New Britain Herald Newspaper, February 26, 1923, Page 5

MONDAY, HERALD FEBRUARY 26, 1023, Wage earners in the ity have be We easier. There 1s much wory these regions that children com do. The returns 1o tenant farmers Are 89 low that they must have the work of ehildren 1n arder to make & living. Owpers do ot provide modern machiners for farm ten {an1s. 1t 18 largely hand work which children can do. This work Is not {tralning them to be any better |farmers. It s mere drudgery and |the parents get the returns from | their labors, Tenants move about continuous which Interferes with schoollng, Sueh & changing population In o section creates an attitude of Ine difference toward the sehool devels opment, In one community, for la. stance, the average schooling wi fonnd to be only six months a yea! Owner parents, who are able, send their ehildren to town sehool Very generally In these one erop reglons child labor is contracted for o family groups, This Is partien. larly true In the sugar beet flelds, The general result of farm labop upon children In after life in striks Ingly shown by the tests made upon soldiers In the army. It was found that the young men from the farm not only are not as well ede cated as young men from the cities, but they have not the same degree of mental nlertness. SLUM SECTION FROM WHICH SORKER'S AR DEAFTED - MuCH 4 . TYPICAL GROUP OF OF THIS LABGR. I3 MIGRATORY iN CTER o BEING CNLD!‘N PANOING FROM s EET WORKERS, SEVEN OUT OF NINE # /2 YEARS OF AGE -+ By JOHN GARRETSEE HAT is chlid labor? Where is it found? To what ex- tent does this long fought economic evil still exist in two million child laborers In this country between the ages of ten and sixteen years at least 70 per cent, or nearly one million five hun- dred thousand, are at work on the farm and practically every state so-called free America? What class of little unfortunates are still its victims? In answer the average render sees at once a vision of factory towns, specifically exempts And unfortuna agriculture from the provisions of its child labor law. some sectlons, notably In the sugar ly In a8 hard, Fe considers play an on- necessary waste of time, As a result of this attitude, It Is almost Impossible to get any direct legisiation protecting farm children, Farm child labor exists in three forms—First, where children work for their own parents on the home farm; second, where they hire out to others for wages; third, where they work with their parents under contract to others, The form most It was found that farm work over.developed the major muscles while the finer muscles were neg- lected. The surprising result was that the farm.reared young man |tired out more quickly than the clty-reared young man, under physi. cal straln that demanded the nuse of the whole body, It was also found that the farm boys have a greater number of correctable physical defects tnan the ecity- beet flelds of Colorado, ' Michigan of squalld, crowded Clty tenements, J 0 and other states, this army Is still prevalent In any glven reglon va- 0.0y h,oy of pale, malformed mites of human- fty tolllng hopelessly for long dreary hours in clanging mills, in further angmented by a consider- able contingent of little laborers under. the age of ten. inines or In quarries, While the evil of chfld labor ries with the stage of agriculture, Usually each farm section passes through three stages, exploitation, specialization and diversification, The first stage Is the boom perlod When it comes to edueation It is well known that the percentage of Miteracy In the country Is twice that in the city, one In every ten of the rural popnlation heing clase. This avereage reader Is some years behind the times, As a mat- ter of fact out of the two million children ten to fifteen years of age exists generally throughout the farming section of the country, one of the most flagrant examples of t at the present time Is found In when the reglon Is opened up. Families move in, take up land and alm to get as much out of it as - ed as illiterate, One Investigator WELL EQUIPPED SCHOOL BUT ONLY FIVE PUPILS EEN YEAROLD FARM finds that of the sixteen states hav. (4 CHILDREN |Ing a percentage of Illiterncy A PRESENT OUT OF FIFTY-THREE -~ THE REST AT WORK IN engaged In gainful occupations in the United States according to the census of 1910, those laboring In factories, mines and quarries Were only about 15 per cent. In other words the average reader's Impres- slon was never more than one-sixth correct. Today It Is even less true as the result largzely of the work of the National Child Labor Com- mittee, organized