The Connecticut labor news., 1923-11-17
WHILE UNITED STATES TALKS ...~ OF ENDING ITS CHILD LABOR
 OTHER NATIONS TAKE ACTION

By International Labor News Service.
 New York, Nov. H.-While the Uni ted States has been talking about ending child labor, but doing little to abolish it, other nations have been going ahead and freeing their child slaves l
 Take supposedly backward" Mexico, for instance. Fifteen million Mexican children between the ages of four and fourteen have been liberated from working day lasting from sunrise to sunset, Senor F. Roel. New York Cons ul General from Mexico, told the Inter child welfare.
 Under the Mexican Constitution, Roel said, maximum days work for child ren between 12 and 16 years of age is sixhours and child labor under the age of l; has been abolished. The Mexican Government IS opening both night and day schools for the development of child workers, who were formerly driven to prolonged labor which harmed them physically, mentally and morally, Roel added
 Over i'll England, the factory report tor l922 shows that last year only 4o6 children under IA submitted themselves for examination under the factory act for certificate of fitness to leave school and begin work. Compared with 1921, this means decline of 92.2 per cent.
 The cause of the big drop in child la bor IS due to an order of the Education al Board. put in force at the beginning of 1921, to apply the clauses of the ed ucat1on act of 1918 relating to child en- pioyment. From 1904, due to prosperi- ty III the cotton industry, an appalling number of children entered the mills. But England has now apparently be- l come aroused to the enormity of child ,, labor and 1t IS probably that never again will industry be permitted to ex- Jloit the labor of boys and girls Meanwhile children are still being for ced to work in the United States under conditions that menace not only them selves but the national welfare A good example of the intolerable conditions that surround many child workers here IS shown by Maryland truck farm which employ migratory child toilers. The Chlldrens Bureau of the United States Department of Labor has just completed all investigation in Maryland which beyond dispute how unfairly America IS treating vast numbers of its children.
 Living conditions which beggar de- scrlptlon exist on the Maryland farms investigated by the bureaus experts. On the subject the report says:
 Seasonal workers are housed bv 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 comps 1t was weather beaten or unpainted and the windows usually lacked either glass or shutters or both. As rule there was but one room on each floor with stairs on the outside lead ing to the upper room. In some par tition divided tht lower floor, which was about 25 by 30 feet, into two rooms. On each side of a narrow aisle down the center of the room the floor was divided into sections or pens by boards 10 or 12 inches Tn height. Each pen was about six feet long and from four to six feet wide and covered with straw for mat treSs. Each family was allotted one of these pens, the larger families some times securing those six feet in. width"
 The employment of young children tor long hours on the trukc farms is al- so continued, because of the loss of schooling 1t entails. Nearly one-fifth of the white children in the area studied had been absent from school because of farm work for six or more weeks of the school year.
 Boys from 12 to 16 were found blow ing narrowing and machine cultivating tor nine or 10 hours day.