The Oskaloosa herald. (Oskaloosa, Mahaska County, Iowa) 1885-1919, 1902-05-22

against child labor, Massachusetts, has.
Massachusetts mill owners profit by
this to move their machinery to this
state and employ women and children.
One mill thus saved two thousand
dollars week, or one hundred thous-
and year. There is secret compact
between these mill owners and the
state legislature that no state inyesti-
cations will be made, no statistics of
mortality demanded, no laws passed
against them, in short, perfect free
dom be given these hustling northern
ers to dupe the illiterate cracker in
to selling his wife and children into
years of living death, death in life
rather. The pay of these employees is
OF course taken out in rent, fuel and
food and clothing from the company
store.
The mill owners are supreme In
their territory. They battle all efforts
of interested workers, and allow no
statistics to be kept. However it is
known with careful investigation that
no child can stand this life longer
than four wears. The majority are re-
leased before this. After a years la
Dor in the mill the child loses all
sensibility and intellectual form. He
cannot now be taught to read. His ner.
yes are dead; memory, feeling. love,
these can never be his. He has become
part of the never ceasing, roaring
machinery. I quote from Hubbard's
article: Boys and girls from the age
of six years and upwards are en-
ployed. They usually work from six
o'clock in the morning until seven at
night. For four months of the year
they go to work before daylight and
they work until after dark.
These toddlers, saw, for the most
part did but one thing-they watched
the flying spindles on frame twenty
feet long, and tied the broken threads.
They couldn't sit at their tasks; back
and forward they paced, watching with
inanimate dull looks, the flying spin.
dies. The roar of machinery drowned
The roar of the machinery drowned
every other sound-back and forth
paced the baby toieers in their bare
feet, and mended the broken threads.
| thot to lift one of the little
toilers to ascertain his weight,
Straitway through his thirty-fye
pounds of skin and bones there ran a
tremor of fear, and he struggled for.
ward to tie broken thread. l att
tracted his attention by touch, and
offered him silver dime. He look
ed at me dumbly, from a face that
might have belonged to man of sixty,
so furrowed, tightly drawn and full
of pain it was. He did not reach FOR
the money-he did not knew what 1t
was. l tried to stroke his head and
caress his cheek. My smile of friend
ship meant nothing to him-and he
shrank from my touch. as tho he ex,
pected punishment - N
II the child workers of South Car
olina could be marshalled by bugle
call, headed with fife and drum, and
marched through Commonwealth av-
enue, out past that statue of William
Lloyd Garrison erected by the sons of
the men who dragged him through
the streets at ropes end, the sight
would appall the heart and drove con.
viction home. Imagine an army OF
twenty thousand pigmy dondsmen,
half naked. half starved, yellow, meaz-
ened deformed in body, with drawn
faces that show spirits too dead to
weep, too hopeless to laugh, too pain
ed to feel. Would not aristocratic
Boston lock her doors, bar the shut
ters, and turn in shame from such a
sight?
l know the sweat shops of Hester
Street, New York; l am familiar with
the vice. deprayity and degradation of
the Whitechapel District, | have visi-
ted the ghetto of Venice; l know the
lot the coal miner in Pennsylvania;
and know somewhat of Siberia afro
cities; but for misery, woe and hope
less suffering have never seen any
thing to equal the cotton mill slavery
of South Carolina--this in my own
America-the land of the Free and the
Home of the Brave"
Hubbard speaks at some length OF
the efforts which are being made to
stop this slaughter of innocents, of the
derision to a popular sentiment these
brave workers have to encounter. The
South has her share of the blame in
this murderous business; but the
North, the slaye-hating, freedom-iov-
ing, intellectual Massachusetts,, what is
her responsibility in this matter?
The right must win. To the intelli-
gent, courageous young man and wo-