The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1913-12-20
CHRISTMAS TOYS AND CHILD LABOR SWeated Industry As a Source of Holiday
 Cheer.
 By Florence Kelley Exclusive Service The Survey Press Bureau.
By Florence Kelley

 ner grocery in one of the poor est streets in New York city, It came from the Huntington Forest, paid it's travelling expenses across the ocean, B per cent. tariff duty, a. profit to the importer and another to the corner grocer.
 What wages can have been paid to the man who cut the wood for it's twenty-eight parts, and to the cI1i1- dren who glued them together aSld packed the toy for shipment?
 Standing in the window of the shab- by little grocery, the toy looked most attractive. A busy nurse on her way to visit a little girl, i've years old, ill with measles, quarantined, bored and lonely, bought a duplicate of the orig inal, thinking to give pleasure to her sorry little patient. So long as the child contented herself with lingering the toy, the pleasure lasted. But it came to sudden eno at the first at tempt to put the tub to the uses for which tubs are supposed to exist. For the tub first leaked, and then fell apart when water was put in it.
 It was not made for use. It was created merely to be sold.
 Few sorrows are more poignant than the grief of a young child at the wreck of 8 cherished new toy; and the kindness is akin to cruelty which ex- d to so eager a. recipient
 Two morals attach themselves to this humble plaything. Two questions are raised by it. Canot we develop for the children whose every penny spent for toys represents a sacrifice by their parents, a supply better worth hay ing, les perishabIe and equally at- ractive? And have we nor an urgent duty to inform ourselves of the sources Of the general toy supply?
 This year. for the first time, it is iIIe- gal to make toys in the tenement houses of New York. This year, for the first time, no so-called hygtenic dolls are in preparation m overcrowded and unwholesome dwellings in con- gested districts, from which in former years came quantities of shape1ess cot ton-batting creatures, covered with cotton cloth, to represent Brownies.
 The chief recommendation of these toys for the. youngegr children was that they were said to be both un- breakable and incapable of doing the baby harm. This year the latter ae- surance will, for the first time, be ac- crate as to all that part Of the sup ply which comes from New York City.
 One state has in this way registered Its growing appreciation of the duty of ascertaining the sources Of the toy supply, and making it safe so far as
 
 cerned.
 In regard to the children who pro duce toys, New York State has this year forbidden their employment in the tenements before their fourteenth birthday. This is an attempt to make the toy supply harmless in relation to the school children in wage earning families
 This year for the first time, however comes an appeal from Europe that we interest ourselves m the European sources of our Christmas gifts for chil- dren.
 In the Thuringen forest there is no effective check upon rhe labor of the youngest children under the sweating system. Little ones Of kindergarten age can be turned to account for glue ing together the innumerable parts of thes fragile pIaythings There is no factory inspection of the industry, be- cause there are virtually no factories.
 This is a cottage industry, most at tractive to the eye of American travel CTS, who imagine that the children work at their pleasure in the intervals Of outdoor play in one of the 1oveliest regions of Germany. In reality, how ever, the situation is essentially the same as it has been in cur own tene- ment house industries. Sleep, play, and school attendance all suffer dur ing the rush season when orders pour in with time limits attached, and all the normal life of the family yields under the pressure of the demand of the export trade.
 Now we are the export trade.
 If we insist that we want toys made by older people getting a wage sufh- c3ent to maintain their families, with out making drafts upon kindergarten and primary school, we can get them whenever we make our demand sufn- ciently urgent.
 This years supply was long since shipped from the toy-fnalzing conmu- mites on the Continent, but the Amer ican orders for Christmas, 1914, will be given in February. We are urgently ibesought to impress between now and February upon American importers the fact that there is in our country a new and effective preference for toys made under conditions good for the health, intelligence and welfare of the juvenile workers, whether they work in America or in Europe.
 Unfortunately the proposed amend ment was cut out of the new tariff law which would, if enacted, exclude the products of the labor of children be- low the age of fourveen years. Until that amendment can be carried, tho task will rest upon the shopping pub