Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1913-04-02
WINNING ORAT|ONS IN
JUDGE MILLS CONTEST
Continued from 1st page

them, to the soul that greed cannot
even attain, is of minor consequence.
The boast of America is its public
school. Why should schools be built
if the children are prevented from at
tending? The illiterate negro sends
his child to school, the illiterate
white sends his to the cotton mill.
The question, what do you do when
you are very tired p. was asked a small
girl in southern cotton mill. 1 cry,
she SAID shyly. She would make no
reply when 1 asked her what would
happen then, but another child who
had entered into the conversation said.
1.-THE boss tells her to go on with
her work. T"
The inclusive and undeniable right
of a child is his childhood. The
child that labors in mills and
factories is robbed of it's childhood,
and is no child. IF man in Texas
finds that one of his hogs has cholera
he sends a telegram to Washington
and if it seems a serious case some
thing like a hundred or more of our
Washington experts will e down to
Texas and make an examination of
that hog. If child is in need of as
sistance and its mother cannot give it,
and no local expert is available, there
is no source at Washington nor any
where else under the American flag
to which she can appeal for aid.
The question if work is a blessing
or curse has never been satisfactorily
settled. In the case of child labor it
has proved a curse. We are prone to
see the evils of idleness and believe
that any kind of work is good for
anybody. We all agree that if a
child is to be trained to a life of
industry that he must be trained at
an early age. The most unfortunate
thing about such labor is that it is
not educative, for the child employed
in the factory, the mill. the store or
the street is not learning trade or
acquiring means of future sub
sistence. The thousands of children
working in our textile mills, north
and south, are not doing work which
requires great deal of skill or thought
and when they have spent the years of
childhood in dreary toll they are
doomed to continue in such work the
rest of their lives The breaker
boys sitting across the chutes are not
learning as they watch the flow of
coal and pick out the pieces of slate
and stone, but are losing in youthful
vigor, and will be less efficient work
men and less valuable citizens be-
cause of their work. The thousands
of messenger. errand and newsboys
are not learning habits of industry.
On the contrary they are learning to
idle large part of their time and are
being trained in every vice. Eighty
per cent of the boys committed to the
reform school in Massachusetts, were
employed as messengers or
sellers. The life on the
street leads directly to the juvenile
court and the reform school. In the
department stores of our large Cities
thousands of young girls find employ
ment as cash girls and bundle girls.
1t would seem natural for these girls
IN fako YoOcif io0c 90 eoloe o;rIs I,,@.~
but that is not the case When they
become too old for children g tasks
they are still untitled for any special
vocation. The great fault with the
child labor is that
the armies of children are not only
deprived of the opportunity to acquire
an education in school but are being
taught nothing which can make them
better able to support themselves
when they reach manhood and F,
The disastrous tendency of un-
regulated child labor is to substitute
the woman and the child for the
man. Many managers have already
the hope that they might be
able to do without men entirely. The
family wage is not increased by child
labor and in time it is actually
lessened. The frequent plea that
people would starve if it were not for
their children's earnings, is untrue,
for the child seldoms earns its own
food and clothes and what it earns is
lost by i'll health.
We are beginning to plan for the
conservation of our national resources.
let us instead conserve our most
precious national resource. the life
and joy of childhood. Science may
cry save the child for the sake of the
future, religion for sake of God,
education for the sake of the people,
democracy for the sake of the state,
but conscience cries, save the child
for its own sake The child is not
IL.