In 1904 This minor phase of the problem has been pretty well solved, at least as far as the enacCment of laws goes. Most states of the Union have adopted at least a fourteen- year-old age limit for the employ- ment of children In factorles, If not in all occupations. The federal tax on child labor has further clinched the matter, It s at last well established in this country that children under !our-, teen years of age shall'not be em- ployed In mills, factories, canneries and’workslops. In short, It Is the American farm and not the factory which Is the stronghold of child labor. Of the redo. years of age. summer, tional. the sugar beet flelds, the source of the raw material of one of the largest Amerlean Industries, One af our general readers with the usual stock of wrong Impres- sions suffered his first rude awak- ening while traveling through Colo- Passing by a great fleld of sugar beets he was amazed to find much of the work being done by young children, boys ,and girls alike, some of them under elght He found that from early spring until the late fall, ex- cepting for a slight let-up In mid- these children worked unceasingly, some of them eleven hours a day, thinning out the small beet plants In the spring, hoeing the crops through the summer and pulling up the” beets and cutting off thelr tops at harvest time, While the conditions In the Colo- rado beet flelds are particularly flogrant, they are In no way excep- The Natlonal Chlld Labor Committee's Investigations In the snme Industry In Michlgan showed conditions equally bad. Other lines TWICE THAT OF THE CITIES found by the Natlonal Child Labol Committee’s investigation among the Itinerant Maryland. conditlons and belng kept out o schooi, In other words, to quote Gertrud H. Folks, ST, of farming revealed the same gen- eral conditions, aithough usually not quite so acute as among the beet growers. Such conditions were in the cranberry bogs of New Jersey, and berry and vegetable pickers of Delaware and In the cotton flelds of Texas, little children were found working long hours, living In unsanitary This was also true in the cotton fields of Oklahoma and In varfous kinds of agricultural Indus- tries In North Dakota, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, West Virginla, California and elsewhere. who has made a con: siderable Investigation of ;his, sub- Ject, “When Is child labor :aot child labor? Every state In the Union BEET FIELDS~ONE REASON WHY euQAL ILLITERACY 1S »~ a farm,"” listed in the law. to exist? general public, and law makers, erroneous Impression 4 e God-send to the chiidren. answers: when it takes place on In seventeen states agriculture Is speclfically exempted from the pro- r | visions of the child labor law regu- leting the age and the number of hours the children may work. the other states there is no definite exemption, but agriculture 1s not Why are such conditions aliowed In the first place, the including parents are under the farm work Is not only not injurious to children but is actually beneficlal. At a recent hearing In the senate in Washington when the questlon ot exploiting child labor Y%y the sugar beet industry came up, Sena- tor Reed Smoot sald perfectly con- scientlously, “So far as child labor In my state is concerned, that it is a It keeps bA%zE?N Y Al IFTEEN YEARS OLD ARE WF!K!NG .ON AM!IUCAN o them off the streets and out of ms- chief. Some of them earn as high as three dollars a day.” Senator Smoot did not add, be- cause he probably does not know, that, In Colorado, the work is so much more extensive and the sys- tem of school administration so In- ferlor to that in his otvn state, that it also keeps the children out of school and that In the majority of cases the children themselves do not receive or have the spending of the money they earn, If a man like Senator Smoot has this idea, is it any wonder that the interested farmer holds much the same opinion? The farmer from the nature of his {solated e:.istence is an Individuallst. He believes he can do with his own chldren as he pleases. He has alwr s been a hard worker as were | s parents before him. He sees no reason why his children shoulc not work In possible and as quickly as pos- sible and move on, The labor supply Is strained. Families are migrating. Child labor reaches an unfortunate point. School faclll- ties are Inadequate. Proper home conditions are totally lacking and recreatlonal and moral surround- Ings at a low ebb, While the child usunally works for his own parents his condition is about as bad as when he works for others, In the second stage, that of