The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-11-10
OF THE CHILD
 LABOR PROBLEM IN ALABAMA
By w. L. "a

physical. but mental and moral as well, position that for every dollar earned
 before the 14th year ten fold of the earn ing capacity in later lie is taken away. In making that statement I am not un- mindful of the men who have worked all their childhood and arisen to great heights later. They are but exceptions, and prove nothing.
 It is always an amazing thing to me to find onyone defending child labor, and yet we do find such people in every conmunicty and one feels sure they have not really studied the question and have not realized the awful waste to the ration. The period between 10 and lG in the life of any child is a period
 of the most intense nervous activity,
 restless, delighting in all sorts of con- tests of physical strength. Now the un- thinking rerson says put that child to | work" A whole page in this paper could be filled with showing the results Of that mistakel
 In Alabama we have a law which pro- tects only the children who work in mill factory or manufactory. we seem not to have considered the children who are working by the thousand in our state in ether lines. We say to the cotton mill man you must not work child under F and only 50 hours a week." and we are strangely silent as to the department store, the telegraph companies, the er- land boys, the meSsc ger service, and so on ad infnitum. The best child labor law is a compulsory education law well enforced, but if it is true, as so many tell us, that Alabama it not ready for that yet we could raise the age to 1i, and we could demand more than six weeks scf coling; the government report shows 65 per cent of the factory children in Alabama not able to read or write. Is that not food for thought?
 We could make our law cover all classes of working children, and we could give to our excellent factory in- parents greed did not exploit our chill eren.
 We are told by the experts in this line that a community should not consider a child of even II, who has had no edu- cation, a possible wage earner, that the burden of that child. if his natural guar dians are too poor to educate him. should be borne by the community, just as the child of years would be: We stand among those states low in Hitter acy, and no one who thinks seriously on these things can fail to see the vic ious circle of poverty, child labor, Hit eracy, moral degeneracy and crime.
 Of course no law has in itself any self enforcing principle. A law of any kind to be enforced needs first. an enlightened
 public opinion, hence the good of visit from a man like MT. Lovejoy; sec end, liberal appropria tions for officials to do the enforcing, third, community which will stand back of such officials with sympathy, not criticism.
 Many people tell us Alabama has child labor law that Is all right. but as matter of fact we ale one of the few states which still has the 12 year age limit, and which protects so few classes of children; we need to awaken to d sense of our personal responsibility, and realize that we cannot build up a great state when we sacrifice our children. It is the earnest hope of those who have been at work on this problem in Alabama for years that the next session of our legislature will see an adequate law rassed. and all the children of the state given that protection to which as future citizens they are entitled.
 MRS. ". l.. MURDOCH, Alatena Representative of National
 Child Labor Committed.