If you do, you may learn a little of how things the child answers: "My mother she works, really seem to the wage-earning child. My first years of factory inspection gave me a longing to resign and go where I might never see a factory again. A civilized person can hardly face the reality of child labor without doubting the very value of life itself. Out of 800 wage-earning children whom I questioned, in 381 cases the cause of the child's working was the death of the father through some industrial accident, or his sickness from some industrial disease contracted in the course of his work. In 28 cases the father had been killed outright. In six out of these 28, there had been some slight compensation given by the employers to the family; but in three of these cases the compensation consisted only in paying the doctor's bill and the funeral expenses. In the other 22 cases the man's death came under the Assumption of Risk, Contributory Negligence, or the Fellow Servant clause, which prevented the families of the men from collecting any damages, unless they took it through a long court process which they were unable to afford. Ask any twenty children in a factory the question: "Why are you working?" The answers will show you that a great part of child labor comes from the premature death or disability of the father through industrial accident or disease, or the unemployment of the father through being engaged in an industry which occupies its people only a portion of the year, at low wages. Over and over again, in answer to the question, "What does your father do?" the reply is, “He's sick"; and the same story unfolds in every factory from most of the children you question: "He's got the brass chills"; "He's got consumption"; "He's got blood-poisoning"; “He's paralyzed"; "He can't use his hands"; "He works in a foundry, and the cupola burst, and he got burned"; "A rail fell on his foot, and it's smashed"; "He's dead he got killed." He worked in the steel mills, or the stock-yards, or on the railroad, and the engine ran over him; he was burned with molten metal, or crushed by falling beams, or maimed by an explosion. These stories, told in the soft voices of little children, are endless. To the question, "Did your mother get any money from the company?" the answer is almost invariably, "No," or a shake of the small head, the child not caring to take enough strength from its work even to speak; and when you ask, "How many children are there besides you?" the numbers usually range from five to seven. And when you say, "How many are there of you who are working?" the answer is sometimes one, sometimes two, seldom more; and often, without looking up, and me." "And how much does your mother make?" "She makes eighteen cents an hour, scrubbing downtown." "And how much do you make?" "I make six cents a thousand, pasting on cigar-bands." "And can you and your mother earn enough money to take care of the family?" "Yes, ma'am," she answers; "we gotta." There can be no doubt that the average healthy life of the father of the child worker ends at forty or forty-five. Coming here as an out-of-door peasant, unused to our climate, to our machinery, to our highly specialized and speeded-up industries, his health is rapidly undermined by the long hours of labor and the extremes of heat and wet and cold, the lack of any protection from occupational disease, combined with insanitary housing, insanitary factories, and insufficient and adulterated food. As the man can not get proper food or air or rest, drink is the quickest means to drive away hunger and exhaustion and supply the necessary energy for heavy work. Young and strong, he can stand the pace set by the machine, and keep himself and his family above the poverty line while the children are little; but by the time the oldest is about fourteen, his only capital, his physical strength, begins to wane. Some day, when he leaves the foundry, after from twelve to fourteen hours' work over red-hot sand-pits, at sixteen cents an hour, an icy chill stabs through his lungs as he comes out into the winter air. So the family goes over the poverty line; the man either dies or comes through broken and weakened; and the children fall into the struggling, suffering, tumultuous mass at the very foot of the ladder. I once asked the head of one of our largest foundries how much he paid unskilled help. "Sixteen cents an hour," he replied. "Can they save anything on that?" I asked. “No,' he answered; "they can not." "What do they do, then, when you have to shut down for months, as you did last year?" "Well," he answered, “as far as I can make out, the women and the children support the entire family. Those Poles can live on almost nothing. Sausage, and three loaves of stale bread for five cents, is their staple." "How many hours," I asked, "do they work?" "Oh, from twelve to fourteen," he answered; "they're glad enough to get work." "How long do they last?" "Well," he said, "they're no good after forty-five. "But," he continued, "you ought to