Hellraisers Journal – Monday April 26, 1909
New Orleans, Louisiana – Southern Child Labor Conference Deemed a Success
From Louisiana’s Reserve Le Meschacébé of April 17, 1909:
A PERMANENT ORGANIZATION
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CHILD LABOR CONFERENCE WILL BE
MAINTAINED AS A FIXTURE.
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Successful Opening Meeting Renders Members
Enthusiastic For Future.
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Doffer boys, ages 12 and 10. Gastonia, North Carolina —–
New Orleans.-The child labor conference of the Southern states, called by Governor J. Y. Sanders of Louisiana, came to a close after a three-days’ session, in which great things were accomplished, resolutions being adopted fixing age limit, working hours, etc., and permanent organization effected.
The convention was the second of its kind in the history of the new commercial South, but it will not be the last for already Memphis has been tacitly agreed upon as the next place of meeting, and in the twelve months which must elapse before that meeting the delegates are pledged to work mightily to create sentiment and mold opinion, so that even greater reforms than those suggested during the past few days may be gained for the “Child of the Man With the Hoe,” as Senator Colville so strikingly describes the work children. Eleven states were represented.
The chief work of the conference was the adoption of a resolution containing important provisions, to be embodied in a uniform child labor law to be proposed in the legislatures of all the states in the South…..
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[Photograph added is by Lewis Hine.]
From The Survey (formerly Charities and Commons) of April 17, 1909:
SOUTHERN CHILD LABOR CONFERENCE
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Smallest girl about 10 years old, has been in mill 2 years, 6 months at night. —–
In the contest over a better child labor law in the Louisiana Legislature last summer, the issue most warmly debated was whether a working day of nine hours or ten should be adopted for children under eighteen years of age, and for women. The Legislature decided upon the ten-hour day and Governor Sanders promised Miss Jean Gordon, who had led the fight for child labor reform, to call a conference in New Orleans to recommend a uniform child labor law for the southern states.
Governor Sanders wrote to all the southern governors asking them to attend the conference personally if possible and to send interested delegates: manufacturers, representatives of labor unions, and of different associations pledged to child labor reform. Delegates to the conference were appointed by all the southern governors except Governor Comer of Alabama, and Governor Campbell of Texas. Governor Comer’s reason for not appointing delegates—that Alabama had already the best child labor law in the country with the possible exception of Massachusetts, was so ridiculous that his action focused attention upon the deficiencies of the Alabama law, it being generally believed that these rather than the excellence of the law furnished the reason why the governor, himself a cotton manufacturer, deplored any further discussion or agitation of the subject in Alabama.
Hellraisers Journal – Friday February 19, 1909
New York, New York – Lewis Hine Speaks to Social Problems Club
From The Brooklyn Daily Eagle of February 15, 1909:
CHILDREN IN COTTON MILLS
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Lewis Hine Tells Social Problems Club
About Conditions in the South.
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Noon hour at Newberry Mills of South Carolina. All these children are working here. Witness, Sara R. Hine. —–
Before the Social Problems Club of the Young Women’s Christian Association, yesterday afternoon. Lewis Hine gave a lecture on the “Children in the Southern Cotton Mills.” The lecture was illustrated with lantern slides. Mr. Hine has worked in the Ohio valley and in the South investigating child-labor conditions. His camera has played an important part in his investigations, and the pictures shown yesterday were taken in mills of North and South Carolina and in Georgia. The speaker said that no little trouble is experienced with the superintendents and overseers of the factories in gaining admission and permission in take pictures. They are suspicious of all Northerners and are afraid that conditions existing in the mills will be exaggerated.
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