The labor world. [volume] (Duluth, Minn.) 1896-current, 1907-03-02
CHILD LABOR
IS 4 N MENACE
Rev. Kerby S. Miller Discusses
Momentous Question-Points
Out the Remedy.

Rev. Kerby S. Miller, preaching in
the First Unitarian church yesterday
morning on Child Labor" spoke in
part as follows:
In our laudable desire to establish
our manufacturing interests in Amer
lea, and our reluctance to interfere in
any way with them, we have been so
self-centered that we have not thought
until recently of the children who labor
in our factories. In four states we
have no child labor laws, in four others
children are permitted to work in fac
tories at the age of twelve. In most
others they may begin at fourteen and
IN few at sixteen, but in all states
the law is enforced with slack hand
II at all. The results can be easily
foreseen, for up to the age of thirteen
the child's muscles are largely water,
and the bones are soft while growing;
curvature of the spine, muscular de-
formity, fiat feet, pulmonary diseases
abound among factory children; the
development is arrested and they never
come to maturity. They are without
exception mentally stunted because all
opportunity and strength for anything
besides the monotonous work is taken
away. Being largely uniformed in
their morals and thrown with older
men who are often vile, at an age
when sex consciousness is just dawn
ing and discipline is most needed, it is
not strange that they become too foul
mouthed many times, to associate with
people decent enough to help them.
In factory towns, the type" is famil-
lar, boys old and girls weary at six
teen.
England A Warning.
England. now decadent in industrial
life, should be constant warning
to us. In London another race, with
another speech. understood stature and
weight is easily distinguished; and
during the busy season from eight
hundred thousand to million unem-
ployed are in constant evidence max
ing 1t prominent question in parlia-
ment. This is the army Of ineffectives,
inhabiting the slums, constantly re-
cruited from the ranks of child labor.
Their stamina can be gagged by their
actions in the Boer war.
Our own slums are constantly re-
cru1ted by the. ineffectives from the
same source. In the United States
teen are at work in factories and
shops. In the cotton mills of the south
there are sixty thousand under four
teen. Georgia has no child labor law,
while Virginia, North and South Car
DINA and Alabama have the twelve
year limit with lax enforcement. There
are over ten thousand in the coal mines
Of Pennsylvania and many thousands
more In the glass factories of many
states. The pace Of modern industry,
Its routine character and it's pitiless
requirements are all set against the
development of the child.
Where Responsibility Rests.
Child labor has grown to these pro-
portions even with the laws on the
statute books of many states. Par
ents are perhaps most responsible, in
their desire to change the child from
an encumbrance to an asset, or through
Ignorance and shiftlessness. in our
change from an almost purely agri-
cultural country to a manufacturing
nation, we have not easily found"
ourselves. Economic conditions, the
high prices and increasing population
have caused a demand for cheap labor
Managers Of industries are striving
for maximum output at the minimum
cost; and child labor has been asso-
ciated with some industries, like cot
ton spinning, from their beginning
Doubtless the greed of men and the
demand for dividends has also entered
in, but not so largely as we are some
times led to think by the lurid mag
azine articles. There are many cases
where 1t has seemed really necssn.y
for the children in the family to earn
a pittance; and many honestly, though
ignorantly. think that boys must
choose between the factory, and the
| street, and because of the inhuman
idea that manual workers are in a
class by themselves, we have often
tacitly consented to the exploitation Of
them and their children.
An Economic Folly.
1.-THE economic folly of discounting
the future of using up immature
strength, of exploiting in an almost
| worthless state what will afterwards
be Of great value, of diminishing at its
source our future supply of labor, Is
becoming evident, even to those ,-nose
constant demand is for profits. We
fill the ranks Of the unskilled. and in
efficients by child labor; making the
acquiring Of skill impossible to them,
| and get as a result feeble and i'm
potent class which becomes largely
dependent upon charity. Is it not un-
| patriotic, also, to SO sap the vital