Classical High School - Classic Myths Yearbook (Worcester, MA)

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The first rays of dawn light the homeward 52 V , 01'MQ 1 G 'cial A' .S l Q CLASS ORATION CHILD LABOR HARRY WILLIAM DOWNEY DAY in June. A ray from the sun high in the heavens finds its way with piercing heat to a rude garret in the slums of a great city-to a little form huddled over a machine, its eyes with a vacant stare, eyes unknown to the country with its green grass and shady trees. path in the coal mines of Pennsylvania for another child, with sunken cheeks and dragging limbs, weary with the hours of its nightly toil. Sad pictures, but true. Not taken from the pages of some fairy book, not in some land thousands of miles from our hearts and homes, but here, here beneath the folds of the stars and stripes, the emblem of the free. V True? Yes, too pitiably true. Read the cold figures of the Uni- ted States census for 1900, and learn that there are I,750,62.4, or one out of every eight children between the ages of ten and fifteen em- ployed in gainful. occupations. just think! VVhile they yet should be romping in play and cultivating themselves in halls of learning. they long since have been sacrificed to mammon by an ignorant parenthood and a demand for cheap labor. These children were at work, not in the open air, not in the fresh country, where sound comes up to us from free and living things. They were at work under the deafening and deadeningi clank and clat- ter of machinery in the cotton mills of the south, in the glass facto- ries of New Jersey and VVest Virginia, in the sweatshops of New York, on the breakers of the mines in Pennsyl.vania. In the textile mills of the South, 25 per cent. of the operatives are under the age of fifteen, 2000 girls under fourteen are doing night work in Pennsylvania, Q2,000 children under fifteen are at work in the State of New York, while in the South, 43,000 children under II

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HARRY XVILLIAM DOVVNEY

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the same age are at work in the cotton mills. In an investigation of the National. Child Labor Committee, it was found the number of door-boys and slate-pickers at work under the age of thirteen, at work in the coal mines of Pennsylvania, was 27.398 in IQOI. In IQO3 the number was 42,000, and in 1905 it was 48,000 No Christian or civilized nation can be indifferent to such a con- dition of affairs,-especially this, the richest of all nations. It is of terrible significance that for the years 1880-IQO5, the number of child-laborers between the ages of ten and fifteen years increased 6 per cent. faster than the total population of the nation, and I2 per cent. faster than the children of corresponding ages. On all sides, it is an axiom that a great sacredness hedges about a child, that a child is industrially nothing, that its future must not be blighted for mere gain. In our textile and cotton mills, foundries, mines and machine shops, we ind that accidents to children are from 250 to 300 per cent. more frequent than to adults. These unfeeling figures present arraignment of our industrial system. All our boasted protection of the home and childhood shrinks before the bare fact that in working out our industrial purposes in America, we subject our children to a danger three times that incurred by men, instead of throwing around the weak and defenseless special safeguards in- voked by their helplessness-a principle recognized as fundamental, not only by almost every savage tribe, but by most animals. VVe must not forget that beyond the individual interest, there is a vastly greater interest at stake, the interest of American civiliza- tion, of human civilization. The reason why child labor must be abolished is one which ethics and biology combine, to enforce upon us. The higher the type of being, the longer the time required for its maturing. The young of birds and of wild animals are full grown after a few days or a few weeks. They acquire with incredible rapid- ity the use of inherited instincts, and after the shortest infancy are ready to take up the struggle for existence after the fashion of their species. The human being, however, requires a period of preparation extending over years. First, infancy, then childhood, then early youth, and during all that period, he must remain dependent on the protection and nurture of adult kinsfolk. If that period is curtailed, an end of nature in the highest type of being is thwarted. The child I2