United labor bulletin., 1910-09-29

system. The child labor problem is
national one, but when we force the
question of its solution, we are at once
handicapped by the division of the coun-
try into forty-odd states, division which
makes it always impossible to deal with |
any of our great social and industrial
problems, nationally, upon uniform prin- |
ciples-for the simple reason, we have
legislation in various states of con-
ficting character adding to the COM
plexity of the problem. Now. then, after
giving you brief illustration politically,
let me illustrate to you industrially,
practically all the unskilled laborers and
hundreds of thousands employed inl
skilled trades are so entirely dependent
upon their weekly wages that months
sickness or unemployment brings them
to hunger and temporary dependency,
which, as you are aware of, the chilli
suffers the most, at the very stage in lie
when its treatment should be the best.
Then another result which our present
system produces under which the child
suffers most, some children are born un-
fitted for life, because their mothers
worked like galley slaves during gesta-
ton. and the unborn foetus has been i'm
pregnated with ennui and lassitude, and
comes into the world cursed with phys
lical debility. Then, again, the moral Ills
resulting from child labor are numerous
| and far-reaching. When children become
wage-earners and thrown into constant
association with adult workers, they de-
velop prematurely an adult consciousness
and view of life. About the first conse-
quence of their employment is that they
| cease almost at once to be children.
| They lose their respect for parental
authority in many cases, and become ar
rogant, wayward and defiant. There is
always a tendency in their homes to re-
gard them as men and women as soon
as they become wage-earners. Discipline
is more or less relaxed at the very time
| it is needed most. When children have
entered upon that critical period of life,
are associated with adults in factories,
are driven to their tasks with curses and
hear continually the unrestrained con-
the child. For instance, when we en-
versation of the adults, often coarse and
| foul, the psychological erect cannot De
other than bad.
| No writer dare write and no publish
er dare publish, truthful description of
the moral atmosphere of hundreds OF
places where children are employed.
|
ercise stern reticence when writing of
these conditions, or evade the truth"
The Child problem" is not new. 1t as
as old as man. But as we go through
the course of life and observe the vari-
GUS phases and complex situations and
conditions which develop from time to
time, in this particular respect, we be-
come sensible to the fact that the prob
/ lon, ic n
tic, graver and is fraught with serious
consequences to the future welfare of
the coming generations and society a
the present time. The ancient and bib
lical belief was that the sufferings OF
parents and their children was the re-
suit of wickedness. The pictures of mis-
cry made familiar to us by Dante and
Milton, and by many a sermon and novel
have this in common-that the misery
they speak of is moral, is the result of
depravity and the deliberate choice of
evil In contrast with the idea that mis-
cry is moral, the inexorable visitation of
punishment for immoral actions and the
| inevitable outcome of depraved nature,
| wish to present the idea that it is eco
nomic, the result of maladjustment, that
defective personality is only halfway
explanation, which itself results directly
from conditions which society may large
ly control.
The question which I raise is whether
the wretched poor are poor because they
are undisciplined, because they drink, |
because they steal, because they have
superfuous children, because of personal
depravity, personal inclination and ma
tural preference; or whether they are
shiftless and undisciplined and drink and
steal and are unable to care for their too
numerous children; because our social
institutions and economic arrangements |
are at fault. hold that personal de- |
pravity is as foreign to any sound theory |
OF. hardships of our modern poor as
witchcraft or demoniacal possession; |
that these hardships are economic, social, |
transitional, measurable, manageable. 1t |
lies not in the unalterable nature of
things, but in our institutions our social |
arrangements, our tenements and streets |
and subways, our laws and courts and
jails and religion, our education, our
philanthropy our politics, our industries
and our method of conducting business.
There are more kinds of misery in New
York and London than Milton ever
dreamed of in his blindness | have no
quarrel or issue with those who would
seek through education in the family and
in the church. in school or in neighborly
relations, to instill in young and old
wholesome fear of consequences.
Nature teaches us in lessons written
large in human experience that certain
habits will eventually prove injurious
and other salutary. We are fully war
ranted in taking these lessons to heart
and passing them on to such as are not
fools, and insist on learning in the dear
est of all schools-that of experience. |
There may be some readers who are In
clined to believe that 1 have overdrawn
the misery of the child of the poor or
dismiss the subject, considering it of lit |
tie importance to them. Let me quote
from the work of Spargo, in which ne
says: "The British Medical Association |