The Jeffersonian. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1907-1917, 1912-09-12

street meeting, assembled to pro-
test enid labor in the cotton mills,
was ordered under arrest by the
mayor. On the city marshal's refu-
saafii TO obey, the speaker and her
cadence were drenched and dis
prsed by powerful streams from the
&c department hose. This is a. free
untry where the right of assem-
age and Of free speech are consti-
ational rights.
I'll In the decades-lo long fight to free
sle children that incident should
eSecome historic. For it drags into
an open street the forces usually
5content to slither through legisla-
1--WE lobbies. The mayor of ITALIA
poosa, himself mill owner, persona
f1es the cotton INDUSTRY that chief
offender against wage earning child
rem. Eighteenth century England
fed her unwanted almshouse waits
! % the spindles; New England of the
? Silgrim fathers heard sermons in
tfaise Of Rowley, Mass, where the
Establishment of fulling mill
tcaused all the little ones to work
sn<ligently." But the new South has
reached the bed rock of social re-
!. sponsibility in the slaughter of the
a,lnocents as cheap, tractable labor
] In 80 years the value of Southern
manufacturers has trebbled, almost
suadrupled, while the number Of
4spindles has increased 1900 per
cent. Here are some of the reasons
4 ny woman protesting the exploit
stion of childhood should be as
sGulted with fire hose in the street
ia Georgia city.
children have a moral right to
Lthy, happy childhood and to the
Possibility of efficient, useful ma
turity. Every child has legal right
to adequate opportunity for play,
learning and development, legal
claim to protest against the condi-
lions bound to cause bodily, mental
and spiritual degeneration. Yet
even in Massachusetts, where we
carroll our school children for 200
hours annually, We conf1ne our fac
tory children almost three times as
long-for 2,912 hours. There are,
approximately, $500 hours of day
light ina year in a year Exclusive
IF sundays Hence the working
child in Massachusetts is deprived
of the autdoor daylight that makes
for physical wellbeing.
In Georgia, where women advo-
Gates for child labor laws are chival-
rously drenched into silence, AZ per
cent of the mill children of school
age are unable to read and write.
In Alabama the percentage of litter
ates is 65 per cent; in Virginia, 70
per cent. Yet such boys will with
in a decade be assumed fit for self
government.
Fourteen years of child labor agi-
tation in the South has not brought
about the abolition of night work
with it's dreadful physical and moral
dangers. Three years ago half the
Investigated cotton mills in North
arolina operated at night, ma
s,rity of the workers being women
children. Such a State policy
t,ells Industrial suicide. Efficiency
1plies mental training. Toflers in
The night shifts reach the point of
extreme fatigue before morning and
go home, perforce, to small, noisy
houses, where there can be no rest
full day sleep. Sunday is, of neces-
sity, spent in bed. There is neither
time nor strength for intellectual or
church life. When life becomes a
long effort to supply BADLY physical
needs the overstrained nerves and
undermined vitality cry out for the
relaxations that brutalize; the saw
ing of souls grows dangerously diff