Twin city review. [volume] (Champaign, Ill.) 19??-1929, 1923-12-07
INTERESTING
FACTS FROM
LABOR BUREAU

Child workers on Maryland truck
farms are studied in a report issued
by the U. S. Department Of Labor
through the Children's Bureau.
This report is the second of a series
on rural child labor being carried on
Ellen Nathalie Matthews, director Of
its industrial division.
Four Maryland counties are includ-
ed in the study, Anne Arundel (near
Baltimore), Wicomico, Somerset. and
Worcester on the Eastern Shore.
Eight hundred and eight white and
negro children in Anne Arundel coun-
ty who had done farm work during
the year preceding the study and S38
children on the Eastern Shore were
interviewed.
The chief findings of the report
are:
Over 80 per cent Of the children en-
rolled in the schools in the truck
farming areas of the Eastern Shore
had worked on the truck farms with
in the year preceding the inquiry. A
large proportion of these children in
Anne Arundel county work on the
farms. In the Eastern Shore locali-
ties the workers are chiefly farmers
children. In the Anne Arundel area
there are also large numbers of
hired workers, some of them white
children who migrate from Baltimore
for seasonal farm work.
Most children under 10 years of age
work short day at simple kinds of
work, and for only a few days or
weeks during the year. Most white
girls do little more work than the
young children, but some of the older
negro girls and large proportion of
white and negro boys IL years of age
or over do a great variety of work
and many work 8 or 10 hours a day.
A working-day of 8 or more hours on
the lats day worked was reported by
one-half the boys studied in both re-
gions.
The work of these children included
not only picking berries and hoeing
vegetables but also blowing, harrow
ing, machine cultivating and some
kinds of machine transplanting. Such
work in conjunction with long hours
was reported by many of the boys II
years or over.
Loss of schooling on account of
farm work was suffered by a majority
of the children in both areas accord
ing to reports made by their parents.
Nearly one-fifth of the white children
had been absent for farm work six or
more school weeks during the pre-
ceding school year.
Serious problems both in lack of
schooling and in undesirable living
conditions were presented in the cases
of migratory child workers in Anne
Arundel county. The majority of
these children lose from to weeks
at the end of the school term in order
to go out to the truck farms. Over
two-thirds of those included in the
tsudy were retarded in school, about
twice the average rate for city chill
dren of their ages.
According to the report,
THE housing provided for migra-
tory truck-farm workers in these
localities is so unsatisfactory that it
appears to call for some public super
vision"
In describing these housing condi-
tons, the report states:
Seasonal workers are housed by
the farm owners on their own land
in what are referred to locally as
camps. Most of the camps contained
but one building, known as a 'shanty,'
which served as sleeping quarters for
the workers. In most camps ii was
weatherbeaten or implanted and the
windows usually lacked either glass
or shutters or both. As a rule there
was but one room on each floor, with
stairs on the outside leading to the
upper room. In some a partition
divided the lower floor, which was
about 25 by 30 feet, into two rooms.
On each side of narrow aisle down
the center of the room the floor was
divided into sections or pens by boards
10 or IL inches in height. Each pen
was about 6 feet long and from to
6 feet wide and covered with straw
for mattress. Each family was al
lotted one of these pens, the larger
families sometimes securing those
feet in width.