The Brunswick daily news. [volume] (Brunswick, Ga.) 1903-1906, 1903-06-14
WHITE SLAVE IS
OUR DISGRACE.
DR.. Rede Gives Some In-
teresting Facts About
Child Labor.
BY WHY'S Rlede, D. q.

~ UyuyS rNCOcy ~ ~
Negro slavery was abolished in Am
erica many years ago.
1t has been succeeded by form ot
servitude Intimately more injurious
to society and yastis worse frcm ev
cry point of view. Its victims are
more helpless, capable of keener sui
ferlng and more liable to permanent
injury that were the slaves OF fifty
years ago. This form of slavery is
not limited to the south, though it is
worse in some of our southern states
than anywhere else the world
1t is gigantic evil which we can.
not permit to continue without bring.
ing dishonor upon ourselves and des.
tfuction to some of the most import.
ant elements of our population.
There are in our southern states
more than $4,000 children who are
reduced to the most calling servitude.
The child Of the negro is today free.
The child of the white man is often
slave, toiling under the keen eye of
cruel task masters in mills and manu-
facturies, wearing out his young life
to satisfy the greed of INSCRIPTIONS
capitalists and heortless parents.
Fifty thousand children under the
age Of fifteen who ought to be in
school and at healthful play, are con-
fined il hot, dusty rooms, for long
hours, dwarfing their bodies, stunt
Ing their minds and starving their
souls.
Why? That greedy mill owners may
g65 cheap labor and unnatural parents
may live in idleness and debauchery
upon the the slender earnings of these
little laborers. Thus the precious
young life upon which our future
greatness and prosperity so directly
depends is being sacrificed before it
has time to come to maturity. FMS Is
shocking and shameful thing Or
iental nations sometimes cast help
less children out to die. We do worse.
We work them to death. The few
who survive the ordeal ill our
hospitals and insane asylums and yet
we call ourselves a civilized nation.
The most painful thought about the
Gainesv lie disaster is CnaU oI tnoae
who their lives in the cotton mill
all wo or three were little chill
DIR ne of them hardly more than
infants, confined at hard labor on the
upper floors, at the mercy of the
storm, caught like lats in trap ami
hurled to destruction without posi-
bility to help. Their blood Is upul.
the state of Georgia. She ought not
to have permitted them to be there.
She ought long ago, like her sister
states, to have made law prohibit
ing the employment of little children
in her mills and manufactures. There
are but one or two states which have
not done this. In South Carolina no
child under II years can work in the
mills, and none under II at night. In
work in factory and none under Is
can work more than &C hours a week.
In Tennessee the age is fixed at IA
years. Georgia has done nothing for
the protection of her children. Justice
and humanity demand that she shall
enact laws which will guard them
against the rapacity of greedy EN-
ployers and cruel parents. The high
est duty of our lawmakers is to pro-
tect the weak and defenseless. bul
they are not doing it.
The blood of the little martyrs at
Gainesville cries from the ground to
the legislature of Georgia to set free
the child slaves whose lives are being
worn out in grinding toll. 1t calls
to the people OF this splendid Elm
pire state to arise in their might and
abolish this shocking evil by which
her fair name is tarnished and from
which many of her innocent children
are suffering. She cannot afford to
be behind any state in the Union in
humane and tender care for the pre-
clous little lives which are being sac
rificed by thousands upon the altar of
mammon. She ought to emancipate
them without delay.