The silver state. [volume] (Winnemucca, Nev.) 1909-1925, 1913-03-27
ninth CHILD La
BOR CONFERENCE

Inc ninth annual Child Labor con-
ference is over and the delegates have
scattered to the thirty-one states from
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 a 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 16
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.
The subject of the conference was
Child Labor and Poverty All through
the papers and spontaneous discus
phasis on child labor as the cause of
poverty, than on the older idea of
poverty as the cause of child labor.
Statistics were given from such wide
ly scattered cities at New York, Lit
tie Rock, New Orleans and Columbus,
Georgia, to show that the Widowed !
mother whose sole support is a wage
Garner of tender years exists largely
in the imagination of the men who
find il 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 COM
mittee called on the National Child
Labor committee to send speaker
throughout the state to make the peo-
pie of Alabama know about the little
children in the fish caAneries, and the
boys coming in contact with vice in
the work as night messengers, but as
Mr. Lovejoy explained, the commit
tee faces in every state a situation de-
manding an expert worker and with
its present resources there are not
enough expert workers to go round.
The following resolution was passed
with unanimous enthusiasm:
"Resolved. That the National Child
Labor committee in convention as
assembled at Jacksonville, Florida,
recognizes that upon it has been
laid the chief responsibility 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 meagTeness 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
tion in the cause of child labor reform.
'That we therefore appeal, not
only to the citizenship of the nation
to increase the resources at our COM
mand and thus our opportunities for
service, but also to all other national
l. - Il Il
fare of society in the respective
spheres of education, health, industry
and social service for their co-opera-
ton.
"That this committee asks espeei-
ally that there be supplied for the
promotion of child labor reform not
only the active sympathy of these or
ganizations, but that special investi-
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 National
Education association, the American
Medical association, the American
Academy of Medicine, the National
Association for the Prevention of
tuberculosis, the American Red Cross
the American Bar association, the
Russell Sage Foundation, the General
Federation of Women s clubs, the Ma
tonal Council of Jewish Women, the
Social Service Commission of the Fed
Grafton of Churches, the Catholic Con
ference of Charities, the National Con
ference of Charities and Corrections
the American Association of Labor
Legislation, the American Federation
of Labor, and finally, since the child
employing industries, while forming
only small percentage of industrial
establishments have brought the re
proach of child labor upon American
industry istelf, the National Maun
facturers' association.