The Daily Worker Newspaper, July 5, 1924, Page 10

RO aaa NT eemployed. Of 34 cities By LOUIS ZOOBOCK. N a previous article in this maga- zine (May 24, 1924), we described rural child slavery in the - United States. The children of the landless farmers, as shown, are forced to per- form the hardest tasks on the farms. They have no opportunities for edu- cation, health, recreation and the en- joyment of a normal childhood. Some- what similar conditions can be found in the cities, where children of wage earners in endless procession are passing thru the gates of child labor into initial employment in low grade industries. It is very hard, almost impossible, to find how many juvenile workers there are thruout the country em- ployed in city industries. The Chil- dren’s bureau states: “Every year an army of 1,000,000 children between 14 and 16 marches out of the schools to become wage earners. This does not include the children under 14 years of age who in a number of states are permitted to work at that early age.” The 1920 census, however, shows that only 1,000,000 children, 10 to 15 years old inclusive, are employed in the United States. Both estimates are altogether too lowfer accuracy. One thing, however, is certain. Since the time when the supreme court, the bastille of American capi- talism, declared the child labor law unconstitutional, there was a steady increase in the number of children furnishing Statistics of employment certifieate is- suance in 1923, 30 reported an in- crease in the number of children un- der 16 years of age entering regu lar employment for the first time dur- ing the calendar year of 1923 as com- pared with 1922. In these 34 cities, the number of 14 to 16 year old chil- dren receiving first regular employ- ment certificates was 75,752 in 1922 and 89,813 in 1923. In 15 of the cities reporting there was an increase of at least 20 per cent in 1923, as compared with 1922. In other cities the percentage was higher. The largest increase was in Waterbury, where almost eight times as many children received employ- ment certificates during the first six months in 1923, as during the same period in 1922; other Connecticut cities reported increases from 98 to 178 per cent. Springfield reported an increase of 214 per cent, Pittsburgh 126.7 per cent, San Francisco 84.8 per cent, Indianapolis 74.8 per cent, Birm- ingham 63.2 per cent, Baltimore 56 per cent, and Philadelphia 50.6 per cent. These figures are the best proof of the loyalty of the supreme court to the manufacturing interests of the country. In the’various industries of the cities, in coal mines, in canneries, in tenement home work, in street trades, etc.—children of all ages are being mercilessly exploited. A great deal of work done by these juvenile workers is quite unsuitable, involving too much sitting, or two much stand- ing, the carrying of too heavy weights, the over-exercising of one set of muscles at the expense of another, and in some occupations—the loss of sleep. A description of some of the occupations in which children are employed will help us get a clearer understanding Of the greatest curse of capitalist civilization—child labor. Children in Street Occupations. Child labor in street occupations, as child labor in agriculture, receives very little protection. It is estimated that over 300,000 children under 16 years of age are engaged in various street occupations: as newsboys, boot- blacks, errand, delivery and messen- ger boys, vendors of chocolate, chew- ing gum and shoestrings, market- stand helpers, etc. The children are compelled to work long hours for very low wages. Thus, in Connecticut, it was found that the greater number of children engaged in street trades earn less than 50 cents a day. In Alabama, children en- gaged in street selling made about an average of $6.50 a week; the boys who were engaged in delivering pa- pers made an average of $2 a week. In North Dakota, carriers were paid according to the number of papers id OCH ABI I IR Industrial Child Labor they delivered, from $2 to $2.50 a week in Minot, from $7 to $10 a nonth in Grand Forks, and from $5 to-$5.50 a month in Fargo. Sellers’ earnings were usually smaller—about one-fourth of those reporting earn- ings made less than $1 a week. It is understood that most of the street workers come from homes of the poor. In Birmingham, about 30 per cent of the boys doing street trad- ing were found to come from broken homes, and the mothers were found to be engaged in some kind of work outside dhe home each day. This meant that the children were left on their own resources from the time they left school until they returned home late at night. Many of the boys stay out all night; some of them sleep on the floors of the distribu- tion room of the newspaper establish- ments, in nearby garages or such sheltered places. Investigations have shown that the greatest number of street workers have physical defects and ailments, such as heart, lung, throat, stomach, and foot troubles. In many instances the defects and ailments are traceable directly to the occupation. The long hours, the exposure to all kinds of, weather, the irregular meals, often un- wholesome and inadequate, the rush and excitement of the streets,—all these are factors in undermining physical health and nervous stability. Children in Industrial Home Work. Another form of child slavery is— home work, almost 9-10 earned less than $100 and nearly 3-5 earned less than $25. In other cities, particularly in New York, conditions are the same. In the process of work, fingers are cut on the threads which must be drawn from the lace. Rosary beads are linked and wired with the aid of pliers and the hands are left sore or cal- loused. “In some homes machines had been installed and fingers were crushed or cut in using them. The children usually work till 10 or 12 o’clock at night, the smaller ones fall asleep before this time. Sometimes the whole family rise again dt 5 o'clock to go on with the work. Stopping at the factory for more work on their way to school, the children are likely to be tardy, and it is little wonder that teachers say that they. come to school worn out and listless. It is also little wonder that many of the children are below their normal grades. : But in addition to the evils from which children suffer, a possible dan- ger to the public health is found in the fact’ that many families work at home on these products during times when some of their members are ill with communicable diseases. In one region, a study of tenement home work. conditions revealed at least 19 cases of tuberculosis. Children who were kept out of school because they had whooping cough were doing home work. Among other diseases which By Haskell Rein. Thrumming electric wires ' Are drawn ominously to taut Fingers: A gust swoops— ‘i And in austere masses id Veering, Tall cloud-figures raise arms, Eloquently tragic— A desperate moon struggles, With the pall: Tenseness gasps— Pin-eyed rats Dart from alleys— Shacks creak from burden of tossing Wrecked fiesh— Eloquently