Evening capital and Maryland gazette., 1912-12-09
BABY WORKERS
IN NEW YORK
Little Children Who Never Play
But WOak and Are Wage Farmers
LOVE OF ADORMENT
| auses HesItsche and Suffering Among
Poor Children Who Tie Ostrich
Feathers.

We of the South sometimes think
with shame of the long hours of
labor and wrstched working conditions
under which many thousand women
and children make 9 scaatv living.
within our horlers, But nothing
quite so bad as the home-workers in
New York city has ever been record
ed of US. thanks be.
The very factory laws most rigidly
enforced in the greater city against
the employment of child labor seems
to have reacted on the little ones
they were framed to aid. So many
parents among the new Americans
seem to think the whole family should
work, and the ancient idea of a mans
house being his castle, where, if il
please MIN, be may set his sixteen
months baby to aid in flower making,
prevents the law stepping in to pre-
vent the home work of little children.
We have been educated to the
point we will not adorn ourselves
with the bodies of birds, furs are
now coming under the bann among
the tender-hearted, but we could say
with ostrich feathers and flowers
we still may be gay without doing
injury to anyone. But the gre at
est crimes against the baby workers
are accomplished in the making of
willow plumes and artificial flowers:
it seems we will have TO take 20
Quaker garb or deck Ourselves with
oyster shells, if we will hurt no
one by our little adornments.
Recently the Bureau of Labor com
pleted an exhaustive report of the
condition of women and child wage
earners, containing graphic account
of che investigation of home work ia
the garment trades. Five cities
were included in the investigation,
one being Baltimore, but notwith-
standing the dreadful reports of the
condition of filth and disease under
which ready-made garments were put
together, there is nothing as tragic
as the lives of the little ones of the
flower and feather trade.
Near the upper end Of Manhattan
Island has been established a new lit
tie Italy. In the tall tenements Oh
this section are manufactured large
proportion of the "willow pIumes
which decorate the hats of those
women from Maine and California,
who "ha re the price. The costly
feathers with their artificial long
plumage are widowed, or tied by
tiny fingers, aid their ends clipped
and the price of work which is te-
dious in the extreme ia five cents an
inch of stem. Three bright childreh
working for whole summer day from
sun rise tc sun set, and after, with
time only to eat cold food between
moments of rest, cannot possibly fin
ish more than one feather. We all
know the price Of the finished pro-
duct. Next time let's look at the
length Of stem and think of the FIVE
cents an inch for the babies who are
theoretically supposed to have
fright to life and the pursuit Of
happiness.
Practically every tenement in the
quarter contains feather workers.
The women tie all day and ths chill
dren hurry home from school. If the
parents have not been able to secrete
them from the idquisitiveness of the
truant officer-and tie until they fall
asleep. The children soon become
more skillful than the mothers, and
their sense of responsibility as wage
earners is as keen-t they never play,
they never sing. they tie feathers.
Poor children from a sunny land who
though poor in their own country were
poor out under the sky and in the
sunny fields. It's not that the Ttal-
ians are particularly clever that they
turn to flowers and feathers, but they
seem among the most helpless of
Uncle Sans foreign wards. and ma
terial and tools are supplied for these
trades and because the new arrival
finds her compatriots doing this star
walton work she falls into the same
way. timid, without initiative she
fears to break away after beginning,
so the mother and her little brood
are bound by floral chains which
come to be heavy than the heaviest
iron links.
(Continued.)