The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1925-02-14
Communists, Capitalists and
Children

NHIkuIEH
The agitation for the adoption of the child labor
amendment has certainly stirred up the animals
The rabd hostility to this very mild reform, com
ing from all sections of the country and almost
all of the organs of capitalist and middleclass
thought is striking proof of the brutal nature of
highly developed industry.
Underlying all the objections to the child labor
amendment is plainly peryerse and reactionary
idea-that children of 10 and under have right
to think for themselves that their minds like their
bodies, are property that can be disposed of at
will by the owners thereof as long as the elastic
code of bourgeois morality is not violated.
The proposal to deprive employers of the power
to rob and kill children for profit appears not to
arouse such hysterical denunciation does the
fear that freedom of body will mean freedom of
mind.
thinking child is hated like the scarlet woman
by the protestant bourgeois press and like hereto
by the catholic organs. Both unite in war on Com
munist activity among children and point to the
young workers who have been influenced by them
as horrible examples of what the passage of child
labor law providing leisure for workers children
would mean.
We quote from the Grand Rapids (1Iichigan)
Press of February an editorial, headed "Young
Workers.:
the case of 14-year-oId Morris speetor.
Morris is public school pupil in New York His
spare time has been employed in gobbIng all the
Red literature obtainabIe and peddnq his
school friends whom he has helped to organize
Young Workers League junior section.
The other night he got up in front Of commun-
ist crowd Of 10000 in Madison Square Garden
thester and set them wildly cheering with a IA
year-oId speech about NeoIa Lenln and the high
duty of young Americans like himself to "mobiIize
the children fight against the capitastic sys-
tenn" and "extend to the Young
Pioneers of Russia to the young Leninists"
AS between honest child labor in industry for
boys of A. giving them a of the meaning
of saving and the value of work, and the enforced
spare time ldeness after school hours which turns
out Morris spectors America will not waste much
time making choice. Child labor for the dollar
may have its objections. Child labor for sedition
and Soviet government in the United States
to provoke of them.
14year-old boy speaking to an audience that
damned Madison Square Garden holding $4,000
persons is in itself news story of great interest.
1t could be used to show the intellectual capacity
of children when given leisure and properly
trained. The incident itself is the best possible
proof that the Communist child labor program,
accompanied by the intensive educational work of
the Communists, dsprOyes the bourgeois prOverb:
"Children should be seen and not heard"
But the thinking workers children are not
wanted any more than thinking adults by cap
italism.
It's spokesman believe-and correctly-that to
robotize both working class children and parents
is the best method of maintaining the rule of the
rich.
"Full government maintenance of the children
Of school age of workers and working farmers
abolition of labor of children under Is years." is
not very revolutionary slogan, but
raised by the Workers (Communist) Party of
America, it has brought upon the party the vicious
attack of all sections of the courtesan press.