Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1907-01-23

RESPONSIBLE FOR DEeENERAcY
British Nation Held Up as Example Of
Evil Effect. Of Child Labo. and En-
ployment Of Women in Factories
,Workinsmen and People Of the South
Warned.

sWorkinamen and People Of the South
Warned.
Washington, Jan. 23.-Ore of the
most notable addresses before the pres
ent session of congress was the ad-
dress today of Senator Beveridge, OF
Indiana, who spoke in favor of his
bill to prohibit the labor of children
in mines and factories and sweat
shops. He presented many facts to
demonstrate the evil effects on the
physical and mental powers of child
rem thus employed. MIR. Beveridge said
in part:
THE census shows that nearly g.
100000 child breadwinners under IL
years of age are now at work OF
these, almost 100000 are engaged in
work other than agriculture. Child
labor on the farm is good. This bill
does not strike at that. It strikes at
child slavery in factories, mines and
sweat shops.
appalling as the census figures are,
they are much below the truth. Men
and women who have given years of
painstaking investigation to this evil,
testify that only part of little child
rem at work in factories, sweat shops,
and mines and in other like industries
were returned by the census enumera-
tors. I here present affidavits showing
the prevalence of the labor of children
from less than years of age to IA
years of age in states where the census
returns show not much child labor en-
ployed."
Senator Beveridge then presented a
large number of affidavits, with pho
tographs Of child breadwinners.
.The evil then exists. What does it
anc an? First, it means inhumanity. Let
me give you Illustrations:
Mr.. John Spargo author of The Bit
ter Cry of the Children, tells of one lit
tie girl at Atlanta, Ga, who said:
When I works nights rs too tired to
undress when gets home, and so
goes to bed with my clothes on me-
HE tells of another little girl in
Paterson, n. J., who works in the
steaming room of a fax mill, standing
barefooted in pools of water twisting
coils of wet hemp. He says that when
he saw her she was dripping wet, and
in the coolest evenings of winter little
Marie and hundreds Of other little girls
must come out of the superheated
steaming rooms in just that condition.
He tells of a glass factory, sur
rounded by high fence with several
rows of barbed wire stretched across
the top, which the foreman explained
was needed because it keeps the young
dmps inside once we have got them
for the night shift
"He tells of a tiny girl years old
who had worked for twelve hours
day in an OYSTER canning factory at
I Oxford, Md, and Maryland has over
200 canning establishments employing
young children.
"Mr. Spargo describes the terrible
work of the 'snapper-up' or carrying
in boys in glass factories and says that
the glass blowers themselves seldom
permit their own children to work in,
glass factories He quotes one glass
blower in Glassboro, N. J., as saying
TO him: I would sooner see my boy
dead than working here
"He testifies as to the work Of the
boys on the breakers of coal mines. Mr..
Spargo once tried to do the work for
half an hour that 12-year-old boy
did day after day for ten hours at a
stretch. He says: My hands were
bruised and cut in few minutes. I
was covered from head to foot with
coal dust, and for many hours after
wards was expectorating some Of the
small particles of anthracite I had
swallowed. There were boys of 10
years of age doing it for so and 50
cents a day Some of them had never
been inside of school; few of them
could read child's primer
Race Degeneration.
'Tf these children do not die, but
grow up to manhood and womanhood,
they become enemies Of society. 1 do
not blame them. They know. that they
are not the equals of their fellows in
body, mind, or soul; that their bodies
are dwarfed, crooked and weak; their
minds dull and clouded; their souls
darkened and vicious Physicians tes-
tify that nervous exhaustion, produced
by child labor in factories, sweat shops
and mines, not only stunts growth, but
produces nervous Irritation which
calls for liquor and tobacco. and causes
another vice worse than either"
Senator Beveridge here produced the
affidavits of physicians in support of
this proposition.
"These children reaching what ought
to be manhood and womanhood, be-
come the parents Of offspring, Inherit
ing their degeneracy, and these chill
dren in turn grow up to produce other
children still more degenerate. This
ruin Of American citizenship, upon
which alone this republic. the last ex-
pertinent Of freedom rests. is too high
price to pay for making still richer
few men who are already too rich.
English Degeneration.
What this means to the future of
the nation is before us in an example
which has startled the worid-tl1e de-
terioration Of the British people reveal
- by the Boer war. When the "a. .ooo.-