special- Ization, the reglon has discovered the crop to which it Is best adapted and gone In for it heavily. It is in these one crop regions where farming Is In the second stage that the greatest amount of child labor and its worst form Is found. The children of farm laborers and ten- ants are the chief sufferers rather than the children of the owners of farms, More than ome-half the familles who live on the land and do farm work are elther tenants or farm laborers. Conditlons of life for tenants and laborers have become harder as conditions of | greater than that of the United States as a whole, fifteen have a foreign population percentage far below 147, that of the United States as a whole, the average be- ing only 2.9 per cent. These fifteen states Include all but one of the thirteen states which have a child labor percentage It ex- cess of the average for the United States as a whole, But aside from the wrecking of the health and the educational equipment of the Individual child by farm labor, there is another se- rious effect upon the patlon at large. Oppressed by the hard and uncatisfactory life at home and tha greater lures of the city, the coun- try boy Is leaving the farm. Every vear It Is getting harder for the farmer to find labor to till his crops. At the same time, the sons of farm owners are unwilling te stay on the farms thelr hard work- Ing fathers leave them, and the old- time, substantial American farmer Is glving way to the migratory allen tenant. ? the $20,000,000 PROJECT. were and ceding the democratic control of the|raised, soldiers appeared boys senate, Mr. Perkins was chairman of |frightened American San Franclsco, Feb. 26.—A vro-" the Naval Affairs committee, and as pounced upon as spies. posal for the financing of a system of | such became a controlling influence in| The commotion reaching the ears|glevated rallways and subways in To- | shaping naval legislation. of King Oscar, he ordered that thelkio by American capital was an-| The senator gave special attention|culprits be brought before him. Then, | nounced by O. Masuyama, Tokio busi- | to improving maritime equipment|for the first time, the boys were ad-| nessman who has just arrived in the |along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, | dressed in their own tonque, the king| United States. He estimated the | and his personal familiarity with the|asking them in English why they were| amount involved at $30,000,000, none chief water routes led him to secure intruding. DPerkins, who acted as|of which would leave America. an exceptional number of lighthouses |spokesman, gave such a plausible ex-| planation that King Oscar shonk and warnings for sailors, studded hands cordially, dismissed the snldi(‘rs‘ from end to end of the coasts. The | regularity of Mr. Perkins' attendance [and entertained the young Americang for an hour at the palace. in the senate was almost remarkable, | for the record of his 23 years of serv- On his retirement from the United bury cathedral the tallest in England. ice shows that he missed but few roll | States senate, March 4, 1915, Mr. Per-! Engineers found that spire, 404 feet kins returned to his home in Oakland, | high, leaned 23 inches from the per- calls, Cal. § pendicular, A police order has been fire flows free at man's command? pressure of gas defying restraint, | burst forth with terrific power wreck- | Black Gold is worth more to the well- ing drilling machinery and towers. ~So |being of mankind than all the hard |great was the force that it ignited |yellow gold that exists on the earth |from the friction of the materials |today. cast forth by its own energy, and be- And California, little more than a came a real volcano, burning for a desert seventy-five years since shines weel ‘ere it could be brought under now as one of the brightest stars in control. Yonder is a wide section of lour union of states. It is a place land covered with crude oil from an-|in which the weary traveller may well other well that for a time flooded the [say, “Here I make my home. Ior vicinity. But these are only incidénts, |God's blessing rests upon it."” COMMUNICATED MUNYON'S DYSPEPSIA REMEDY When Prof. Munyon eaid that his Dyspepsia Remedy would relieve indigestion and all forms of stomach trouble he simply told the truth, It will relieve a stemach that has been abused by over-eating. It will relieve a stumach that has been weakened by old-style drugs, It will do much toward making an old stomach act like asound one. At all druggists, 2 cents. Black Gold By Chas, H. Aspinwall As guests of the Doty's, father and sons, of whom it is only fair to say that no more Kkindly, courteous, or well informed gentlemen conduct ex- cursions to the oil fields of California, we leave beautiful Library Park, Pas- adena, on the morning of February 15th. Mid-winter dispatches tell us that a large portion of the United States is held fast in the icy grip of frost and snow, Men are freezing to death there. Coal is a luxury that can only TALL SPIRE LEANING. London, Feb. 26.