Clinch Valley news. [volume] (Jeffersonville, Va.) 18??-2019, 1912-08-23
Robbed OF Hs Childhood
Why must childre, work.

work? Children do the work cheaper.
| Do children labor in mills, shops.
fac tories and every Imaginable hole
of industry. reeking wi& unwhole-
someness, because they ike to do il?
Not at all, brother. The little
children who are shaken from their
sleep early in the morning AVID hustled
off to some unsanitary place to spend
the day, exchanging their future vital
ity for dividends and the price of
something cheap to eat, do it because
they must.
There are two crimes that stand
out head and shoulders above every
other crime. Every crime is repulsiye
to the normal mind, but there are de
grees of horror in crime, as in other
disaster. The worst crimes are those
for which. there is no reason, no cause.
no excuse whatever. Pure crime.
One is to rob woman of her virtue
and the other is to rob a child ofhis
childhood.
We are not talking about means
and methods. Results count. The
means by which woman is despoiled
cannot make any difference in the re-
suit. She has been robbed, crushed,
cheated, outraged, whatever the means
to accomplish it. She is beaten VIC
tim. Nothing can prevent it from
being a crime. and nothing criminal is
worse. unless it be robbing a child of
his childhood, his fellowship with bird
and flower.
Neither does it matter how the
child is robbed. He may be coaxed
and cajoled, or flattered, or lied to
outright, or beaten with a whip or
club, he is victim just the same.
1t is mere hairsplitting subterfuge
to point out that the child whose
means of support are too limited,
ought to work at whatever may come
to his and, or to whatever employ
ment he be sent that will provide the
means of sustaining life.
Only half of this is true. The child
has right to life, but every child
forced to toll In mine. shop, factory.
or any other place is being robbed.
There is no reason why any child is
forced to work in the Industries
except one. 1t profitable, not to the
child, but to the eXploiter.
Some day, when we become civilized
no child will be permitted to work.
end every child will be trained and
educated in nina and body for the full
filment of real humnn destiny reach
ing up to that divinity of which we
hear so much, and see so little.
There are some 5000, 600 women
and girls in the United States strug-
CLING to earn the means to live, and
making a failure of it. They are
earning minimum of So or Sc a week
when they need $12 to Sid.
If you can point out here and there
the fortunate woman worker who is
earning enough to live III safety and
decency you are merely marking the
exceptions to the mass rule. There
are thousands and thousands of others
to every one of that kind.
There are between 100000 and
4, 600, 900 children of various ages
sacrificing their lives for corporation
dividends in the United States. Every
one of these is being robbed of his
right-the right of childhood.
Little children whose hearts long
for the right to play and "make be.
lieve," do not choose to toll for divi-
dends for men too rich to need them.
They have no choice about it.
Women and children are driven into
the mines, mills, shops and disease
breeding factories because the men
who should support them can't earn
enough. That's the only reason.
The man at the head of corpora
ton who would laugh at the sugges-
tion that fully grown, ripened apple
develop at one step from an apple
blossom, is ne same man who says a
man or women will develop in
step from little child, if the child
is put to work in his mine, mill, shop
or factory at an early enough age.
Does anyone believe that if toll for
little children is the right course and
beneficial to childhood that the child
rem of the well-to-do, the near rich,
the already rich, the idle rich, and
the too rich, would not have their off
spring employed in that way?
The prediction from our school aut-
horities that.the attendance at the APP
preaching term will be heavily cut
down because so many children are
being sent to work is a solemn warn
ing, if we take it as such.
The statement that the iudustrie s
must take children because they can t
get men is lie.
What these dividend seekers mean
is that they can't get the men at the
wages they are willing to pay.
They refuse to pay men enough to
support their families and then offer