Hellraisers Journal: From The Comrade: “Child Labor in Free America” by John Spargo, Illustrated by Ryan Walker

Mother Jones Quote, Child Labor Man of Six Snuff Sniffer —————

Hellraisers Journal – Thursday July 3, 1902
“Child Labor in Free America” by John Spargo, Illustrated by Ryan Walker

From The Comrade of July 1902:

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Mocking the stately phrases of the Declaration of Independence and the proud boast enshrined in our national songs, is the terrible reality of child-slavery. From the far South comes a cry from children that know no childhood and upon whose degradation the great edifice of our commercial supremacy is being raised. Not since the early years of the last century when the great and good Robert Owen, Michael Sadler and the seventh Earl of Shaftsbury (then Lord Ashley) gave voice to the terrible condition of the mere babes who languished and toiled in British mills and factories, has such a terrible story of shame been told as that which is told of Alabama, Georgia, and the two Carolinas to-day. Little boys and girls of five, six, seven, and eight years, toiling in factories ten, and even twelve, hours a day, all unconsciously mock our “civilization” and imperil the very life of the nation.

But it is not alone in these States that child labor prevails. From almost every State in the Union the cry of the child toiler for rest, for childhood, for life, is heard. In the North no less than the South; East no less than the West, the same great problem exists-the problem of child labor co-existing side by side with a permanent army of unemployed adults. In the textile mills of the South it is estimated that there are at least 20,000 children at work under fourteen years of age. In Alabama alone there are some twelve hundred children employed, being a proportion of between six and seven per cent of all the operatives. In Georgia the proportion of children under twelve to grown persons employed in the mills is stated to be not less than 14 per cent, and in South Carolina it is at least nine per cent. The ages of these children thus classified as “under twelve” run all the way down to six and even five years!

Let those who prate of our “glorious progress,” and boast of our ascendant commercial power, reflect upon the terrible fact that little children, scarcely more than babies, can be found by the thousand in these southern mills working 12 and 12½ hours every day at the spinning frames for wages that range from ten to twenty cents a day. Here is a terrible account of this child slavery, written by a special correspondent of Cincinnati Post, which should be sufficient of itself to shame the people of this country, and to rouse them to vigorous action. He says:

I secured entrance to the People’s mills of Montgomery, (Alabama) which manufacture sheeting for the China trade. In the spinning room, where most of the children are employed, there were 125 persons of all ages at work. Of that number between 40 and 50 were children less than 12 years old. Those who had ever been in a school house were rare exceptions. In this room I saw boys and girls so small that their efforts to perform their work were absolutely pitiful. In reaching up to join the ends of the broken threads they were obliged to strain and stretch every muscle and sinew of their frail bodies and some were so small that they were compelled to stand on their tiptoes. This was repeated every five minutes or oftener for twelve long hours. I called the foreman’s attention to several little ones who I was sure could not be over six years old and was told “they are not working,” which meant that they were not on the pay-roll, but were helping the parent or older brother or sister, or learning the machines, so as to be able to take their place in that mill.

[…..]

The effect of child labor upon the wages of adult workers is a serious consideration. Of course, the reason for child labor lies in its “cheapness,” and the inevitable consequence is the reduction of wages all round. Ill advised and short-sighted parents are sometimes befooled by the arguments of the capitalist, or his hirelings of the press, into opposing any attempt to do away with child labor on the ground, that the children’s wages help to support the family, yet the truth is that wherever child labor obtains it takes the united labor of the family to maintain the ordinary standard of comfort. Foolish people who cry out Socialism would destroy the sanctity of family life, had better reflect that capitalism has already accomplished that by taking the wife to compete against the husband and the child against the parent. It is today that a man’s foes are of his own kin and household!

These awful facts, and they might be indefinitely extended, betoken a condition that is truly appalling. This is the terrible fact: we are denying to the children of today, in ever increasing numbers, the right of childhood; we are debasing their bodies to an alarming extent; and we are denying them that mental equipment and training which alone can make them good and useful citizens. Could there be anything more dangerous, from the point of view of national pride than to stunt the bodies and minds of the children? Could there be anything more cruel, from the point of view of humane principle, than to crush hope and joy and love out of these little child lives? Could there be anything more foolish than to send the child into the factory to labor and the parent to look for work as we are doing today? These are questions for the workers of this country to face in unflinching earnest.

I say the workers advisedly, for this question, like every other social question, properly understood, is a class question, and appeals primarily to the worker as a worker. Let those who will, seek to deny the existence of class antagonism, here is proof enough for the man of unbiased mind and average intellect. If we ask ourselves whose children are being crushed beneath the great capitalistic Juggernaut, the answer comes back to us: “They are ours-the children of our loins.” And if we ask ourselves for whose gain are these our babes being debased physically, mentally and morally, the answer comes to us, born out of our inmost souls, “Their degradation, and ours, is for the gain of the idle class that preys upon us.”

[…..]

[Emphasis added.]