The labor world. [volume] (Duluth, Minn.) 1896-current, 1906-10-20
CHILD LABOR WRONG
IS NATIONAL CRIME
The Shame of This Country is th'
Destruction of American
Childhood.
Every Criminal Employer Has
the Favorite Cry of
'Class Hatred.'

The Chicago American had a very
timely editorial last Sunday on the
evil of child labor. 1t says:
Every citizen is responsible for every
national wrong, unless he is doing his
best to right the wrong.
The shame of this country Is the
destruction Of childhood. the organized
system of murder called Child Labor.
1t is murder Of the body as we'll as Of
the soul. More dsgraceful than any
black slavery, more shameful than any
possible injustice to grown men, Is
this abuse of the children in the fac
tories, the mills and the mines. The
child Of the black slave was allowed
to grow up healthy and vigorous be-
cause it was worth to its owner two
hundred dollars at Its birth.
But the white child cannot even have
it youth. 1t is worth nothing to any
body, except to the nations iture,
and in thousands Of factories and mills
the white children are ground into
money-the only way of getting money
out Of them.
Among those that oppose this news
paper-and they include every criminal
employer of child labor and every
Hatred"
An attack on system which kills
children by thousands Is called, and
Will be called, "fomenting class hatred"
But those who read this newspaper
and all the people Of this country know
we'll how to distinguish between class
hatred and hatred Of injustice.
In the Congo, where the King Of
Lott, trlx ~
child and cut off it's right hand if the
father and mother fail to bring in their
allotted supply of rubber.
They cut off the child's hand be-
cause it Is too young to pick rubber.
They don't cut off the fathers or the
mothers hand; ;zthey need those hands nds
for rubber picking.
The SECOND year the child's second
hand is cut off If the parents fail to
bring the necessary amount Of rubber,
and then, among other results, the child
becomes blind, because it has no hands
to wipe the insects Of the tropics from
it's eyes.
But go down there and tell the truth
and you will be told by the agents of
King Leopold that you are breeding
class hatred, just as you are told by
SAAN
mill In this country, when you attack
the slow killing Of children, that you
are breeding class hatred.
We sincerely hope that it will be
possible to breed the most intense
hatred-a hatred that shall find vigor-
Gus expression at the polls-agains
every man who for dollar sacrifices
the life Of young child.
Mr.. Edwin Markham, the man Of
feeling and genius who whote 1.-THE
Man With The Hoe," has taken uI
Systematically the defense Of the child
slaves In the Cosmopolitan Magazine
In the Cosmopolitan for October
there Is this brief description Of the
factory slave:
1T is nightfall when the long hours
end and the children may return tt
the barracks they call home. often toe
tired to wait for the cheerless mea
which the mother, also working in the
factory, must cook after her factory.
day is over. Frequently they snatch
only bite and curl up undressed or
the bed"
Is not that a pretty picture of life
in the greatest Republic, the riches
nation, that the world has ever seen
In this same Cosmopolitan articl
Mr.. Markham, who writes about thu
child-killing glass factory, has this:
THE factory was br1stling will
cordons Of barbed wire. Asked th'
reason of this hidous hedging, tn
superintendent blandly replied, I
keeps the young imps here when we've
got 'em in for the night Shift Only
one more turn Of the screw would pu
chains on the legs again, as the Not
tingham cotton manufacturers wer,
wont to hold their runaways in Eng
lands obsolete factory infernos."
Had you asked the English child
killer years ago why he had chains or
the legs of his little slaves, his repl,
would have been, What are you III
to? Are you trying to breed clas
hatred?'
If you had gone into the English
coal mines, to see women half naked
with chains around their necks, in thei]
hands and knees, pulling loaded Goa
cars through low tunnels, you woul(
have had the same answer had yo,
expressed resentment.
The work that Mr.. Markham is do
ing in his systematic exposure Of chilt
labor in the Cosmopolitan Magazin
is a noble one.
But the citizens of the country hay,
got to help It, It won't do to read tn,
article, Or look at the pictures as yo,
look on a play at the theater, and the1
go away and do nothing.
You have got to feel this thing i,
your hearts; you have got to know
that you. as an individual in this ma
ton. are responsible for that chill,
crying in the picture on this page
We give pictures of two children O,
this page-the working child and an
other.
Purposely we have made the pictur
) Of John d. Rockefeller and his grand
son fantastic. >-s..'....