee of Il, are picking the slate
out Of coal for 40 cents a day.
Why have the stocking manufacture
ers selected Anthracite for their fac
tory sites? Because they know that
the child labor demanded by their
business can be more readily supplied
in the land of the miner than anywhere
else in the United States. They realized
the prevalence of child-stunting when
they came to Anthracite.
My youngest child was a girl" a
woman said. when my husband was
killed in the mine cavern the three
boys went to work in the breaker. The
fore-woman of the factory promised to
make a place for Mary at the loom,
where she could make so cents day.
But she isn't Il years DID, says 1.
oh, that's easy says she; lots of them
are younger nor that. You can have
the papers made out any age you want
to for half a dollar No. L says,
thinking it over, the Bible says not to
tell no lies, and because of that 1 can't
lie about her age, although I'd like to
do it for the money. I'll bring her to
the factory the day she's 49, 1 says.
I'm glad now of what L done, because
when she were Il year and eleven
months, Cod he took her. The asth-
ma she had, kind of turned into con-
sumption, so she died. And she could
not go to heaven and tell them all up
there that her mother was liar