see those Polish women and children work when they're put to it. Why, a woman and a halfgrown girl will feed the whole family, and the man too. The stock-yards are full of them. Ever seen that box factory in the next block? It's worth seeing. Go into one of those rooms, and you'd think you were in the fourth grade of a Polish school. If it wasn't for the wages of the children and their mothers, the families would never pull through." The child of the working class represents the human rubbish-pile, the waste material of the industrial world. In our age of efficiency, the horns and the hoofs of cattle, the bristles of the pig, the tar from coal, scraps of iron, of meat and paper, all the waste products of industry are being utilized. The working people have for a long time possessed an unsuspected mine of wealth. They have, through ignorance, large families of children beyond their earning power to rear; and now the economic waste material these children represent is being utilized. All that is needed to make an iron and steel machine perfect in its money-making power is the addition of a human cog. A child will do as well for this human cog as a man, and so a use has been found for the children of the working people. As commercial waste products they are the source of some of our largest fortunes. The commercial system could not bring things to this pass if the parents understood. A child was working and coughing in the dust-filled air of a lumber-mill which I inspected, and, although I stood close to him and shouted, my voice was drowned in the roar of the machinery, and he continued to work, feeding a gleaming, carnivorous-looking rip-saw with pieces of wood with automaton-like regularity; and as I waited, afraid to startle him while his hands were in reach of those jagged teeth, another fit of inaudible coughing shook his thin body and brought the sweat out on his face. I sought out a big, muscular Swede who was evidently in charge of the mill. "Tell that child, the one over there, to come into the office. I want to talk to him," I shouted, my lips close to his ear. The man looked bewildered, and I saw his lips move. He shook his head, pointing to the machines to indicate that he could not hear. I motioned him to follow me, and, when I had again reached the boy, indicated that I wanted to speak to him. The boss reached up and pulled a lever above the child's head, and the great circular saw slowed down reluctantly, gleaming and leaping with life. It stood still, and the small, stoop-shouldered child who ran it turned toward me with a dazed look, brushing the dust from his hair and listless, yellowish face with his thin hands. In the office the child stood before me, stooped and passive, covered with dust, looking at nothing, apparently thinking of nothing. All my stock of little jokes and playful remarks died within me as I looked at him. I could not imagine him smiling or his eyes lighting up. He seemed the very gray breath of weariness. "Sit down," I said. "What is your name?" "Adolph Jenson." "How old are you, Adolph?" "Bout fifteen." "When did you begin to work?" "I don' know." "How old were you when you started to work?" "Bout thirteen, I guess." "When do you come to work in the morning?" No answer. "Listen, Adolph. What time must you start to work?" "Bout six-thirty." "Six-thirty! Where do you live?" "1430 Larrabee Street.” "Why, that's 'way out north. What time do you get up?" No answer. "Adolph, what time do you get up, dear?" "Bout five.” "When do you stop work?” "Six o'clock.” "Do you have an hour for lunch?" "Yes'm.” "Do you ever play?" "No'm." "What do you do at night?" He seemed not to hear. His loose, dusty clothes hung about him in shapeless lines, and he sat with his eyes fixed on the floor. "What do you do evenings, Adolph?" I insisted. He raised his dull eyes. "I go to night school," he said, and dropped them again. "Do you like to work?" shook his head. "Do you like school?" I put my hand on his arm to rouse him. He shook his head again. "Do you ever play with the other boys - ball or anything?" "No." "How long have you had that cough?" "I don't know." He The office door opened, letting in the roar of the factory and the shriek of the saws through the wood as the manager came in. "How are you getting on with the kid?" he said goodnaturedly. "This child is working cleven hours instead of eight, which is a violation of the child-labor law. He is working on dangerous machinery, which is another violation. And," I added, "he is sick.” The man regarded me as one would look down upon an unreasonable pigmy. "You're all on the wrong track, Inspector!" he said. "I don't employ that boy. There ain't no violation. That's my own boy, working here without pay, learning the business. Only boy I got; all the rest's girls. D'ye think I wouldn't take care of him? Don't I send him to night school every night, to learn him so he will get educated? Don't his mother cook him everything he wants to eat? Ain't he got a bedroom with a stove in it? Ain't I