Hellraisers Journal – Thursday May 25, 1922 Report Describes Child Labor in Shrimp and Oyster Canning Industry
From the Pittston Gazette of May 23, 1922:
POOR CONDITION FOR CHILD WORKERS IN FISH CANNERIES ———-
Josie, six year old, Bertha, six years old, Sophie, 10 years old, all shuck regularly at Maggioni Canning Co, Port Royal, South Carolina. -by Lewis Hine, February 1911
A report made public today by the U. S. Department of Labor through the Children’s Bureau describes child labor in the oyster and shrimp-canning industry during the period between the first and second Federal child labor laws, when no Federal regulation of child labor existed. Special significance attaches to the report in view of the decision of the U. S. Supreme Court, rendered on May 15, which held the Federal Child Labor Tax Law unconstitutional and thus leaves the children again without the protection of a Federal law. The report, entitled “Child Labor and the Work of Mothers in Oyster and Shrimp canning communities on the Gulf Coast,” calls attention to the very young ages of many of the children employed, the detrimental conditions under which they worked, the poor school facilities, the marked retardation in school, and the employment of mothers of young children.
The work of both the children and their parents was subject to all the irregularities of the canning industry, the report states. Since the work depended on the catch, it began any time between 3 and 7 o’clock in the morning and lasted a few hours, a whole day, or sometimes on into the evening. Of the 544 working children under 16 years of age included in the study, more than three-fifths worked whenever the factory was open. The others worked only occasionally or before and after school and on Saturdays. The majority of the children-334 of the 544 who worked-were under the age of 14 years, the minimum fixed by both of the Federal laws. Some were as young as six years of age or under.
Most of the cannery work was wet and dirty, and was done in cold, damp, dirty sheds, the oyster shuckers or shrimp pickers standing among the empty oyster shells or shrimp hulls. The workers were liable to injuries from the sharp oyster shells, shrimp thorns, and work knives, and to constant soreness of the hands from acid in the shrimp. Many injuries were reported among children.
In order to secure an increased supply of labor which the employers are able to control, the custom of importing families from the North has been carried on each winter for a number of years. Those migratory workers are housed in company camps, which usually were found to [limit?] their education, 37 per cent of the white children 10 to 15 years of age in the migratory families studied were illiterate, as compared with 4 per cent for approximately the same age group, both white and colored, for the United states as a whole. Nearly two-thirds of the children of these families at the ages of 14 and 15 had not completed the fourth grade. Even among the local children who worked in the canneries retardation in school was serious. Nineteen per cent of the resident white children and 25 per cent of the colored, could neither read nor write.
In about one-fourth of the families in which the mother of the children were employed, the father was dead or had deserted the family. The study was made at a time when earnings were said by employers and workers to be higher than ever before but the earnings of the fathers for their best week during this season were found to be under $25 in two-thirds of the cases, and under $20 in nearly one-half; for the average week 79 per cent of the fathers made less than $25, and practically a third of them less than $15. Four-fifths of the mothers averaged less than $7.50 a week.
Working mothers with children under 6 years of age left them at home, in a majority of cases with only children as caretakers or with no caretakers at all. or took them with them to the canneries, where they were subject to the physical discomforts of the shucking sheds and were liable to accidents.
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