Solution of the Child Labor Problem/Chapter 4
CHAPTER IV
CHILD LABOR—AN INDUSTRIAL WASTE
I. The Newer View of Industry
The Treasurer of the Alabama City Cotton Mill, Alabama, wrote to his agent:—"Every time I visit this mill, I am impressed with the fact that it is a great mistake to employ small help in the spinning-room. Not only is it wrong from a humanitarian standpoint, but it entails an absolute loss to the mill."[1] In a letter to the Boston Transcript the same gentleman writes:—"I have never been South without protesting to the agent … against allowing children under twelve years of age to come into the mill, as I did not consider them intelligent enough to do good work."[1]
There can be little question that child labor is a social waste. It hurts the children's bodies, deprives them of needed education, and often places them in questionable moral surroundings. Child labor is a social waste, and as such should be summarily dealt with; but what of its relations to industry? Society looks upon the destruction of its working material with comparative indifference, because society has not a "business view-point; "but what must be the viewpoint of industry? Would it not be a discovery fraught with the most far-reaching significance for American industry if the statement made by the Treasurer of the Alabama City Cotton Mill proved to be correct? What a waste would be involved in the employment of thousands of "small help" in the various branches of American industry!
The members of any social group are, under present conditions, liable to emphasize the individual problems much more than the social ones. "Let us abolish child labor," cries the social reformer. "Wait," warns the manufacturer, "you will drive me out of business."
Is that true?
In western Pennsylvania, northern West Virginia, and eastern Ohio, there is a region of natural gas deposits around which a glass bottle industry developed. The glass bottle industry formerly employed a large number of boys, some of whom assisted the blower, while others carried the bottles when blown to the annealing-oven, where they were cooled. As this geographically centered industry comprised three states, any attempt at legislation in one state was met by a prompt statement, "If you raise the age in Pennsylvania, we move our industry to West Virginia. We've got to have the boys in our business. If you legislate 'em out of it, we move." This threat, combined with consistent lobbying, for years prevented the passage of child labor legislation in these three states.
In Pennsylvania and Ohio the minimum age for night work in glass houses was fourteen, and in West Virginia, twelve, while in Indiana and Illinois, the two states directly west, the minimum limit for night work was sixteen. Slowly the supply of natural gas was exhausted in the Pennsylvania-West Virginia field, and new fields were discovered in Indiana and Illinois, when, marvelous to relate, the glass industry began to move from a state with fourteen-year minimum to a state with a sixteen-year minimum. And the boys? the "problem" over which the reformers and glass men had contended for years? They were replaced by adults or by machinery. The real crux of the situation was not the boys at all, but the natural gas supply—the cheap fuel.
This is a single instance of the effect of eliminating child labor from an industry. Is it an isolated case, or a general rule? Has the cotton industry developed in the South because of the presence of quantities of children, ready to work in the mills, or because of the proximity to the fields where the cotton is produced, to a cheap fuel supply, and to an abundance of water-power? If children under sixteen were prohibited from working in the Southern cotton mills, would the manufacturers move? Would it not be a discovery pregnant with the most far-reaching importance for the future, if it were found that child labor is not at all necessary to industry, and that, after all, it entails just as great an industrial waste as it does a social one?
Child labor is wasteful to industry. The statement of the Treasurer of the Alabama City Mill is not an isolated opinion. Manufacturers everywhere are being forced to the new viewpoint. The philosophy is well summed up by a silk manufacturer:—"So far as the economy of production goes, as a manufacturer I think we can do without the labor of children."[2] Child labor is undoubtedly cheap labor. But is not the product cheaper than the labor involved in its creation?
II. The Industrial Inefficiency of Child Labor
Leaving aside for a moment the very pertinent question as to whether the extensive employment of children will materially affect their efficiency as adult workmen, it may be stated as a general truth that the employer of to-day cannot afford to employ young children. Says the manager of a jute mill:—"We used to employ one hundred and thirty-seven kids, but we have cut the number down to eighty-seven this year, and we expect to go on reducing it. Our mill is turning out more stuff than it used to, and we find it cheaper to work with older help."
In all industries, and in all sections, thoughtful employers who have considered the matter have reached the same conclusion. They have decided that it is in the long run cheaper to invent machinery or to employ adult help and thus replace the children. The "kids" are "quick" and "cheap," but they are unreliable, wasteful, and expensive as accident causers.
Child labor is cheap labor, and the product of this cheap labor is a cheap, product. Miss Jane Addams tells of seeing a child of five in a Southern cotton mill helping to make sheeting for the Chinese Army. The product was poor and very cheap, but so was the market for which the product was destined.
"In the Georgia Legislature last summer a noted cotton manufacturer, a member of the Georgia Senate, in an eloquent plea against the child labor system, challenged his associates in that business who were also members of the Senate, to disprove his statement that the same quality of cotton goods manufactured in the South was sold at a price from two to four cents a pound lower than these goods manufactured in the North.… A Georgia cotton mill imported skilled laborers for the manufacture of fine goods. The goods were sold at Philadelphia and New England prices. Once some tags containing the name and location of this mill were slipped into the bales of finished cloth by the workmen. The mill management immediately received a letter from the commission merchant urging that this should never be done again; that he had concealed the fact that this particular mill was located in the South, and thereby had been able to get northern prices for the goods."[3]
Thus the prevalence of child labor in an industry at once throws discredit on its product. "Industries so recruited cannot long compete with similar industries recruited from men who have been technically trained. In the long run that industry, wherever in the world it is located, which combines with general intelligence the broadest technical knowledge and the highest technical training, will command the markets of the world."[4]
It is evident, then, that even in an industry as intimately dependent on child labor as the glass bottle industry is said to be, the child labor is only incidental to the supply of fuel; that for the average manufacturer, machinery and adults are cheaper in the long run than children, and that the existence of child labor in an industry lowers the value of the product. Not only does child labor play havoc with the industry of the present, but it detracts materially from the industrial possibilities of the future.
