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'The Constant Stalker Among the Mill Children
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LAVERY of full-grown men and women is a thing
S of the past.
Slavery of ten-year-old boys and girls in the
mills and factories of Georgia is a thing of the present.
Yet we call ourselves civilized.
Conscientious men and women have investigated
the system by which little children are ground into
dollars.
Entire families work dawn until dark in the mills
and factories. In many cases the head of the house is
the only member of the family who is exempt from
toil.
He says he is disabled and for that reason he is al
lowed under the existing law to MAKE HIS CHIL
DREN OF TEN AND ELEVEN SUPPORT HIM.
He spends the day basking in the sunshine or
lolling in the shade, according to the season. He gets
plenty of fresh air and amusement. He is, in reality,
as healthy as a lazy man can be. His only duty is to
see that his children go to work and work so well that
they are not fined. Some of his children earn 30 cents
a week; some 60. The more children he has, the larg
er his income.
The children are children in name only. In the
morning they are pulled from their beds and are in the
factories long before the average business man begins
sipping his coffee. Eleven hours a day they actually
work.
Those who have known how to play before they
went to the mills soon forget the art. Their minds be
come cramped as their fingers become active.
In a few months they are transformed from grow
ing children into stunted, ignorant men and women.
The mill becomes their little world, and there they stay
until death steps in. AND DEATH IS A CON
STANT STALKER AMONG THE CHILDREN OF
THE MILLS.
«Children in Bondage’’ is the title of a book re
cently written by Edwin Markham, author of ‘““The
Man With the Hoe,’' Judge Ben B. Lindsey and
George Creel. The bock is devoted to laboring chil
dren. The introduction is by Owen R. Lovejoy, secre-
{MM@MVWE "MUST SEND THEM OUT TO PLAY
$ By ELLA WHEELER WILCOX.
§ Now, much there is need of doing must not be done
{ in haste,
But ‘slowly and with patience, as a jungle is
changed to a town.
But listen, my brothers, listen: It is not al
ways so.
! When a murderer’s hand is lifted to kill, there is no
$ time to waste;
And the way to change his purpose is first to knock
him down
j And teach him the law of kindness after you give
him the blow.
The acorn you plant in the morning will not give
shade at noon;
And the thornless cactus must be bred by year on
year of toil.
But listen, my brothers, listen: It is not ever the
way.
For the roots of the poison ivy plant you can not pull
too soon;
If you would better your garden, and make the
most of your soul,
Hurry and dig up the evil things, and cast them
'§ out to-day.
eAAAARAP AP A A A A N N PP PN I
tary of the National Child Labor Committee.
“In these United States, dedicated to freedom,
justice and fraternity,”” the opening chapter says,
“‘nearly two million children are fed annually into the
steel jaws of a modern industrial machine. {dammon
proved no less cruel to the little ones of the world than
Moloch. Herod is held in detestation, yet he is more
kind in that he slew outright.
““The closer one comes to the problem, the more
intense grows the conviction that much of our national
despair flows from a system that saps the moral and
physical strength of our young, begetting rickety and
unfit fathers and mothers for the begetting of rickety
and unfit children, generation after generation.
““Not until Congress and the Legislatures are
made to take the same burning interest in the welfare
of children that they have long manifested in crops
and live stocks is any decent citizen entitled to rest
and complacency.’’
Chapter by chapter the tragedy of child labor in
Editorial and City Life Section, Hearst’s Sunday American, Atlanta, July 19, 1914
The ancient sin of the nations no law can ever efface;
We must wait for the mothers of men to grow and
give clean souls to their sons.
But listen, my brothers, listen: When a child
cries out in pain
We must rise from the banquet board and go, though
the host is saying grace;
We must rise and find the Herod of Greed who is
- killing our little ones;
Nor ever go back to the banquet until the mon
ster is slain.
The strong man waits for justice with lifted soul and
eyes,
As a sturdy oak will face the storm and does not
break or bow.
But listen, my-brothers, listen: The child is a
child for a day;
If a merciless foot treads down each shoot, how can
the forest rise?
We are robbing the race when we rob a child; we
must rescue the children NOW;
We must rescue the little slaves of Greed and
send them out to play.
its different phases is blazed like another hand-writ
ing on the wall. First and most shameful of all child
exploitation described is that in the cotton mills of
Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina. Here only are
boys and girls of twelve years permitted to labor in
credible hours doing some one monotonous thing—
abusing their eyes in watching the rushing threads,
dwarfing their muscles in an eternity of petty move
ments, befouling their lungs with vitiated air and lint.
Worse than all the breakdown of the body is the
breakdown of the soul, that this book so clearly brings
out. The fearful moral risks run by young girls and
boys in the mills is plainly and frankly treated.
Equally deplorable is the demoralization of the father,
who shifts the responsibility of bread-winning upon
his children.
That child labor means economic loss is forcibly
proven. ‘“‘lf a child of fifteen,” it is stated, ‘‘has a
prospect of working until 60—a good, clean stretch of
45 years—and child labor sends its product to the in-
dustrial scrap-heap in middle life, cutting down the
active and productive years to fifteen, then we have
a right to argue an economic loss that runs up into the
billions.
“‘Child labor in America is still in its first genera
tion, practically; but we can measure the extent of the
calamity that we are inviting by consideration of Eng
lish statistics. For two centuries Great Britain has
permitted its children to be exploited for private
profit; but to-day, horrified at the results, no country
is striving more fiercely to repair its blunders.
“The Boer War opened England’s eyes. In Man
chester, the home of the factory child, 8,000 out of
12,000 recruits were rejected as utterly unfit, and of
the 4,000 retained only a scant thousand were really
up to requirements. A comparison with the records
of the Crimean War, less than half a century before,
proves that the average height had dropped three
inches and the average weight about 30 pounds.
“‘Children in Bondage’’ is full of facts so startling
and so forcibly presented that even the most compla
cent of us are stirred from our lethargy. If it could be
“read by every member of our State Legislature; if it
could sink its message into the hearts of the men and
women of Georgia, and of this nation, there would
soon be an end to child exploitation.
The child labor bill which will be presented to the
Legislature this week gives Georgia a great oppor
tunity. Our State is now regarded as the one that
treats its mill children worse than any in the Union.
The Sheppard bill will put Georgia on a footing with
the best of the States in the South. Its passage will
mean that the general average of Georgia will be rais
ed. Illiteracy will begin to decrease, instead of in
creasing, as it has in recent years; children will be
come stronger and healthier; the State’s death rate
will become smaller and the efficiency of grown men
and women will become greater.
Legislators representing factory owners who are
fighting to keep the children in bondage will oppose
the Sheppard bill with all their power.
THIS PAPER WILL MAKE IT A POINT TO
LET YOU KNOW WHO THESE GENTLEMEN
ARE.