Wheeling majority. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1907-192?, 1912-01-11
Child abOT

Let the editor Of the Gazette, who
believes in child labor, read this:
"Children of more tender age are
employed in the shrimp and oyster
canneries than in any of the cotton
of the south, some of them being only
four or five years old. Children under
the stern We of "shucking boss,
cut the meats out of the shell and
transfer them to tin buckets, ready
for canning.
~This is an immense industry in
the gulf states. At Pass Christian,
Miss, and other points, great num-
bers of children are employed to
shuck oysters in the. canneries. Nearly
all of them are of foreign parentage,
and largely they are Poles. They are
often housed under the most squalid
and insanitary conditions, and 1t is
beyond question that many of them
die from the hardships they are oblig-
ed to endure.
Most of these children come from
Maryland and Delaware. They are
employed during the summer and
early fall in the vegetable and fruit
canneries, of those states, and are
shipped to the south in flocks to
suck oysters and pick shrimps through
the winter and spring. When autumn
arrives afents for the shrimp and
oyster packers visit Baltimore and
other large towns in that part of the
country and pick up as many poor
immigrants as they need. Such faml-
lies, usually provided with plenty OF
children, are persuaded to go by the
promise of free transportation and OF
sne payment of their return passage
he latter expectation being nearly al
ways unfulflled. Very ignorant and
commonly unacquainted with any
language except their own, they are
helpless to protect themselves; and,
once herded on board steamers, they
have no chance to escape.
while at work they commonly live
under sucn conditions of squalor as
| would not be tolerated in the most
. poverty-stricken quarter of any north
ern city. The pay is small, and for
the children often not more than IL
| cents a day; but good deal of north
ern capital is most proftably invest
ed in the canneries, and the big divi-
dends they yield are largely derived
fro mthe labor of mere infants"
Flocks of children four and five
years old deceived, robbed, enslaved,
| slaughtered, because good deal OF
capital is proftably invested in it!
about our love of the child of the
manger, when we think our hearts &c
out to the poor homeless boy OF
!, Nazareth. Blessed are the little ones,
| for they are of God! Peace and love
| to man on earth! Glory to the High
est! And the Highest says, Except
We become as the least of these, We
cannot enter the kingdom o fheaVen!'
And the least of these" is at four
years of age working under the stern
eye of boss for 10 cents a day!
We, civilized society, have got a
good deal of capital must profitably in
vested in 1T. There's profit in the
sweat of babes, and northern capital
| is out for the money. Society gone
money-mad! Civilization deaf, dumb
and blind, while ungovernable and
ungoverned greed goes down into the
depths of hell to offer babies to Sthe
fires of Mammon as "a most profitable
| Investment"
| God pity those of US who do feel a
class consciousness! God help those
of us who are standing between babes
| in the cradle and the bloody talons OF
corporate greed that would drag them
away to the mills of profit which
grind to dust innocence, childhood,
character, manhood honor, love, all
hope of human happiness! -Cleyeland
Perss. :