Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1910-02-02

Secretary for New England of the Ma
tional Child Labor COMMITTEES.
LoRue. y rare privilege was given the
Augusta public in the opportunity to
hear this lecture, as it is the same lee
ture that Secretary Lord will deliver
today at Hotel Nendore, Boston, be-
fore the Federation of Women's Clubs
of that city. The subject of the lee
tu1e was 1.-The Boy and His job and it
was presented in a forceful and con-
NlnCing manner.
Mr.. LORD spoke in part as follows:
I believe the old debating society
problem as to whether work is a bless
ing or q curse has never been satisfac-
torily settled.
1t is Fashionable to claim a love for
work, although a good inany Of us find
it nOssitle to speak of it in terms
which cannot he ranked as eXtrava-
giant encOmiunlS; but the love Of work,
if ANYBODY has it, is absolutely un-
natural. In tie carly history of civil
ization most of the manual labor was
performed by slaves. In Ancient
Greece. which we are so fond of emu
lat:nc in many ways, the number of
slaves was from four to six times as
large as the number of Nfree inhabi-
tantsF In later times SLAVES or SerfS
still continued to do the manual labor.
and the upper classes, the free men and
women, were able to devote their lives
largely to leisure. With the abolition
OF slavery and the economic rise of the
lower classes ii became more and more
necessary for all to work, and though
= ,ie no
point where we look upon a person
who has no regular occupation as eth
or Il profiigatc idler or q dangerous va
grant, I still maintain that the love of
work so marh"G in America is unnat-
ural and wholly an acquired habit.
In an IDEAL state OF society no one
would have t" Work unduly; the faith
er of the family would be able to sup
port his wife and children without
their having 10 enter occupations out
size # the horne; every. worker would
find his tasks congenial and sufficient
ly productive to meet all his demands.
Under such circumstances we could
recognize y ork as a blessing for it
would undoubtedly serve to prevent
the evils which follow in the path of
idlcness. That We are a long way from
the ideal state is evident when we rea-
lie that thousands Of toilers, even in
prosperous America, mast spend every
waking moment in frantic endeavor
TO gain the barcst subsistence by their
work; that women are so generally 60
ing into the Industrial life that the
stability of the home itself seems to be
threatened; that the labor Of children
& n faI 70
provide d complete grammar school
training for only one child in three;
ana that discomfort with the job and
dissatisfaction with the recompense
arc driving ten thousand workmen
daily into disastrous strikes.
The presence of women in the indus
trial world is comparatively recent
factor which must enter largely into
any consideration of labor problems.
There are few lines of industry into
which women have not entered; indeed
out of 800 equations or groups Of oc-
equations named in the United States
census in 1906 there were only four
which women had not entered. Ten
years ago a little more than one sixth
OF all the women in the country We're
reported as wage earncrS. In general
they work for less money than do men;
often they do better work. How gen.
orally they become real competitors
with them. even to the extent of fore
ing men into idleness, cannot be told.
but trlle it is that the father at home
doing the E1usework while the mother
earns the living in shop or factory is
by no means infrequent; nor do we
krow how often a business career be-
fore marriage las caused disaster
therefore through the inability of the
wife to perform the household duties.
That such cases are common our di-
vorce court records show
The percentage of child bread WIN
ners between the ages of ten and six
tecn was, according to the census of
1903, almost the same as that of women
wnrkers; nearly one sixth of the chill
dren Of these ages were reported as at
work in So-called gainful industry,