The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-10-17
tions will soon be as bad as they were two or three years ago.
 Why the 0ppositionP

why the OpposlC1out
 If there are but few children under 12 Is no delfber ate intention to employ more of them. why should the mills expend so much money. energy and time In op- position to a law which would keep them
 Why this vigorous and intolerant an- tagonism to the legal prohibition of thing which nobody desires @ and which is alleged to be insignificant in its mag nitude?
 Is 1t not a serious injury to the devel- opment of cotton manufacturing at the South for the impression to go abroad that success is dependent upon the em- ployment of little children under F years of age?
 Does not the opposition of the mills to a reasonable child labor law serve to strengthen this false impression?
 Almost all of the manufacturing Statss of the country have such laws. If chili labor law has not checked success with them it certainly cannot check succ ess in Alabama, where we have the advant- ages of local cotton. local power, local fuel and surpassing climate.
 If anything could check our progress in Alabama 1t would be the impression which some of the factories have helped upon the right to put the younger chil- dren into the long hours and the confiu- ing labor of the mills.
 Investors Alienated. Where one investor is attracted by such conditions, ten investors are alien ated from a field in which such condi-
 tions have been demanded. l am not speaking from hcarsay. I am speaking upon the drect authority of
 some of the ablest business men of our | country, both North and South. We sometimes hear the cry that "the child Is better off in the mill than out of
 the. mill " Is this true of our children
 under, 12-better or them that they dh a fhn arxy fod nf hn | spinning room in the rattle and whirl of | machinery from half past 6 in the morn | ing to half past in the evening (some-
 times worleig far into the nighD than | that they should have freedom! Are the probable iniqllies of little | children under F so great that We can | save them only by the antidote of sus-
 tained labor in the factory for ten or
 posterous in its absurdity. Freedom may | bring them into mischief. but shall the l purely uncertain and problematical risks | of freedom force us to yield their tender | lives into the certain perils of long, con- 1 tinuous confinement and monotonous | drudgery2
 It is true that the outward condition of
 the child of the mill family is sometimes l better than that of the poor white child | of the country Where this Is true 1t Is | true not because of child labor. but in | spite of it. There are men in the East | who claim that the condition of the child | in the sweatshop is vast improvement | on the condition of the child in the crowc- | ed foreign city, where 1t once lived. Does that prove that the sweat shop labor of its tender hands is responsible for the | change? No!
 Is child labor responsible for the bet | ter condition of the factory child? Its | life may share in the general improve | ment of conditions, but the child, instead of receiving, as childhood should, the
 maximum of immunity from distress and the largest freedom which the new en- vironment affords, is bearing in its tender
 strength the greatest burdens and the heaviest curse of the new prosperity"
 Let us not be guilty of mental confusion. Let us not credit the good fortune of the family to the misfortune of the child Edgar Gardner Murphy.
 Chairman of the Alabama Committee on Child Labor.
 Montgomery, Ala, Oct. S. 1902