The Washington herald., 1906-12-14

Special to The Washington Herald.
Cincinnati Ohio. Dee BIN a speech
tonight before the National Child Labor
Convention Senator \. J. Beveridge, Of
Indiana declared that the continuation
of child labor in the factory and mine
is daily creating an element in American
citizenship saturated with the spirit Of
revenge and filed with more real physical
danger to property itself than ever was
packed in dynamiter's bomb.
The meeting, which was attended by
4.000 people, was also addressed by DR.
Felix Adler and Miss Jane Adams, who
indorsed the Beveridge-Parsons child Ia
Dor bill
Senator Beveridge, in his address. called
upon the lords of gold to reflect upon
the fact when they tremble for their
widespread properties. And not only, -
said the Senator. lis physical danger
TO property manifesting itself in in
cendiary fires. in Unreasoning mobs, in
shots through inoffensive windows. but
It viii finally manifest itself in votes TO
the destruction of the very purpose and
reason for which this government of free
and equal men was founded"
system Makes Physical Degenerntes.
The Senator declared that the system
against which he protested was in opera
ton now This crime against free in
sdtutions is being committed this very
night.' he exclaimed. GAs I speak to
YOU thousands of children are at work
in cotton mills, glass factories, sweat
shops. and on the breakers OF mines
Their bones are not yet hardened; their
brains are yet the brains OF infants-they
are still in what should be the very first
period of their growth. and yet the mate
rials for the foundation Of their life's de-
velOpment are being utterly shattered;
their normal growth is being stopped; their
bones made crooked; their backs forever
bent with the stoop Of an eternal old age;
their minds stunted; their characters per-
verted and malfOrmed.
Ilow-cheeked, sunken-eyed, weak
neTved. puny and vicious souled, hundreds
of thousands of miserable little creatures
are being still further degenerated by a
system of greed as foolish as it is wick
ed -
The Senator adverted TO his own child
hood. when he worked. but he said it was
in the open air, on the farm; then on
grades of railroad building. afterward in
the logging camps. and finally college,
"and ali the saving forces Of the true, the
beautiful, and the good And yet" he
declared, 7 do not permit myself to think
Of my life from twelve to nineteen years
Of age, because it makes me bitter.
Nation Has Most Mt Stake.
we cry out with alarm when some
European anarchist is discovered among
our immigrants, and yet we go on re-
ducing the same spirit of the misguided
foreigner whom We so fear-prOducing the
same spirit, but without even the intel
lect and physical strength of this alien
menace
This manufacture Of possible anarch-
lists has got TO be stopped. It cannot be
stopped by the States They could not
stop the evil If they would and they
would not stop the evil if they could. In
the States in which this practice is worst,
the immense manufacturing and mining
interests are so powerful that they either
prevent the passage Of thorough laws. or.
what is a good deal worse, enact a mutt
lated law which makes the people believe
that their legislature has done all if
could, while at the same time the evil
itself goes on.
Where an evil is national in effect a
national remedy should cure it. The chill
dren OF New York, when they reach ma
ture years. will not be New Yorkers only.
they will be Americans also. and even
more. So that. from every point of view
the remedying Of this evil cannot be left
to the United States. acting individually"