The silver state. [volume] (Winnemucca, Nev.) 1909-1925, 1914-03-24
CHILD LABOR MUST
BE STAMPED OUT

a procession or all the child work
ers in this country, passing before
you one minute, day and night,
would last FIVE years. - So said
Lewis W. Hine, at the Tenth National
Conference on Child Labor, which
closed its sessions yesterday at New
Orleans. He was showing the pie
lures of some few of the children in
that procession, and demonstrating
the high cost of child labor to the
child, to industry and to society.
And when do you play?' Pauline
Newman told how she had asked
child of twelve in a Connecticut mill
town this question. He looked at
me with his lusterless ewes and said
with surprise, 'Playg l never play ,
And I remember the day when
first went to work in factory in
New York. / was not quite fourteen.
The factory overlooked the park, and
] could hear the voices of children
out there. I went to the window to
watch them. There were some young
er than I, some older, and oh, how I
wanted to go out and play with them.
But / had not been at the window
more than half a minute when a hand
was laid on my shoulder. Child. the
factory is not the place to dream. ;
That moment taught me what child
labor means. And when you rob a
child of his childhood, you have de-
prived him of something he can never,
so long as he may live, never have
again
"We must cut child labor out of
the vicious circle-poverty, child la
Dor, intemperance, disease, crime,
etc. Child labor is the only link in
the chain which it is possible for the
American people to break tomorrow,
if they wish to do so. | do not claim
that the abolition of child labor will
destroy the vicious circle but it will
reduce it; it will give us people bet
ter able to break the other links in
the chain. If all these things are
tTue, as we believe they are, and if
we are an intelligent people, why
does child labor continued
As if in answer to this question of
Owen R. Loveioy, secretary of the
National Child Labor committee.
some stories had been told by Mrs.
Florence Kelley, stories from her own
experience. "In Maine where
Dor who lives in boat FIVE miles from
shore. He dares not come to land,
because he knows that the agents of
the Federal government would send
him to prison. Several years ago he
stole 1850 scallops, a grevious of
fense, for which a fine of 81 $50 was
imposed. He can never pay the fine,
so he is a man without a country. But
in the same village there is fish can
merry where young children work ev-
cry day undisturbed, although the
state of Maine has said that no child
under fourteen years may be employ
ed But the factory inspector is far
away in Augusta; the nearest justice
of the peace is thirty sniles away, and
roads are bad; and the people, who
care very much if their scallops are
stolen, do not mind if their children
are ruined.
"Twenty years ago, when | was a
factory inspector in Illinois, / went
to a packing house one prostratingly
hot day and saw one of the boys who
opened and shut the doors of the
cooling room. One minute he was
outside in the direct rays of the sun;
the next he was inside where the
iccles never melt I was told that
the company had three times as many
boys on their pay rolls as they need
ed for this job, becouse two out of
three of them were always sick. At
the same plant | saw the agents of
the United States inspecting with a
microscope the meat that was to be
sent to Germany, and | learned that
the Federal government was paying
more for inspection of meat in that
single plant than the state of Illinois
had appropriated for the inspection of
al the places where children were EN-
ployed throughout the state.
"We care more for our food than
we do for our children. We pass state
laws, but we do not respect them as
having real authority, and we do not
provide the means to enforce them. ~