e fourd

m" stair

ced below: children.

ows that

al sections

) a year: nnualre

ar: whi correspon

that one

are rece

$500 &

$600 ar

Three-fourths of the adult males and nineteen-twentieths of the adult females actually earn less than $600 a year.2

29

Many of the persons employed in the industries of the United States earning low wages are bound to be parents of children who will recruit the ranks of child laborers, if social legislation and social remedies are not invoked. The most fundamental and far-reaching method of dealing with child labor must somehow attack this problem and find a solution. The discussion of a minimum wage and of pensions for widows with children indicates that the country is waking up to the needs of the situation. At first it may seem a long jump from child labor to a minimum wage and widows' pensions, but closer consideration will lead to a recognition of the connection. Again, it is found that the ounce of prevention is worth the pound of cure.

Another cause of child labor results from the failure of the schools to reach the child. The situation from the point of view of the child is shown by the answers given by five hundred factory children in Chicago to the question whether they would rather be in school or in the factory, if there were plenty of money in the family for them to make a choice. Four hundred and twelve preferred the factory. Among the answers given was the following: "You never understand what they tells you in school, but you can learn right off to do things in a factory." Another declared that "when you works a whole month at school, the teacher she gives you a card to take home, that says how you ain't any good."30

An investigation by the City Club of Chicago brought out the fact that forty-three percent of the children never reach the eighth grade and forty-nine percent never complete it. Only about twenty-five percent of the children

of the country get into the high school. Of the remaining seventy-five percent a large fraction do not go beyond the fifth grade.31 Those who leave school between the ages of fourteen and sixteen are "idle half the time, and earn during those two years not more than an average of two dollars a week. Their idleness during at least half of the time, their frequent passing from one job to another, their lack of any responsibility, necessarily tends to moral, mental, and frequently to physical degeneration. "'32

Similar results were discovered by the Massachusetts Commission on Industrial and Technical Education. Both reports stated that the vast majority of children do not drop out of school from necessity: they lose interest in a school life that does not seem to be leading them anywhere. In Chicago this is the testimony of more than ninety percent; while at least three-fourths said they would have continued in school if they had been getting some sort of trade training. In Massachusetts seventysix percent of the families were able financially to give their children further training. Fifty-five percent said they would have done so, if opportunity had been given.33

There are many reasons for this failure of the school system to reach the children. The course of study needs modification to bring it into touch with modern life. The efficiency of the teachers is impaired by compelling them to try to handle too many pupils. Small salaries mean illy-prepared and inexperienced teachers. Our school boards too frequently build magnificent buildings and then economize by paying niggardly salaries. The personal element counts for as much in education as in business; and in neither calling can you get a first rate man for a third rate salary. The "feminization" of our teach

ing forces is a phase of the problem. Fortunately, however, many of our educators are awake to the needs of the situation. One of them declared recently that "no question more appalling confronts the thoughtful school administrator to-day than the question of a proper readjustment of the school curriculum, school hours, and school equipment, so as to make our public educational system fit the need of the child to-day."'34

Again, recent experience in industrial education in Massachusetts and other States proves "that when a training is offered which promises equipment for a life work, more of the really serious minded pupils are attracted and can be held until they have received the training which the school offers. ''35

Finally, the most fundamental cause of child labor, and the source of its most serious features, may be described as the "industrial situation" or modern industrial conditions: it is a result of the Industrial Revolution which began in England in the eighteenth century and which is still going on with the greatest rapidity. Improved machinery and minute subdivision of labor have made it possible for the young, unskilled and physically weak to take the place of the adult, skilled, and physically strong worker. Hence we have an increase in the number of child and women wage-earners and of immigrant laborers as an outstanding feature of our industrial life. Competition compels cheaper production. Labor cost is easiest to reduce for there is no cost of production of the worker to the employer and consequently no loss through depreciation as is the case in connection with machinery and plant. The "cash nexus" throws upon the community the cost of rearing and also the cost of maintenance of the workers after they have been thrown upon

the scrap heap. Child labor is therefore a natural result of industrial progress. The finer the machinery of industry becomes, the less important it is whether the laborer is skilled and intelligent. Human powers grow cheaper because there is less demand for them.

VI

THE NATIONAL CAMPAIGN AGAINST CHILD LABOR

THE national campaign against child labor began about ten years ago. Rev. Edgar G. Murphy, a Protestant Episcopal clergyman in Alabama for twelve years, had seen the repeal in 1895 of an act passed in 1887 fixing a fourteen-year limit for factory workers and an eighthour day for persons under sixteen. The repeal of this statute came as a result of the establishment of a northern cotton mill in the State. When Mr. Murphy organized the Alabama Child Labor Committee, children of ten years of age were at work in cotton mills and nearly onethird of the mill hands were under sixteen. It was Mr. Murphy's address at the National Conference of Charities in 1903 that first aroused the social workers of the country to the seriousness of the situation. Thus the national campaign was the direct outgrowth of the economic development of the New South.

But very little investigation was needed to make it clear that child labor was not confined to any single section of the country. Mrs. Florence Kelley showed, by a comparison of the census figures of 1890 and 1900, that the great industrial States - New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Massachusetts, Ohio, and New Jersey- had fallen in the scale when measured by the percentage of their children between the ages of ten and fourteen years who are able to read and write. Thus, New York from