Ottumwa tri-weekly courier. [volume] (Ottumwa, Iowa) 1903-1916, 1904-11-15
0 N CHILD LABOR
IOWA FEDERATION OF LABOR
PREPARES VALUABLE
PAMPHLET.
Federation Makes an Earnest Plea for
the Young Of the Nation and Depicts
Conditions Attendant Upon Child La.
Dor Throughout the Nation.

- ~N''0 ~ sbS tNohiSit anu 1CHICkS
Conditions Attendant Upon Child La.
Dor Throughout the Nation.
The Iowa state federation of labor
has prepared little pam phlet upon the
subject OF Child Labor" copies of
which have been received in Ottumwa
and extracts from which will prove in
teresting. The pamphlet is not only
largely historical, but it gives recital
of the conditions attedant upon child
labor throughout the United States.
An interesting portion of the pam
phlet is as follows:
The Jewish Talmud says:
The safety Of the nation depends
upon the schooling of the children"
Children are schooled whether we di-
rect their schooling or not. Initiative.
susceptible to influence from any sort
OF environment, children make the
kind Of adults their circumstances and
surroundings determine. No doubt we
should carefully scrutinize the moral
and physical status of the foreigners
we permit to land upon our shores;
but why SO frantic about this and so
Indifferent as to the fate of our ma
tive born children.
In Berne, Switzerland, there is
bronze statue Of hideous ogre eating
a child. The pockets of the monster
are filed with boys and girls waiting
for the cracking of their bones and
the extraction of their marrow between
the teeth of the cannibal. It is only
a statue this horrible image in Berne.
Tho SWtcc ora To
may like statues. But we are prac-
teal, realistic people; we read lola
and have Ibsen clubs. We don't take
much to bronze statuary; besides the
realistic facts of everyday life all
around us are brazen enough.
In Pennsylvania we have breakers
to break our boys; and silk mills, too,
by the way, to break our girls. South
ern states, as a bid to capital to come
down there and invest in cotton mills,
agree to repeal all child labor laws
with brazenness that is only match
ed by the capital that is so suddenly
attracted by such allurements. There
has been enormous increase in the cot
ton mill business in several southern
states, accompanied by appalling in
crease in child labor. The ogre has
migrated, under direct promise in
many cases, through southern boards
of trade. that in the fresh fields and
pastures new, there was no end of lit
tile children, and there, would be no
laws to modest or make him afraid
Jesus said: Suffer little children to
come unto me and forbid them not
but He did not have cotton mill, nor
breaker, or silk mill, a glass factory,
nor a beer bottling establishment to
put them in; nor does it appear that
He wanted them for a department
store, or to use the girls to replace the
messenger boys who had struck to en-.
force the terms of an agreement by
which former strike had been set
tied. In fact, He seems to have
wanted to make men and women of
/ them, and fit them for the Kingdom of
Heaven.
1--WE seem to have been drifting away
from His idea fthe proper treat
ment of child. The census Of 1900
shows that drifting to be quite rapid.
While the number of males over 16
years Of age in all manufacturing in
dustries increased 1877 per cent, the
number of women over 16 years of age
increased 1874 per cent, and children
under 16 increased 1915 per cent.
I'm some states the increase is nearly
800 per cent, as in South Carolina,
where the number rose from 2,30S to
1850; ovec 125 per cent in North Car
DINA, where the total number rose
from 4,7S3 to 10,377; in Alabama from
| 1,425 to 3,474: Georgia from 1921 to
6,373. At the same time do not let us
forget an equally alarming increase
| elsewhere.
"In Wisconsin the law provides that
the child labor law may be set aside
by any judge if the parents of the
child under IA years need its wages
| for their support. What a spectacle
| is this. A great rich state deliberately
casting the burden of supporting its
aged poor upon the backs of the little
children who must thenceforth &c
through the world in stoop-shouldered
| ignorance, broken in mind and body
under the load. Tacitly or openly this
IS to some extent true in all the other
states, a shifting or aged parental pau
perism upon innocent children to save
a penny in taxes.
| Another thing. child labor laws anc
compulsory education laws mus
blend. The fourteen weeks schooling
law in Illinois must be made forty
weeks and the child labor question
taken out of state politics and put into
the hands of local compulsory schoo
attendance officers.
Get back to the people in this as Ii
everything. Look at the school reg
istration in September in Chicago, ther
seen what it is in aJmary when the
fourteen weeks Of schooling has beer
secured; if you would know how chill
dren are driven out of the schools into
the factories the very moment the law
permits. Make the compulsory schoo
year co.extensive with the schoo
terms, and leave only the vacation in
teryals to the discretion Of factory in
spectors and the perjury of parents OF
| judges permits. Educate the chill
dren. That is what our schools are
for. with all due Difference to those
who think it is for cheap commoditie,
and dividends on stock Every child
is entitled to all the education the
off 4