Foreign Language Press Service

One Result of the Efforts of Labor Unions (Editorial)

Svenska Nyheter, Apr. 5, 1904

Whatever one may think of the labor movement in general, in one line the work of the unions has borne fruit... The work here referred to is the movement for the abolition of child labor. Granted that a considerable amount of selfishness lies behind these efforts, yet it is a selfishness which assuredly will not have any evil consequences.

According to statistics, there are at present 168,000 children employed in factories, in mines, in other industrial enterprises or in stores in the United States. One third of these children, or 55,000, are working in the various branches of the cotton industry, and about an equal number are employed in the cigar and tobacco industry,.... and in shoe factories.

Although the age limit is raised from time to time, there remain in the 2factories in the southern states, a great number of children from the ages of eight to ten years.

Due to the strong and broad labor movement in the northern states, child labor has been curtailed so much that, in spite of the great increase in population, fewer children were working in the factories in these states in the year 1900 than in 1880.

In the South, on the other hand, where organized labor has had less success than in the North, the ranks of workers in cotton and tobacco are recruited in an alarming degree from the army of children. There in the South the power of the manufacturers over the children is nearly absolute. The little ones are treated almost as if they were slaves, and they can do nothing to lessen the tyranny. They are made to work long and hard, and all too frequently their undeveloped energies fail in their efforts to supply material for the machines which they are supposed to feed.

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The result of the employment of children in factories is not merely lowered wages for the grownups who work in the same plants; the most serious result is the physical and mental stultification of these child workers.

Thousands of the men who nowadays tramp the country roads and the city streets begging their more fortunately situated fellows for a little money, or a meal, perhaps, are products of this system of child labor.

The glorious time of childhood and early youth is changed into dark days in the factories, and the vigor and enthusiasm of young lives are debilitated by the machines. The prospects of a child who has been working in the plants for five or six years, and who has thereby lost his chance for school attendance, are very dark indeed. It is no great wonder that many men and women whose early years were spent at the factory bench become vagabonds and criminals. Child labor is the primary curse of our country, our Christianity, our civilization.

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