—Heavy traffic is Santa I Spri; a few short anta Fe prings, a few short threatening the famous spire of Salis- | months age not even a village is to- day, a marvellous field overlying a lake of oil, a mile below the surface, whose extent no human being knows. be obtained in Ilimited quantities at exorbitant prices. And here, tempers the warm rays of the bright- ly shining sun. Snow can be seen but it lies high up on the mountain tops and simply adds to the beauty of the scene. An easy conveys riding car ly growing Crown City. On we roll, down through a wonderful glen shad- ed by live oaks, out between groves of orange trees among whose dark green leaves countless spheres of golden fruit hang in radiant clusters, then Into the streets of Alhambra, almost unthought of ten years ago, but now a city, and on past the old mission property to the San Gabriel valley. One would scarcely believe that all the territory we have driven through from the foot hills above Los Angeles to the Sierre Madre moun- tains on the north, and from the Arroyo Seco on the west tb Lucky Baldwin’s Santa Anita ranch on the east, a tract over ten miles square, was sold only fifty-four years ago for eighteen hundred dollars. We glide on through extensive gardens of let- tuce, beets and spinach, ready for market, down into and beyond the old Montebello oil fields to the great walnut orchards worth thousands of dollars per acre. Mocking birds carol in the trees as we pass., The almonds pare solid masses of pink bloom, and now begin to appear on either hand, steel and wooden frames towering seventy-five, a hundred feet in the air, and at their base powerful machinery, drilling, drilling, down, down, a mile or more into the bowels of the earth. Derricks, derricks on every hand in all stages of constyuction, supply houses going up, pipe lines for con- veying the oil to refineries being laid down, bustle and seeming confusion everywhere, yet in and through it all an ordered purpose. Santa Fe Springs two years ago was & fruit and nut growing district with groves of orange, lemon, peach and walnut trees, little homes, small tanches, and quiet rural life. Today It is a hive of mechanical industry whose aim is the extracting from the beart of Mother Farth the treasure so tong concealed in her bosom, “Black Gold.” Oil! Oil! Oil! and still more oil, no matter where we look, while the natural gas goes to waste by the million feet. in Cali-| fornia of the south, a balmy breeze us | through the busy streets of the swift-| We know that wherever the drill has penetrated to a sufficient depth, ofl has always been struck, ofl of high | gravity commanding top market | prices. And the best thing about it is that a man does not have to be a million« aire to take advantage of the oppor- tunity. Any person who possesses a hundred dollars in cash can reap some of the benefits, The great corpora- tions are there, of course, but the man of small means has a chance among the independent producers that seldom comes to the average man in a lifetime. And the small fruit farmer, the man who had a lot in the village, the poor | man struggling to make a home, has shared in this wonder working Alad- din's fortune that was undreamed of only a short time since. A lot that sold for eighty-five dollars, twenty- four months ago could not be bought today for a million dollars. A man| who was land poor twenty-four months ago now gets a royalty of two | thousand dollars a day. The first well brought in was'“The Bell” driven in the widow Bell's five | acres which relieved her of a worry of how to get along that she had been under since her hushand’s death. She is now touring France. A Mexican with a small holding has given everyone of his relatives, includ- ing his grandmother, ¢ Ford touring car, and entertains them royally from time to time. Seventy wells produce daily over 100,000 barrels of oil. Nearly three | hundred new derricks are up. Ma- chinery is being put into place and drilling going on. New wells are com- ing in with increasing frequency. This fleld is now one of the three largest producers in California, and bids fair to outstrip all competitiors in a brief space of time. Santa Fe Springs, only a name on the map in 1921, whose land, ail told, could have been bought for less than a million dollars, today would bring five hundred times that amount. It is of greater value than all the oranges harvested in the state since crange trees were first planted. The yellow gold of the era of 1849 would be but small compared with the value of the “Black Gold” flowing from the carth through a thousand faucets in California of the south. Who says the days of miracles are past? Who says that men must bury themselves at a constant risk of sud- SENATOR, IS RECORD This Was Remarkable Career of (. C. Perkins, Who Died Today Oakland, Calif, Feb, 26.