Los Angeles herald., 1908-03-21
THE MARooNED

A n eastern contemporary asks: rs
"a there any moral necessity for up
"a wards of 100000 children shaving
their lives away in the mills, mines and
factories of the United States, when
their fathers are walking the streets
looking for work? In Pennsylvania
alone there are over $4,000 children
working IN THE MINES" The mines
referred to are coal mines. Deep down
in the grimy shafts of the black under
world. or in the breakers, these little
BOYS and GIRLS work at the sorters
and riddles, help load the hoists, and
sometimes do pick and shovel work.
Girls and women, garbed in oVeralls,
like men, with their hair cut short or
tightly bound in nets, with their faces
and hands begrimed with coal dust, do
the work of the "swart salves of the
pitt that poets write about. Now and
then the history of the mining under
world of pennsylvania is diversified by
an accident" that is more than usually
horrible. Firedamp, perhaps, extin-
guishes the lives of all of the slaves,
big and little, leaving not one to tell
the tale to the coroner, who, thereupon,
listens politely to the deprecatory ana
regretful statement of the superintend-
ent, instructs the jury and obtains
verdict-in accordance with the facts?
Never. The verdict is in accordance
with the superintendent explanation
Outside of that. it is in accordance
with one fact-the fact that all the
iurymen are dependent, more or less.
on the mine owners for subsistence.
But. to come back to our initial ques-
ton, is there any moral necessity Tor
child labor? No. What kind of neces-
sity, then, compels it? An alleged eco
nomic necessity. Is there any true
economic necessity? No, otherwise
thousands upon thousands of able
bodied men would not today be without
work, without the opportunity of earn
ing a livelihood. The problem of all
the eastern states today is HOW TO
GET RID OF THE UNEMPLOYED.
They are raising funds to send them
away from eastern cities. They are
various state governments to make ap-
propriations to carry the unwillingly
idle out of the cities in which their
presence is recognized God forgive us)
as a MENACE, and to dump them
dump them, dump them anywhere!
with the excuse that the land needs
them and that the people should be-
restored to the land The bumpers
are actually posing as philanthropists!
With what cunning malignity doth our
social Satan address himself to his de-
structive task! AS in the times of old
yea, as in the recesses of eternity when
there was no Time, he poses as an angel
of light! The irresponsible, scared
Bumper a philanthropist!
In the east unskilled labor presents
the biggest puzzle in the problem of
"The Unemployed Citizen-What Must
We Do with Him." From the Carnegie
city, Pittsburg, the chief boast of which
is that it is a great industrial center,
there has been an exodus of 47,000 me-
chanics and laborers, and ALL THE
GREAT INDUSTRIAL CITIES HAVE
SEEN A SIMILAR EXODUS. Tn
skilled labor deprived of the means of
livelihood in its old haunts and homes,
is FLEEING FOR ITS LIFE. But
whittier?
Will precipitate fight from one part
of the country to another, from one city
to another, solve the problem?
And so the wiseacres tell the govern
ment that it must DUMP these fugi-
tives on unoccupied lands. If they are
thus dumped. if they are taken to this
or that remote and untitled acreage.
without tools, without money. without
food, without shelter, without knowl-
edge, without experience, and in a ma
jority of cases without adaptability,
they won't be helped. They will bel
MAROONED BY A BLUNDERING,
WOULD-BE BENEVOLENT, STEP
PATERNAL GOVERNMENT.