tragic, Blue-white arms extend, In fierce gestures of imploration,- O water lapping in a country stream! O undulating ecstasy! ~ tenement home work. This is the most vicious form of child slavery which is not protected by any de- finite state laws. Thousands of chil- dren, many of them little more than babies, are victims of the iniquitous tenement home work system. They work late at night at occupations which strain the eyes and blister and callous hands. The work is both hard and tedious. Coming home from school, with little playtime, or with none at ail, the chil- dren go to work. Perhaps they card- ed glove or dress-fasteners or shoe buttons, or jewelry, or they worked at stringing tags or separating bands of lace held together by some threads. Usually the whole family works to- gether. The older members doing the harder parts of the job, and the little children doing the easier. The average earning of each person is about 3 cents an hour. To earn % of a cent at carding fasteners, it is ne- cessary to place a gross of them in cards, and very small children even working at top speed, could not make more than a few cents an hour. The investigations of the Children’s Bureau in three Rhode Island cities revealed shocking conditions. Chil- dren were engaged in home industries, working long hours-and receiving very little pay. Four-fifths of the chil- dren, who assembled jewelry, strung beads, finished lace and performed many other operations incidental to manufacture, could make at rates paid so much as 10 cents an hour work- ing at top speed; half of them could not make 5 cents. Of the families reporting total yearly earnings from the home working families reported were pneumonia, typhoid fever, tonsil- itis, influenza, and diphtheria. The system of industrial home work is one long tale of neglect, under. nourishment and over work. It con- tinues because the employer who uses it saves rent, floor space and over- head charges for heat, foremen and wages. It cannot be controlled or regulated in any way. It must be abolished unconditionally. Children in Canneries. Another industry in which children are practically without legal protec- tion—is the canning industry, which stands on the borderline between fac- tory industry and agriculture. Canneries depend for their labor al- most exclusively on women and chil- dren. On account of the perishability of their product and even more on ac» count of the unauthorized and irregu- lated method of securing their raw materials, these establishments work overtime to a degree almost unpre- cedénted in any other industry. Conditions of work in canneries are intolerable: The whistle blows 4 o’clock in the morning summoning the wage slaves. Women and babies, and children of all ages, appear from the row of barracks behind the can- nery. These are the workers. The oyster cars are pulled along into the drafty shed and the workers fasten containers to the sides of the cars and reach in for clusters of oysters. They break apart the clusters and open the shells with knives and begin to fill the cups with oyster meat. The work is wet and dirty. The workers are liable to injuries from the sharp oyster shells, shrimp thorns, work knives, and to constant sore- ness of the hands from acid in the heads of the shrimps. Severe colds, injuries from falls, infections from cuts*from the oyster shells, bruises and poisons in picking shrimps—are very common among the child and - women workers. The eafnings of the children are very small, the medium wage ranging between $4 and $5 a week for children of 14 years of age and over; younger children earn between 50 cents and $2 a week; among the part time work- ers, the median earnings fall between $1 and $2; while the medi earnings of the occasional workers are less than $1 per week. A great number of the workers in canneries are imported from the north. They are forced to live in quarters provided by the cannery, which are often shamefully overcrowded. Fifty ‘eople, including men, women and chil- dren, may be housed in an old barn; or shacks may be erected of the poorest construction, allowing but one small room for a whole family of adults and children. Often several hundred people live together in the utmost squalor, lacking all the decencies of life. The illiteracy among the children over 10 years old is six times as great as for the children of about the same ages in the United States as a whole. Many children of school age have never been to any school. This is especially true among the families brought from the north. In the spring, they return to the "Middle Atlantic States and work till fall, perhaps in the corn and tomato fruit canneries, where conditions are likely to be much the same as in the oyster can- neries on the gulf. Wet, uncomfort- able work, long hours, lack of sleep, exposure to inclement weather, insuffi- cient food, crowded camps to live in, and no one to take care whether the children are sent to school—since they are not “legal residents” in any district. Child Labor in Coal Mines.. The demand for child labor in mines is greater than is generally supposed. The census of 1920 shows nearly 6,000 children between 10 and 16 years working in mines. This figure, of course, is far too small. Everywhere in the coal mines, boys of 10 years old and over are preforming duties which properly belong to groups. In Pennsylvania, the 14-year-age mini- mum of the state law is being violated. Hundreds of boys are employed in mining before they reach that age. Many of the boys work underground, sometimes obliged to wade in mud or water, sometimes enveloped in suffo- cating gas and smoke. They usually begin as 6 grits tase means that they sit and stan ¢ a door which leads from one mine chamber to an- other, and open the door for the elec- tric coal to pass. Sometimes they work in total darkness. Others turn the ventillating fans in the dangerous sections where the last remaining coal is being cut away, and where the roof sometimes falls in. The Children’s Bureau studied con- ditions in an anthracite coal mining region with a population of about 25,000. Most of the boys working in the district were in the breakers, re- ceiving very low wages. And, as one of the workers stated, “You begin at the breaker and end at the breaker, broken yourself.” “The men and the boys,” says the report, “worked in the constant roar which the coal makes as it rushes down the chute, is broken in the crushing machines, or sorted in the shakers. Black coal dust is every- where, covering the windows and fill- ing the air and lungs of the workers. The slate is sharp, so that the slate pickers often cut or bruise their hands; the coal is carried down the chute in water and this means sore and swollen hands for the pickers. The first few weeks after a boy be- gins works his fingers bleed almost continuously and are called red tops by the other boys, Slate picking is not itself dangerous; the slate picker is, however, sometimes set at- clean- ing-up jobs, which require him to clean (Continued on page 7.) *