—Former United States Senator George C. Per- | kins, 84, died at his home here today. | From ship boy to forty-six years of | almost continuous public service, | twenty-two years of which were in the | | United States Senate, was the active| life experience of George Clement Perkins. He was in his Bdth year, | having been born at kennebunkport” Me,, August 23, 1839. At the age of thirteen, young Per- kins left his home at Kennebunkport tn become a sailor “before the mast,” | his first voyage being on a sailing ves- \:ol to New Orieans. Thereafter, for |a number of years, he followed the| |life of the sea, visiting nearly every [port of the world. Touching, finadly, |in 1855, at San Francisco, he caught | | the gold fever and turned prospector | and miner. He was the first to intro- duce steam whalers in the .Arctic | ocean, and operated numerous ships on the Pacific from Alaska to Mexi- €o. Onée Country Merchant. | As a country merchant in Califor- | | nia, Perkins became interested in pol- ‘HIN and was elected to the state sen- {ate in 1869 and to the governorship Iten years Jater. In 1893 he was ap- 'pmnt- d United States senator to fill the unexpired term of the late Le-| | 1and Stanford, the appointment being | | confirmed later by the legislature. | Subsequently he was reelected to three full terms. S Mr. Perkins’ long experience in gea- faring gave him recognition as au- thority in the senate on the many measures relating to maritime affairs and the naval establishment. He was constantly consuited on these subjects, and whenever a question arose on the floor of the senate regarding some technical point in shipping, by mu- tual consent it was usually referred to the authoritative judgment of the Cal- jfornia senator, who was always sup- plied with the fullest technical de- tails on such subjects. This led to his rapid promotion to positions of in- fluence on the senate committees on Naval Affairs, Commerce and Appro- ‘We pass now the location where the den death to mine coal when liquid priations. During the four years pre- Stood Before Royalty While he never, as a distinguished person, was presented at any Europ- ean court, Senator Perkins neverthe- less, once stood before royalty, It happened in this manner: LIQUOR ORDERED DESTROYED 26.—Liquor said to be worth $17,000 which was | seized in the home of Louis Sorchiotti Stratford, Conn. Feb. a young sailor, his ship, on one| here on February 14, was ordered de- yage, carried him to Christiana, |leave in company with another boy of | by |his own age. The American strolled outside the grounds of royal palace, but were refused ad-|liq {mission at all of the gates. Finally, | discovering a disused tunnel, leading| under the moat, they crawled through ’\n(l continued their walk through the |grounds. Soon a great shout was lberty local and state police. uor has not been discovered. old r give me death.” Mhe Your O Mayonna Home 1se at an business yells "Give me He would die a natural death if he didn’t use “Herald"” classifled ads. stroyed in a ruling by the town court |Norway, where he was granted shore | today. The liquor was taken in a raid Sorchiotti | boys' declared he had rented storage space | the | in his house and the ownership of the | & | issued prohibiting heavy trucking, in the immediate vicinity of the church. ' MUNYON’S, , Scranton, Pa. OUR BAKERY SPECIAL FOR THIS WEEK IS Mohican‘ Ciflnamgn rBuns vev....Doz. 15¢ YOUR F BREAD Spal:;ibs 10c LB.. FANCY PLATE | Corned Beef PRIME RUMP ’ Corned Beef . 18¢c | Il ( (71 T M-I ) sossve R SH APPLE BUTTER LB, 3 (‘R .\l 15c¢ | 15¢ | FRESH Pork 8c FRESH P’rk Kidneys . 25¢ Liver . &9C | 2 1ss. SWIFT'S PREM. OLEOMARGARINE. Lb»2 6 c MOHICAN CRY. P 55c NEW STRING Figs 3 "LARGE MEATY Prunes LBS, BUTTER EXTRA HEAVY Grapefruit : 25c 4 For 25c Strawbemes RED LARGE RIPE Bananas RIPE .49¢ | TEA ROCKPORT \Tlu/\l( Fbllo“' MACARONI MOHICAN MILK FR'SH COD TON AND CHEEKS SAYBROOK FLOUNDERS