The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1924-03-04
Child LABOR is
REAL MENACE IN
UNITED STATES
Infants Working Eleven
Hours in the Fields

factories of the nation but it takes
the child out of the cradle and twists
its little bones out Of their sockets in
the mad rush for profits.
The oldest inhabitant has an early
recollection of movements to pro-
hibit child slavery. But it still goes
on. When congress passes a law
prohibiting it our supreme court de-
clares it unconstitutional. Sam Com
pers passes resolutions against it but
the capitalists pay no attention. They
know their Sam.
This curse of child slavery is TAX
ing place here in free" America and
not in the so-called benighted coun-
/ tries of Europe. American tourists
visiting Lithuania or some other state
on the borderland of Russia return
to tell sorrowful tales of how women
there are used to draw the pillow
while the husband plods along behind
smoking his ,fpipe and urging the
woman along with curses and blows.
This is, of course, an exaggerated
picture but granting that it was true
such a condition would be humane
compared to that which consigns lit
tie children of from eight to twelve
years into slavery. This is done here
under the Stars and Stripes.
The capitalist press tries as usual
to blame certain manufacturers for it
rather than the system. But that ex-
cuse will not hold water. Children
are employed wherever the bosses
can get away with it.
Child Nrvo1foro l-.l.-1
that conditions existing on farms to-
day are worse than those that pre-
vailed years ago in the mining re-
gions. In Baltimore, Maryland, pad
rones recruit whole families from the
tenement districts. They are herded
into narrow pens six feet long and
four feet wide, without privacy or
sanitation. There are as many as
one hundred in each shanty, separ-
ated only by boards ten inches high.
Men, women and children are indi-
scriminately huddled together on
bare boards for sleep.
How futile and hypocritical is the
moral crusade of the religious or
CARNATIONS of Chicago to protect the
eyes of burlesque patrons from the
nude or semi-nude forms of chorus
girls, while the immoral conditions
under which these unfortunate VIC
TINS of capitalist greed live are ig-
nored. But that is the way organ
lied virtue and religion always look
ing for the mote and ignoring the
beam, IN the social body.
At the Mississippi Valley confer
sepre on industrial legislation now
meeting at the Hull House, TAYLOR
Frye of Wisconsin said that since the
supreme court declared the federal
child labor law unconstitutional the
individual states should be forced to
pass their own child labor laws. He
did not say how the hands of the SUI
preme court could be kept off after
these laws were passed
Miss jeanette Rankin declared that
despite the idea that child labor con-
dltlons IN the south were the worst.
Rhode Island had the largest per
centage of child labor of any state
IN the union. Two Massachusetts,
cities had the largest proportional
number of children under Ia work.
ing.
The conditions in MARYLAND as re-
vealed by an investigation made bv
the childrens' bureau at Washington
beggars description. In Nav every
year trucks laden with household
goods can be seen moving from Bal
timore into the country to pick straw
berries. beans and peas. The pad
rome tells them they are going to
have mice vacation in the country
with good pay"
The following excerpt from the re-
port. of the children's bureau is
shocking:
Most of the camps contained but
one building, known as a 'shantv.'
winch serves as sleeping quarters for
the workers. This building, usually
two stories high, was erected on piles
or rough stones. In most camps It
was weather beaten 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 staiif on the out-
side leading to the upper room. On
each side of a narrow aisle down the
center Of the room the floor was d.
vlded into pens by boards ten or
twelve inches in height. Each pen
was about 6 feet long and four to
SIX feet wide and covered with straw
for mattress.
Each family was allotted one of
these pens, the larger families some
Tunes securing those six feet in width.
AT night, men, women and children.
partially clad, one family separated
from the next by the plank ten inches
in height, lay side by side.
Many of the shanties containing
two such rooms often were used for
sleeping purposes by thirty to fifty
persons. Of both sexes and all ages |
Little attention was given to sani-
tation. More than one-half the fani. |
lies had no toilet facilities. Manv
families described the way in which |
they lived as like hogs like sheen,
and like cattle beasts"
The survey found that the wages
Of entire families were seldom over
three dollars. On a aaranIa das, ani..