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PAGE FOURTEEN
CHILD LABOR LAWS AND THE
SOUTH.
By E. E. Miller.
The great interest lately developed
in the regulation of child labor in
the mines aud factories by the many
“Associations” and “Leagues”
which have taken the matter up,
found voice, so far aa Congress was
concerned, in Senator Beveridge’s
plea for the federal regulation—or
rather prohibition—of interstate
commerce in goods manufactured by
child labor. Whatever one may think
of Mr. Beveridge’s radical method
of controlling the evil, no one can
deny that the evil exists, and that
along this line there is great need of
and great room for a genuine reform.
The situation in the Southern
states, where the laws are, generally
speaking, very lax, is the one that is
at present attracting the most at
tention. The newness of the evil
here and its rapid growth both tend
to draw all eyes toward Dixie. In
fact the impression seems to prevail
to a large extent that this is pecu
liarly a Southern problem. That
the people of the South have the
problem yet to solve is all too true;
but that other sections are partners
with us in perplexity is also an un
fortunate fact. The only states with
out any legislation at all for the reg
ulation of child labor are Florida,
Mississippi and Oklahoma. Perhaps
it is unfair to include the last
named, as it is scarcely a state yet,
and has been under a general terri
torial law on the subject. It may,
however, be said in passing that with
these states must be included the
District of Columbia! The laws of
Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, North
Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia,
and West Virginia are also very de
fective. So it is no wonder that in
the South, with the great growth of
eotton and other manufactories, the
matter has reached an acute stage.
That the laws of the Southern states
are, generally speaking, behind those
of other sections does not prove that
the people of these states care less
for the welare of their children than
do those of the North and East. The
restriction of child labor did not
come anywhere without a struggle.
The same forces which oppose any
reform in South Carolina and Geor
gia today opposed it in Massachu
setts and Connecticut a generation
ago. The people of the South had
not legislated on this subject be
cause there were very few factories
and therefore no great need of leg
islation. Within the last two decades
cotton mill* have increased in the
South beyond any visionary’s most
optimistic dream. Other factories
have sprung up alongside of them;
and what was a few years ago an
academic question has become an
urgent practical problem.
As the mills went up and the
mines were opened preachers, editors,
publicists of all kinds began calling
attention to the necessity of new
laws to meet the new conditions. But
the Southern people are naturally
conservative. The legislators, the
lawyers, the men of affairs, were in
clined to go slowly along the road of
such new legislation. The “poor
whites” who found their children
getting larger wages than they had
ever hoped for could not be expected
to favor any restriction that would
imperil their chance of earning these
wages. The capitalists both of the
North and of the South who had
their money invested in the facto
ries, and who were thus helping to
build up the “New South,” brought
all their influence to bear in opposi
tion to any change. In Georgia a
“gentleman’s agreement” among the
mill owners was allowed to take the
place of positive action by the legis
lature. In the Carolinas the manu
facturers have fought every change
in the laws; and each action taken
to safeguard the children has been a
compromise. Take South Carolina
for example. eSnator Beveridge gives
this abstract of th? child labor law:
“Age limit for children working in
mines and factories, 12 years. Or
phans and children of dependent par
ents allowed to woik at any age m
textile factories. Night work forbil
den for children under 12 years of
age. Hours of labor, 66 per week.
Parents required to furnish certifi
cates of age. No factory inspec
tion.”
Analyze this law for a moment, if
you please. “No factory inspec
tion,” no effort made to see that
the law is enforced. Sixty-six hours
of labor a week for twelve-year-old
children; and they need not be this
old if they are orphans or have de
pendent parents. Who cares for an
orphan anyway? And if the child’s
father is too tired or too lazy to work
and thus becomes “dependent,” why
let the child work bn. He might
grow up to be like his father. Sure
ly this would seem to be little enough
restriction; yet this law was bitterly
opposed by the mill owners, who ac
tually succeeded 4n defeating it in
at least one legislature.
This is the problem as the South
must face it. On one side the desire
and demand for new manufacturing
enterprises, on the other the pro
tection of the children from heart
less exploitation. On one side the
inherent conservatism of the sec
tion, the strenuous opposition of the
mill owners and the apathy or si
lent opposition of the poorer and
more ignorant classes; on the other
side the earnest efforts of the best
brains and hearts of the land and
the old Southern spirit of chivalry
and high ideals. No one can doubt
what tlie final result will be; but
there are many hard battles for the
reformers to fight before they secure
the enactment of rational legisla
tion.
One more point; this, as has been
said, is not exclusively a Southern
problem. It is a national one. The
labor laws of Illinois may be better
than those of Tennessee, or those of
New York than those of Kentucky;
but according to the best testimony
conditions are worse in the two
Northern than in the two Southern
states. Good laws are of little value
if they are not enforced. It is doubt
ful if any Southern state can dupli
cate the horrors of the Pennsylva
nia coal fields. The laws of the Da
kotas are little better than those of
the Carolinas; and no doubt they are
poor for the same reason, there has
been little need so far of better ones.
