The Palatka news and advertiser. [volume] (Palatka, Fla.) 1908-19??, 1913-03-21
NATIONAL CHILD
LABOR CONGRESS
Closes an Important Session
in Jacksonville.

which they came, taking with them
new courage and hope for their fight
against child labor.
The darkest sides of the present sit
uation were set forth: the moral haz-
ards of night messenger service; the
low wages of adults in southern cot
ton mills where more young children
are working long ten or eleven hour
day than in any other industry; the
physical dangers of work in glass fac
tories, still permitted to boys under Is
years old in Pennsylvania and West
Virginia; the interstate commerce in
little children between the canneries
and berry fields of the Middle States
and the shrimp and oyster canneries
of the South; the horrors of tenement
home work in New York and other
large cities; and the mockery of good
child labor laws written on statute
books with no sufficient provision for
enforcement.
And yet there must have been i'm
mense encouragement in the tone of
the conference. In the first place,
more states were represented than
ever before: thirty-onc in all, includ-
ing distant Iowa and Texas and all of
the Southern States east Of the Mis-
sissippi. DR.. McKelway, southern
secretary of the National Child Labor
Committee, at ONE of the sessions,
spoke of the changed attitude of the
Southern delegates, no longer a little
inclined to be on the defensive, but
even outdoing him in unsparing criti-
cism of their own state conditions.
People were, in fact, so busy think,
ing out the difficulties of local situa-
tions which they would have to face,
that no time nor eloquence were
wasted on evils in remote sections ex-
cept as they offered the lesson of ex-
perience to points under discussion.
The subject of the Conference was
Child Labor and Poverty. All through
the papers and spontaneous discus
sions, the speakers put far more en-
phasis on child labor as the cause of
poverty, than on the older idea of pow
erty as the cause of child labor. Sta
tistics were given from such widely
scattered cities as New York, Little
Rock, New Orleans and Columbus,
Georgia, to show that the widowed
mother whose sole support is wage
Garner of tender years exists largely
in the imagination of the men who
find it profitable to employ the child.
Poverty was shown to be the indirect
cause of child labor, in its limiting of
the horizon of those parents who have
worked hard or drifted with their
neighbors, and have lost (if they ever
had it) the vision of what education
and citizenship might mean to their
children.
But Florence Kelly made a convinc-
ing plea that industry should be COM
PEELED to pay its way and bear the
burden of the disabled worker, of the
woman widowed by industrial acci-
dent, and of the workers who do not
now receive from industry wage
that will support their families. Right
here the thread of. argument was
taken up by the Conference and many
speakers dwelt on the lowering of
adult wages by the employment of
children.
The Alabama Child Labor Chm
mittee called on the National Child
Labor Committee to send a speaker
throughout the state to make the peO-
pie of Alabama know about the little
children in the fish canneries, and the
boys coming in contact with vice III
the work as night messengers, but "a
Mr. Lovejoy explained, the COMMITTEES
faces in every state situation de-
manding an expert worker and with
its present resources there are not
enough expert workers to go around
The following resolution was passed
with unanimous enthusiasm:
"Resolved, That the National Child
Labor Committee in convention as
sembled at Jacksonville, Florida,
March 16, 1918, recognizes that upon
it has been laid the chief response
bihty for bringing about the abolition
of child labor in the United States,
fully appreciates the magnitude of its
task and deplores the fact that
through the meagreness of its re-
sources thousands of American chill
dren, many yet unborn, will never Sc
cure the protection of Child Labor
Laws unless there is greater awak-
ening of interest throughout the ma
ton in the cause of child labor reform
"That we e'therefore appeal, not only
to the citizenship Of the nation to in.
crease the resources at our command
and thus our opportunities for service
but also to all other national organi-
cations which stand for the welfare
of society in the respective spheres OF
education, health, industry and social
service for their cooperation.
"That this committee asks espe-
cialIv that there be supplied for the
promotion of child labor reform not
only the active sympathy of these or
ganizations, but that special investl,
cations of child labor conditions be
conducted from the different points OF
view which these organizations have
taken in their respective spheres OF
work, and we mention among them
while excluding none, The Nationa
Education Association, The American
Medical Association, The American
Academy of Medicine, The Nationa
Association for the Prevention of Tu
berculosis,, The American Red Cross
The American Bar Association, The
Russell Sage Foundation, The Genera
Federation of Women's Clubs, TIL,
National Council Of Jewish Women
The Social Service Commission of th'
Federation of Churches, The Catholic
Conference of Charities, The Nationa
Conference of Charities and Correc
tions, The American Association o
| Labor Legislation, The American Fed
Grafton of Labor, and finally, since tn
child employing industries, whil'
forming only a small percentage o
industrial establishments hav'
hrnnght the reproach of child labol