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

Hand and Wales were called on to furnish
| an army to meet $4,000 Boer farmers
| in South Africa, an average of 30 per
cent of all recruits were rejected for
reasons of physical and nervous In
feriority. The inspector general re-
ports that from 40 to so per cent were
unfit for military duty. Under size,
narrow chest. bad teeth, decayed
nerves. bad vision, and all the other
evidences of race inferiority We're the
causes of rejection.
"Of those that were accepted for
military duty, 2 per cent were imme-
diately found unfit for service. OF the
remainder who got to the field, a large
number were incapable of actual oyer
ations in battle. OF those who could
go to the firing line large number
were quick and easy victims of enteric
fever. The British in South Africa
fought with the ancient British pluck,
which is the last thing to decay; but it
was the poorest army that this Won
derful people ever sent to the field
grotesquely inferior compared with that
which any other first, second, or even
third class nation can in a month rally
to its colors today.
England Stopped Child Labor Too Late
1T took three-quarters of a century
to stop these causes that were running
the British people. Not till a decade
ago was the intolerab1e abuse entirely
ended. But in the meantime the phys
ical, nervous, mentar and moral under
mining of the British people had gone
forward. And SO, when the Boer war
of 10 III
well-nigh impossible to send to battle
scarcely more than three hundred
thousand soldiers; and those soldiers.
splendid as was their courage, were
ridiculously inferior to the men they
met. One Boer in the field was worth
a dozen British soldiers.
This situation has alarmed British
statesmen as nothing else has done for
a century. The deterioration of Eng
lish men and women was too great a
price to pay for making British COM
merce the mistress of the seas and
London the financial center of the
world.
England now stopped this infamy.
and already the physical condition OF
her people has begun to improve. But
it will take century to build up what
it took century to tear down. Per-
haps it will take more than a CEN
tury.
Warning to People Of the South.
This word to our southern brothers.
and it is a word of doom. While the
white working people of the south.
composing the enormous majority Of
the entire white stock of that section,
are increasingly sending their children
to the mills and thus wrecking the fu-
ture of the white race, the negroes of
the south are increasingly sending
their children to school, and thus inn
proving the future of the black race
We are deliberately weakening the
white race of the south, while grad
ually strengt gthening the black race of
the south.
'I am glad to see the negro children
going to school; but it is heartbreak-
ing to know that the white children are
being made their interiors, physically,
and, in the far future, men
tally. And to what end? To the end
that the already unhealthy fortunes Of
northern capitalists who own these
southern cotton mills shall be made still
greater. The nation is alarmed over
the unrighteous power of unrighteous
fortunes; and yet we go on swelling
those fortunes with the blood and lives
Of American children.
Warning to American WorIeingmen.
"And this word, too, to the working
men of this nation: Child labor is
bringing your wages down to the level
Of child wages. Every labor leader in
the country knows this. If he does not,
he Is not worthy of leadership.
'It is an economic law that wages
seek the lowest and not the highest
level. So long as factories, mines and
sweat shops can employ children from
nine to twelve hours day and at from
30 to 70 cents, 1t Is clear that higher
paid labor is crowded out of the mar
ket, as is we'll known, and child labor
is as good or better for tending ma
chimes in cotton mills than adult labor.
Not only should the working people
insist that their children should have
a chance to grow up into healthy
workers, but working men and women
should demand that their wages shall
not be reduced by competition of little
ones who ought to be in school or at
home or employed healthf,lly in the
open air"