El Paso herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1901-1931, 1912-08-31

eight, and ten. The intensity of the
struggle for existence which they en-
counter at birth, as one might say, IS
a rebuke TO the idleness even of the in
FAINT in its cradle.
In New york city there are hundreds
of little girls who help in the business
of making artificial flowers others
contribute their labor to the manu-
various other commercial articles, toll
ing five or six hours at night in the
dim gaslight of unventilated tenement
rooms, often crowded to sVffocation.
Babes In Glass Factories.
In glass factories, great numbers OF
little boys are found, and usually the
work they do is night work, which
makes it particularly Objectionable In
this case the problem is complicated by
! the circumstance that the children are
employed not by the owners of the fac
tories, but by the glaSsblOwers, who
pay them out of their own wages, as
helpers The perpetuation of this sys-
TEN, however, has been earnestly ad-
VOcated by the manufacturers on the
ground that the industry could not be
maintained except by the night labor
of boys.
This plea until recently has defeated
legislation for the correction of the
syStem-One advantage of which, from
the glassblOwer's standpoint, is that
the smaller the boy the less wages he
requires. The national child labor COM
mittee has made a big fight on the
question in New York and New Jersey
and has accomplished some results. 1t
is trying to get legislative action on
the same subject in Pennsylvania, In
diana and West Virginia
Few industrial enterprises in this
country yield more satisfactory divi-
dends than the cotton mills of the
south, in which northern capital is
largely invested. They average 50 per-
cent and run up as high, it is said, as
80 per cent These enormous profits
are obtained through the employment
of multitudes of children of both sexes
who can be hired for next to nothing
Twenty-Five cents a day is considered
fair wages, and mere babies work for
or cents a day
Children Work at Night.
Many of the children work at night
In Columbia, S. c., Miss Jane Adams
found a tiny girl of five toiling all
night. Children not old enough to
know their own ages work from p. m.
to a. N. without a moments rest for
food or cessation of the maddening
racket of machinery, IN an inSanitary
atmosphere clouded with lint When,
as often happens, they become drowsy,
they are kept awake by dashing water
in their faces.
The efforts of refOrmers have
brought about legislation in most of
the states which has compelled the mill
owners to mitigate somewhat the evils
the children were formerly obliged to
undergo But conditions are extreme
" bad, and little ones under the lawful
age are quite commonly employed.
One is told that the children are in
the mills ito attract northern capital"
Few of them know their letters. In
most parts of the south the illiterate
negro sends his child to school; the
illiterate white man sends his child
to the cotton mill. In South Carolina
there are $4,000 more negro children
than white children in the schools.
North Carolina is the state in which
+he greatest number of mills are run
at night Commonly, the spinning
room has to run "A hours in order to
supply the weaving room for u hours.
Thus there has to be a night shift of
workers A recent investigation by the
government bureau of labor showed
that 26 percent of the night workers
in the cotton mills of North Carolina
were children.
Accidents from machinery are ap-
palling. Chances of such mishapS in
factories are reckoned from $50 to 400
percent greater against the child than
where grown persons are concerned.
Losses Of fingers are the least of the
miSchanceS. One physician said that
he had personally amputated more than
100 little children's fingers mangled in
the mills. Mill children are frequently
seen without fingers or thumbs, or
sometimes with a hand missing. So
some of the companies oblige the par
ents of small applicants for employ
ment to sign contract that in case
of injury the mill owners shall not be
held responsible.
Extreme PaIIor of Mill Tots.
Among the children in the cotton
mills extreme pallOr is universal. They
have an aged, worn expression pitiful
to see. And no wonder, inasmuch as
they have become Injured to toll before
they ever learned to play One conse-
quence of their employment is that
wages Of grown men and women are
lowered to a child labor standard
With children eliminated, wages would
rise to the subsistence point and the
adult poor whites" of the south would
find such demand for their services as
textile operatives at satisfactory pay
as would uplift them to an entirely
new plane.
Fine cotton textiles are made in New
England, and the tariff on such goods
is so high as to be practically pro-
hibitive. The coarser goods are manu-
featured in the south, and the protec-
ton they enjoy is nearly as complete.
It has been urged that people who
themselves receive so much protection
ought to protect children, yet cotton
manufacturing is worse cursed today
by child labor than any other industry
As Mr.. Roosevelt said in one of his
MESA ges to congress, IF these manu-
factUrers demand special privileges and
advantages, they should come to con-
gress with clean hands Let them
eliminate child labor, reduce the num-
Der Of working hours to a reasonable
point, and pay living wages-then
their claims will have some right to
consideration
One of the chief objections to the
system of employing child labor is
that it creates and maintains a poor,
ignorant and helpless class which can
be used, and which commonly is used
to lower the general scale of wages of
adults throughout the country. In
view of the misery that follows in its
train, it is interesting to consider the
fact that one Of the main objects the
Pilgrim Fathers had in leaving Eng
land was to escape child labor, which
even at that day had begun to op-
press the little ones in manufacturing
centers. Rene Bache.