Some day conditions will change;
and then the skirmish line may be
transferred from the cotton fields to
WATSON’S WEEKLY JEFFERSONIAN
the prairies. So the fight must go on
all over the land, the forces of civic
righteousness battling against inert
conservatism, legislative indifference
and favoritism, and individual self
ishness and greed.
THE PRESIDENT A TRUST PRO
MOTER, NOT A TRUST
FIGHTER.
The Bank Trust rules the Presi
dent. The Bank Trust rules every
one of his “captains of industry”—•
Morgan, Rockefeller, Harriman, too,
and all the other “big fish” and
gold Democrats, too. The present
Roosevelt-Harriman imbroglio is
simply a “tempest in a teapot,” a
case where “when rogues fall out,
honest men may get their dues.” But
in this case, honest men will not, for
the rogues will all get together when
the President has again fooled the
people and made them believe he
wants justice to prevail. But his ef
forts are chiefly to make an appear
ance of “curbing the trusts” in or
der to keep the Republican party in
power and thus perpetuate the chief
infamy, the great disturbing factor
in government affairs, the National
Bank Trust.
As proof positive to any student
who can understand what he reads,
we will quote what the President
said in his message to Congress, De
cember 6, 1904:
“The attention of Congress should
be especially given to the currency
question, and that the standing com
mittees on the matter in the two
houses charged with the duty take
up the matter of our currency and
see whether it is not possible to se
cure an agreement in the business
world for bettering our system. The
committees should consider the ques
tion of the retirement of the green
backs and the problem of securing
in—our currency such elasticity as is
consistent with safety. Every silver
dollar should be made by law redeem
able in gold at the option of the
holder.”
That “decree” carried out would
melt every silver dollar and burn ev
ery greenback in existence, about
one billion free and lawful money,
costing the people not one cent of
interest for the making. Now, why
does the President go out of his way
to attack the people’s favorite mon
ey, made by George Washington and
Abraham Lincoln, if it is not simply
and solely to benefit the National
Bank Trust, so that robber combine
can then issue its currency (not mon
ey) which cannot get into circula
tion until the people borrow it out
of their banks; said banks in the
manipulation making from 25 to 50
per cent per annum interest thereon?
Does not this show that the Presi
dent is bending his energies to ben
efit the special privileged class?
That is by no means all he has
done and is doing. Read his message
December 4, 1906, for asset, credit
or “rubber” currency. There is
nothing worse in the annals of pi
racy, under the guise of law. And
a subservient Congress enacted the
vicious Aldrich Currency Bill, with
but one or two speeches against it,
and those from Southern patriots,
one of whom was Hon. Ollie M.
James, of Kentucky. See what the
President and his Secretary did only
last week to placate the banks and
thieves of Wall Street —dumped
some fifty millions of the people’s
money into the banks for them to
use without paying one cent of in
terest to the government, and the
same banks had already been favored
in the same way with some 185 mil
lions free from the United States
Treasury. Is the President dishon
est, or is he ignorant? Say which
you will, and it is plain he is not fit
to be President. If he is pandering
to and serving the capitalistic “in
terests,” the favored few, he does
not and cannot mete out justice and
equity to the people.
Membership and correspondents
solicited who will write for publica
tion.
JOS. N. STEPHENS,
Nat’l. Sec’y. U. S. Monetary League.
THE LESSON OF FRENCH
LIBERTY.
On July 14, 1789, there was struck
in Paris the blow which gave rise to
republican government in France.
For several centuries the French
people had suffered much oppression
at the hands of the ruling classes.
The monarchs, when they were not
engaged in making costly wars, were
indulging in the most wanton and lux
urious extravagance in pursuit of
pleasure. In order to get money the
taxes were farmed out to contractors
who oppressed the people to the last
degree. The miserable peasants were
robbed by the tax collectors of their
last pig or bushel of grain. He cared
nothing for the rights of man or the
principles of civil liberty, of which
he understood not the least thing in
the world. Codes and constitutions
were nothing to him. All he want
ed was to know that he could enjoy
peace and some comfort in his cabin,
with his family, secure from the in
satiate tax collector.
It was this state of things that
drove the people of Paris on a hot
July day one hundred and eighteen
years ago to attack the Bastile pris
on and fortress that had stood in the
midst of their city for more than
four centuries, as a monument of
tyranny, and they did not cease from
their ferocious assault until its gar
rison had been slaughtered and its
towers and torture chambers leveled
to the ground.
When the revolution was thus
started the people most active in it
had no plans, no definite idea of
what they were going to do and how
it was going to end. But the move
ment resolved itself into a carnival
of bloodshed. Scarcely anybody
without regard to class, condition,
age or sex, was safe from the fury
and madness which reigned among
the people; blit soon individuals who
wanted to mold affairs to further their
own schemes began to assume lead
ership, always taking care that in or
der to please the people there should
be an abundant outpour of blood.
King Louis XVI. and his queen, Ma
rie Antoinette, an Austrian princess,
were beheaded, and their son, who
would have been Louis XVII., if
there had been any dynastic succes
sion, was killed in prison. It is said
that a million lives were sacrificed
in the revolution, great numbers of