The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1931-12-10
Profits Stained With Children's
Blood
Blood

the sufferings Of defenseless childhood. OF
the children who migrant farm laborers
and those who street vendors, both groups
largely without adequate safeguards in most
of our states, stories could be multiplied such
as of very young migrants working to IL
hours day deprivedof from 2 to 5
months schooling yearly, of street vendors
working through meal hours far into the night
or beginning in the small hours of the morn
ing, with exposure to serious moral as well as
physical risks. Tenement homework remains
a hotbed for the Illegal employment of chill
dren. Canneries are exempt from child labor
law in several states and in many places
ploy young children under unsanitary condi-
tons, for long hours at high pressure"
Children Under 10 On Farms
Although complete returns are not yet made
on the status of agricultural child laborers, who
form by far the largest section of the group,
partial estimates reveal this phase of work to be
a veritabe hell hole for children The report
to the recent White House Conference on Child
Health and Welfare shows that 48 per cent of
the children working in industrialized agricuI-
tIual occupations were under IL years of age,
while TWENTY FIVE PER CENT WE'RE UN-
DER TEN YEARS OF AGEl
Child labor In street trades is continually on
the increase and keeps step with the growth of
urban population. Dinwiddie's report stresses
this fact while. at the same time exposing the
completely misleading rnderstatement given of
this category of child laborers in the Govern
ment Census of 1920.
Accidents Kill and Main.
The toll taken of children thus forced into
industry through poverty and parental unem-
ploynent does not stop with the mere depriva-
ton of education or exploitation in the factory.
If it is true that the profits of the American
capitalist class is saturated with the sweat Of
children it is equally true that they drenched
with the blood of children manned and crippled
through the intense speed-up to which they
are subjected.
Over period of five years. per cent of COM
pensated injuries to child workers under 10 in
New York state took the form of amputations,
one-fifth resulted in permanent disability OF
the injuries sustained by children in occupa-
tons supposed to be illegal" 80 per cent re-
suited in amputations and SO per cent caused
permanent gripping. In the same state the
greatest number of industrial accidents was
found to occur among girls between the ages of
IS and 10. In Michigan there were 11O7 injur-
les to working children IT and 10 years Of age
during the year 1928-29 For the year $780, the
state of Illinois recorded 297 accidents to is and
16-year-old children
Child Toll Increasing.
Although many states do not keep statistics
on the number Of industrial accidents, or where
they do keep them, there is no attempt at
division by ages it is beyond all shadow OF doubt
that accidents to child laborers is increasing at
terrible rate as result of the inhuman speed
up and lack of industrial safeguards on hazard
Gus machinery In this connection, the report
of Dinwiddie states:
Through statistics which are collected by
the United States Children's Bureau from
states which keep them in comparable form
we know it TO be q fact that, yearly thousands
of minors receive permanent injuries or are
dlled, and that tens of thousands are injured
in the industries Of the country"
Little more need be said. The tremendous
suffering and misery of the proletarian child
stands out in black relief against the disgusting
hypocrisy OF the demagogues who hide the ex-
ploitation of child labor, the mangling and
numbering of the working youth under veil of
Return to School" and "Anti- Child Labor
r1overrsnty