Los Angeles herald. [microfilm reel] (Los Angeles [Calif.]) 1900-1911, 1909-01-25
SCORES PRACTICE
OF CHILD LABOR
ROBBERY OF HERITAGE OF
CHILDHOOD DENOUNCED
REV. PRIcHARD GRILLS BONDAGE
OF LITTLE ONES
Declares Employment of Boys and
Girls More ReprehensibIe Than
African Servitude Two Gen.
erations Ago In South

At Central Presbyterian church on
Hill street the pastor, Rev. Augustus
B. Prichard, spoke last evening on
"The Value of Childhood" in response
to the general request sent out by the
national child labor committee.
Mr.. Prichard took for his text the
words of the prophet Joel, in chapter
3, verse 8: "They have given a boy
for an harlot, and sold girl for wine,
that they may drink" His address was
in part as follows:
"Of all crimes, none exceeds in atroc-
ity the exploitation Of the defenseless
for purposes of gain 1t was because
of such a crime as this our nation was
but few years ago plunged into the
most terrible civil war the world has
ever known. 1t Is for crimes of this
| character that the administration of
the so-called Congo Free State by Leo
pold of Belgium has called down upon
that unhappy monarch the opprobrium
of the entire civilized world.
"We of this favored land are in
clined to boast we have long since
learned that any form Of slavery is
Incompatible with the principles of our
constitution and inimical to the inter-
ests of the people as a whole. And yet
today there exists almost throughout
our entire country a form Of human
slavery more reprehensible if possible
than the African slavery Of the south.
l refer to the extensive employment
of child labor in the cotton fields and
mills and in the tobacco plantations
and works of the south, the glass fac
tories of Ohio and West Virginia, the
coal mines and bunkers of Pennsylva-
MIA, the sweatshops and factories of
New York and the fruit canneries and
packing houses of many states, sCalifor-
mia not excepted.
Child Should Be Protected
''The employment of children as la
borers may indeed cheaper the cost Of
commodities to the producer, and 1t
may add to the income of inpecunious
or avaricious parents, but it can never
find justification upon economic
grounds. The child has rights, and as
a helpless creature Of the conditions
to which he was born he is entitled
to the protection of the state of which
he is ward as we'll as subject.
childhood itself is his possession
and his inalienable right. Has child
hood as a fact no estimable value? It
most certainly has, and it is my pur-
pose to show that it has, first, from
the necessities of his physical devel-
opment; second from the requirements
Of his proper mental equipment; third,
from the due regard to his moral bal
ance, and fourth, from the sentimental
influences which must surround the
normal child. To take away the oppor-
tunities for these by putting the child
at unwonted and laborious tasks is to
rob childhood of it's proper heritage,
and in the name Of everything Chris
tan I protest against whatever en-
coura geS the wrong.
1.-THE Christians Lord, who sanctified
childhood by his entrance into it. has
redeemed us by his cross. That re-
demption is for the whole man. All
there is of possibility in any child
has been purchased by his grace, and
no Christian can rest content until
childhood is delivered from the menace
which by premature exhaustion would
rob the Lord of what is rightly his"