CHILD LABOR

a problem of modern industry which developed after the invention of steam-driven machinery. Production by machinery having become a@ practical fact in manufacturing, in the early part of last century, the tendency manifested itself on the part of factory owners to displace the higher paid skilled men with women and children, little skill being required in the automatic regulation of machines. According to the historians of that period, even the poor houses, the orphan asylums and insane asylums were emptied of children to supply the demand of the newly established factories. So pronounced became the evil that legislation was pa ed to check it, the first acts of Parliament in this direction being pa ed in 1833. In the United States manufacturing industry did not develop sufficiently to make a problem of child labor till after the Civil War, and then the sudden growth of the textile mills New England gradually brought the question to the fore. As investigation showed, during the late sixties and early seventies children from eight to twelve years of age worked eleven and twelve hours a day in Ma achusetts, and similar conditions obtained in the coal mines of Pennsylvania and the cotton mills in the South not long after. With the direction of public attention to the evil legislative efforts were made to check it in various states, but that these laws did not prove very effective is obvious from the figures shown by the census of 1900, demonstrating that 13 per cent. of the workers engaged in the cotton industry were children under 16 years. In 1910 this percentage diminished only to 10 per cent. At that time there were over 2,000,- 000 children between the ages of 10 and 15 working for wages in the various industries, or 18 per cent. of all the children of the country belonging to that age group. The worst conditions were found in the Middle and South Atlantic states, more especially in the latter. After this period the impetus behind child labor legislation became more pronounced, the initiative coming partly from liberal minded citizens, more especially women, organized for that purpose, and partly from the labor organizations. There now remain few states in the Union which do not afford some measure of protection against the employment of children in factories. In the field of agriculture, however, the situation remains the same as it was half a century ago. Usually legislation takes the form of limiting the age at which a child may be put to work for wages, the minimum age usually being 14. In 1921 there were laws of this nature in all but four states. In seven states the minimum age was set at 15 or 16. In all cases agriculture was not included. In 29 states children under 16 may not work longer than eight hours a day. Forty one states prohibit night work for children under 16. In 18 states doctor's certificates are demanded for all children under 16, showing them physically capable of performing the work required of them. In six states there is no age limit to the children who may work in mines, covering the larger part of the coal industry. While practically” all states have pa ed legislation against child labor, it remains a fact that these laws are enforced to a very slight degree, sometimes not at all. In some states the enforcement of the laws is in the hands of a special force of factory inspectors. In Ma achusetts a special department of the police administers the laws. In 15 states there would be no enforcement were it not for yoluntary organizations of citizens, such as the ‘child welfare committees,’ usually supported by labor organizations. In most cases pre ure is brought to bear on the state authorities by the industries affected, and thus the laws remain a dead letter, unle this tendency is counteracted by pre ure from the opposite direction, as where the voluntary organizations and the labor bodies are active. An effort was made to repre the evil by means of Federal legislation, in 1918, by means of the taxing A iain of Congre . The law then pa ed was declared unconstitutional, but a second law, signed by the President on February 24, 1919, went into effect in the following April, Within a week a Federal judge granted a permanent injunction against its enforcement in North Carolina, on the grounds that Congre was attempting to ‘do indirectly what it cannot do directly.’ In 1922 a final decision had not yet been handed down. Another attempt to check the evil was made through the Federal Government by the establishment, in 1912, of the Children’s Bureau in the Department of Commerce and Labor, now the Department of Labor. This bureau has no power to act, but by CHILD PSYCHO LOG! gathering facts and publishing statistic regarding the prevalence of child labo furnishes vital material to support thos humanitarian organizations which ar fighting in the various states to mak child labor legislation effective. Th growth of these organizations is th most hopeful sign for the future, in thi direction. At the National Conventio) of the Child Labor Committee, nation al federation of these organizations held in New Orleans, in 1920, grea emphasis was laid by the speakers or the deplorable conditions for childrer found in the purely agricultural com. munities. According to the census statistics of 1920, there were then 1,060,858 children between the ages of 10 and 15 engaged in gainful occupations, includ. ing both sexes, showing that there has been some in pron eae brought about by preventive legislation.