The wageworker. (Lincoln, Neb.) 1904-????, 1905-04-07
The Slaughter of the InnoCentS )"

lima manufactures more cotton cloth
than any other state in the union. The
cotton mills of South Carolina are
England capital.
In many instances the machinery of
the cotton mills has been moved en-
tire from Massachusetts to South Caro-
lima. The move was made for the os-
tensible purpose of being near the raw
product; but the actual reason is that
In South Carolina there is no law
regulating child labor. Heartless GU
pidity has joined hands with brutal ig-
norance, and the result is child labor
OF SO terrible a type that African slav-
cry was paradise compared with it.
Many OF the black slaves lived to a
good old age, and they got hearty
enjoyment from life.
The infant factory slaves of South
Carolina can never develop into men
and women. There are no mortality
statistics; the mill owners battle all
attempts of the outside public to get
at the facts, but my opinion is that
in many mills death sets the little pris-
oner free inside of four years. Beyond
that he can not hope to live, and this
opinion is derived from careful obser-
walton and interviews with several
skilled and experienced physicians
who practice in the vicinity of the
mills.
-
years and upwards are employed. 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
At noon / saw them squat on the
floor and deyour their food. which con-
sisted mostly of cornbread and bacon.
These weakened pigmies munched in
silence. and then toppled over in sleep
on the floor in all the abandon of baby
hood. Very few wore shoes and stock
ings; dozens of little girls of, say, sew
en- years OF age wore only one gar
ment, linsey-woolsey dress. When
1t came time to go to work the fore
man marched through the groups
shaking the sleepers, shouting in their
ears, lifting them to their feet, and in
few instances kicking the delin-
quents into wakefulness.
The long afternoon had begun-from
a quarter to one until seven o'clock
they worked without respite or rest.
These toddlers, / saw, for the most
part did but one thing-they watched
the flying spindles on frame 20 feet
long, and tied the broken threads.
They could not sit at their tasks;
back and forward they paced, watch
ing, with inanimate, dull look, the fly
ing spindles. The roar of the ma
chinery drowned every other sound
Back and forth paced the baby toilers
in their bare. feet, and mended the
broken threads. Two. three, or four
threads would break before they could
patrol the 20 feet-the threads were
always breaking!
The noise and the constant looking
at the flying wheels reduce nervous
sensation in few months to the
minimum. The child does not think;
he ceases to suffer-memory is as
dead as hope. No more does he long
for the green fields, the running
streams, the freedom of the woods,
and the companionship of-all the wild,
free things that run, climb, fly, swim
or burrow
He does his work like an automa-
ton; he is a part of the roaring ma
chinery memory is scared, physical
vitality is at such low ebb that he
ceases to suffer. Nature puts short
limit on torture by sending insensi-
bility. II you suffer, thank God!-it
is q sure sign you are alive.
At certain night school, where
several good women were putting
forth efforts to mitigate the condition
of these baby slaves, one of the teach
ers told me that they did not try to
teach the children to read-they SIM
ply put forth an effort to arouse the
spirit through pictures and telling
-. L
spectacle of half the class, of dozen
or more, sunk into sleep that more re-
selnbled a stupor. The teacher was a
fine, competent woman, but worn-out
nature was too much for her-to teach,
you must make your appeal to life.
The parents of the children sent
them there so they could be taught to
read, but I was told by one who knew
that no child Of, say, seven or eight
years of age who had worked in the
mill year could ever learn to read.
He is defective from that time on. A
year in the mills and he loses the
capacity to play; and the child that
can not play can not learn.
We learn in moments of joy; play is
education; pleasurable animation is
necessary to growth; and when you
have robbed the child of it's playspell,
you have robbed it of it's life.
The reason that thought flags and
stupor takes possession Of the child