III. The Cost to Industry
"It may be stated as a safe proposition that for every dollar earned by a child under fourteen years of age, tenfold will be taken from their earning capacity in later years."[5] Children are inefficient as child workers, and become inefficient adults because of their work as children.
These statements hold true under many different conditions. The Massachusetts Commission above quoted reports that eighty per cent. of the children at work between the ages of fourteen and sixteen are in mills and unskilled industries. "For the great majority of children who leave school and enter employments at the age of fourteen or fifteen, the first three or four years are practically waste years so far as the actual productive value of the child is concerned, and so far as increasing his industrial or productive efficiency."[6] From the standpoint of the industry it is clearly a waste of industrial efficiency and future producing capacity to have children begin work at an early age. The problem of securing efficient workers to-day is only one of the problems of industry. Quite as important, if not more so, is the problem of securing efficient workers in the future.
Before the Industrial Commission, Chief Factory Inspector Campbell of Pennsylvania was asked:—
"Question. What effect has the employment of children on the wages of adult labor?
"Answer. There is no doubt it has some effect.
"Question. You believe it has an injurious effect?
" Answer. There is no doubt of it at all in my mind."[7]
The Secretary-Treasurer of the Boot and Shoe Makers' Union, testifying before the same commission, said:—"The introduction of child labor is quite a factor, sometimes displacing the head of the family. There was an instance in Marlboro where a man was receiving $2.00 a day; the firm turned him off and put in his own son at $1.00 at the same job."[8]
Many authorities, dealing with the economic side of child labor, lay special emphasis on this point, insisting that men must give place to children, when the latter are willing to work at a considerably lower figure.
There can be little question that the employment of children disemploys adults. Whether or no these adults ultimately find work in some new industry which springs up in response to the constantly increasing demands of civilization, is aside from the question. That they are displaced, at least temporarily, is evident.
But the problem has an even more serious side. Child labor results in lowering the wage standard of the entire group in which it exists. The argument is well put by Carroll D. Wright in the following words:—"There seems, in recent times, to have occurred a change in the relation of wages to support, so that, more and more, the labor of the whole family is necessary to the support of the family; that, in the majority of cases, working men in the commonwealth do not support their families by their individual earnings alone. The fathers rely or are forced to depend upon their children under fifteen years of age, who supply, by their labor, from one-eighth to one-sixth of the total family earnings."[9]
Looking at the matter from the standpoint of practical experience in the mines, John Mitchell gave the following testimony before the Industrial Commission:—
"Question. Does the influence of child labor reach into all classes of miners? For instance, if you find a man with three or four boys, and you find another man who, perhaps, has a large family of girls.… If it comes to a question of competition between these men, who will succeed and why?
"Answer. The one having the boys would because they would obtain work in the mines."[10]
Both phases of the question are thus summarized by John Spargo :—"It is a well-known fact that the competition of children with their elders entails serious consequences of a twofold nature, first, in the displacement of adults, and, second, in the lowering of their wage standards."[11] There is no question among the authorities on the subject. All are agreed that the labor of children replaces the labor of men, or else forces the men to take lower wages as a result of the child competition.
This displacement of men by children, and the lowering of men's wages by a competition with child wages, means to the laboring men who are affected by it, a lowered standard of life. The man who has a family of half-grown children must send them to work in an endeavor to supplement the family income, and the man who has a family of small children to keep, or no children at all, must suffer because of this child competition. In some cases, child labor is impossible, because of the character of the work, but in the textile industries, the glass works, and the tobacco factories, children are employed and men discharged.
Is child labor "an industrial waste"? Among the thinking men who have gone carefully over the ground, there is but one answer. Child labor cheapens the product, lowers the industrial standard of the present, and threatens the industrial standard of the future.
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Child Labor in Alabama: a pamphlet published by the Alabama Child Labor Committee.
- ↑ "Restriction on Child Labor in Textile Industries." By Howell Cheyney, Cheyney Silk Mills, So. Manchester, Conn. Proceedings Fifth Conference on Child Labor, National Child Labor Committee, 1909. P. 91.
- ↑ "Child Labor in the Southern Cotton Mills." By A. J. McKelway. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. xxvii, p. 266.
- ↑ Conclusion of the Massachusetts Commission on Industrial and Technical Education, 1906. P. 19.
- ↑ "A Business Man's View of Child Labor." By S. W. Woodward. Annals of American Academy, vol. xxvdi, p. 362.
- ↑ Report of the Massachusetts Commission on Industrial and Technical Education, p. 18.
- ↑ Industrial Commission, vol. vii, p. 52.
- ↑ Ibid., p. 363.
- ↑ Carroll D. Wright. Sixth Annual Report, Massachusetts Bureau of Labor, p. 384.
- ↑ Report of the Industrial Commission, vol. xii, p. 46.
- ↑ The Bitter Cry of the Children. By John Spargo. New York: Macmillan, 1906. P. 192.