The Connecticut labor news., 1923-11-17
Paul Reynolds s'WORk NEVER HURT ANY KID
 YET" .-. So 'They'' Say, But What Do You Know About It?

1 Bureau or the OniteQ SlateS Depdrt-
 ment of Labor to formulate physic- 1 ians' code of standards puts 1t this
 way: The minimum age for the en-
 trance of children into industry lshould be not younger than I6 years
 Since 1t is recognized that the physio- logical and psychological readiust- ments of pubescence determine a per 1 iod of general instability which makes great and special demands upon the
 vitality of the child, it is of paramount importance that he should be protect ed during this period from the physi- cal and nervous strain which entrance into industry inevitably entails"
 There is the medical point of view. A kid is awkward and he likes to play. he result Is that he is a dangerous,
 mechanism to have rnonkeying with
 machinery. e sticks his fingers into
 the jigsaws and falls on the gears. He
 spells so much material and works so
 inefflciently that in a really well-run
 factory they usually do not want him.
 coton-rni1l manager wrote to me that he could not afford to have kids around because the company thought too much of the product it had to sell. So did owners of factories re- port when estioned-factories in Connecticut and Rhode Island, where the child labor law is not what it might be.
 The chief mercantile inspector and the head Of the child-hygiene bureau of the health department of New York testified that after years of ex- perience they had concluded that a child is not physically fit to enter in dustry until he reaches the age of I6. The trouble is that the work asked of the child is too hard for him. He has to handle too heavy weights; he ex- ercises single sets of muscles when the law of life demands exercise for equal development; he stands too
 much, he sits too much.
 There have been very few detailed health studies among child workers. Some are in process which will throw more light on the facts than we now have, yet wherever studies have been
 made these large percentages of de work such as Jimmi of Jersey does that affects the child. The newsboys of Cincinnati showed an equally bad record when compared with non working children, as has been pointed studies made by Teleki, a hygienist Of international fame, proved that the children he studied were far more suS- ceptible to disease than those who stayed in school He found that there were two occupations which did not injure them: landscape gardening and forestry
 Tn Milwaukee when twelve thous- ana ChllQren (l4 10 ID were work-| 0f * every day, per cent due to illness.
 The story of delinquency among child laborers is just as poignant as the health story. Delinquency in most cases means that the kid was bumped into the law for some reason or other. One typical fact is all that needs to be quoted to show the general situa- | tion: Of 8,7o7 offenses recorded in Philadelphia during one period in a | Federal report, 62 per cent were com mitted by child workers. Yet of | couise there is a majority not work ng-presumably large majority of | all the children within the stated age limit. It was also shown that the offenSeS of the child workers were the | more serious ones.
 All these things speak for them selves, and when you stop to think about the child-labor problem it is what you would expect. Obviously the kids don't stand labor too hard 1 for them. Obviously if they work hard during vacations and after school or drop out of schools for periods, they won't get even what little edu- cation they have time for-they can not make good use of their school time. You expect the awkward youth to be the subject of industrial acc1- dents. You expect the child worker to learn the ways of a rough world and get into the tolls of the law. And those arc the things which happen to him. The facts show it. It is pret- ty thoroughly proved that you need not be a sentimentalist to object to child labor.
 It is incontrovertible that child la Dor is bad; it is true that it exists in the United States in this enlight- ened day. There remains the ques- ton of what can be done about it?