worked up and bought out this business as much fer him as fer me? Why, I own this here place, and he's my boy! Me and him'll be partners when he grows up and when I'm dead and gone he'll be boss over his own men, 'stead of workin' his liver to tend the ducks, up in Sweden, when I was out for 'em." five years old. Bound out to a farmer when I was ten-feedin' stock and doin' chores. Slept in the barn; never had enough to eat, or decent clo's or shoes. Hauled gravel when I got older, and earned forty cents a day. Used to sleep in the barn at night, aching from head to foot from shovelin' dirt all day. Colder'n Greenland I was, an' hungrier'n a wolf. "I just made up my mind, after I came to Saturday, and has done this ever since he was thirteen? Your own little boy? Why," I said, standing up, "why have you done this to him?" Something in my tone penetrated the peasant mind of the father, and roused him. "See here," he said, with a sort of grave dignity, "work don't hurt nobody. Look at me. I started work in the old country when I was a baby, and I ain't never been sick a day. Used America and my boy was born, that he should have an inside job out of the cold and rain, and a warm bedroom and a bed. None of your day laborers fer him, breakin' his back fer other folks. Why, all he has to do is to stand there and feed that rip-saw. That ain't work. It's just play. And I'm learnin' him the business. He'll own this factory when I'm dead and gone." "Mr. Jenson," I said, a great pity for the man forcing me to speak, "your boy is sick. Now, here's the address of the doctor that can cure him, if anybody can. To-morrow's Saturday. Won't you take him there to-morrow morning? It won't cost you anything. Just look at him," pointing at the child in the chair. "Can't you see there's something the matter with him?" The man fumbled at the card with his big hand, staring at the child and back again at the card, an undefined fear showing in his face. "His mother's been pesterin' me, too," he muttered. "She says the boy don't eat nothin'. Yes, if you say this doctor's all right, I'll take him over there to-morrow." . . . "There's a man been waiting here to see you all the afternoon," they told me at the office, Monday; and, turning, I saw Mr. Jenson sitting on the BOYS of fourteen working in the The boys work in this position age wage of $4.50 a week, their work and stone from the coal as it moves bench at the door, his big hands resting idly on his knees, his eyes, strained and bloodshot, staring at the opposite wall, so sunk in wretched, anguished thought that I had passed in front of him without his seeing me. He lifted his huge body heavily from the seat, and looked down at me, pulling at his beard with thick, trembling fingers. "Adolph's got the tuberculosis," he told me. "The doctor he says as Adolph would 'a' kept well if he'd had to sleep in a barn and shovel gravel like me. The doctor he says it's the learnin' and machinery that's give Adolph this here tuberculosis. The doctor he says as everything I've been doin' fer Adolph has been bad fer him. I can't understand what he means!" the man cried, breathing hard in his suffering. "The doctor he says my Adolph's sick, and he must go up in the pine woods and live in a shanty, and keep outdoors in the cold, and have the wind blowin' on him from the windows. I- that's got up in the night to keep the fire in the stove, so's his room would 73 brute force. Cold, hunger, exposure, blows, and heavy manual toil that's all they understand." That night I read in Thomas Oliver's "Diseases of Occupation" these lines, which sum up the reason why children work. Speaking of England, he said: "Child labor was fostered by the ignorance of the working people, by paternal greed and poverty, and was encouraged by employers." The disease of child labor seemed to have similar sources in all countries. Was there any panacea for it? I wondered. What future was it making for America? In 1909 I took 500 children out of over twenty different factories in all parts of Chicago, and asked them this question: "If your father had a good job and you didn't have to work, which would you rather do go to school or work in I want to ask you if you'll listen to him, and find out what he means, and tell me so's I can understand." He fixed his eyes, full of dumb suffering, on me. "You was mad about his tendin' that rip-saw," he said, "but you know I'd do anythin' for Adolph. And his mother" He turned and, pulling his hat down over his face, pushed open the door and went out. It was too late to do anything for the boy, the doctor told me. "I was sorry for that poor old Swede father," he added. "He was like a whale with a harpoon through him, around here in the office, when he finally understood the boy had consumption and might not live. Kept telling how he'd never let the boy work outdoors or bum in the streets, and was bringing him up to own a factory." "That's the trouble. The parents have no conception of any work being hard, except that which requires sheer |