The Connecticut labor news., 1923-07-27
Still Many Slaves In The U. s.
 But A Million Will Soon Be Free

while it decreased in other states, yet
 the laws are fairly good and those
 they have are we'll enforced.
 The percentage of children working lis worse in Rhode Island. It is worse
 in South Carolina and North Caro-
 lima. There are more of them work ing in Pennsylvania, a larger state, than in Massachusetts. New York has
 some seventeen thousand. New Jersey
 is worse than it was in 1910.
 This IS factory work and mechani- cal pursuits, mind you, that we speak of. It doesn't tell the story of viola
 tons of the law where enforcement Is joke It doesn't tell the story of
 Tenement work, or the street trades; l it does not tell about the unbeliev-
 able conditions in the great agricul-
 tural factories, which turn out fruits
 and vegetables much as door knobs
 are turned out of a mill, by machine
 work. Nor does this tell how thin .fthe census figures probably are, as
 shown by the fact that the report
 states that less than II,ooo children
 are gainfully employed in Wisconsin, although local authorities estimate
 the figure at from two to three times
 las high .
 But you should have by now good
 idea of what this unfairly chosen, .hand-picked sample is like. The sam iple should give you good idea, if your imagination IS working proper ly, of what is going on in other states
 where the laws are poor, in states
 where a I2-year-old can work II
 hours a day, and be broken in body hood Just keep in mind, as you
 watch Babe Ruth swing at fast one from the cunning old hands of Wal
 ter Johnson this summer, that the
 kids who'd like best to watch, the
 kids who would like to be out on the
 old sand lots in school vacation time,
 slamming at a yarn ball-well, they're
 inside in the dust and half darkness,
 watching the shuttles, packing the goods, at whatever their poor unskill 1 ed hands can do, from morning to night, all summer long-I85,337 of them in factories, 10 to Is years old, according to the last census. Moreover, 1t might be worse, as 1t was century ago in England, and
 America-yes, as it is right this min
 ute in the state of Pennsylvania, U. is. A.
 That great state has governor who Is ranked as one of the most far seeing progressives. The old-line
 politicians feared him as doctor fears pneumonia. We have no idea /; of saying for one moment that Glf- ford Pinchot is responsible for the 1 fact that the boys are still working I at the mines, great many of them 1 illegally, underground in the Penn sy1vania fields, but what we do call to
 attention is the fact that an elector- i,fo ,~h 0f h 0f tsyrN 1 Is the same electorate which permits the damaging work to go on. It is no backward community It is one of the greatest in the United States. What Is going on there is cold fact It is all down in the United States Department of Labor, Chil-
 dren's Bureau Bulletin No. Io6, pub ilished last year eIo22). The total ex- , tent of 1t Is not known. The inves- litigation, by trained persons, taking months to complete, was confined to a very small area in Schuylkill coun- ity, the Shenandoah district Right there 57 per cent. of the boys of the district, from B to I6 years of age, had commenced work.
 Since the investigation was made, some improvement has been rcorded,
 at least in the actual territory covered by the government work In Shenan- doah the mine owners now demand
 church, certificate which states that
 the boy Is I6. They are quite par ticular about this formality, but it is, on the whole, merely form. It did
 not prevent Edward -, IA, from going to work on the night shift
 June, 1923, after the school superin- hoI to him. Union officials and towns people stated that large percentage of the breaker boys are under I6; many; many of them look 1t, certain ly. t
 It is not illegal for I4-year-o1d
 to work in the Pennsylvania break CTS. Some of the mine operators seemed to think they were working under the last Federal child-labor
 law which was declared unconstitu--. tional over year ago. So they were being courageously careful that their
 official records will look all right Even the inspectors of the Bureau of Labor and Industry of the state, charged with enforcement of the law, are quite vague about what the law is, if their signed reports are truly in dicative. The new secretary of this department, hopeleSSly hand1capped. by the size and character of his force
 of inspectors, is very much interested and eager to make what improvement is possible in a chaotic and muddled situation. The laws aren't so bad,
 and Dr. Royal Meeker may soon have them better enforced, but that is still
 hope and promise, not reality.
 To the Federal inspectors some
 children reported that "they began to
 work with no certificate Ga certificate is required by law) other than work
 50 cents" No central authority had
 seemingly been charged with the duty
 of enforcement and inspection There
 has been a humorously legal mix-up