years in England, in its great milling centers, until there has come about "an alarming impairment of the national physique," to quote the words of an English physician.

Paisley

But we have a striking case of this moral and physical degeneration in a Scotch city, the history of which is quoted by Dr. Thomas Chalmers, from a contemporary writer: "From about 1770 to 1800 the manufactures of silk gauzes and fine lawns flourished in Paisley; as also, during a portion of the period alluded to, that of figured-loom and hand-tambourined muslin. These branches afforded to all classes excellent wages, and being articles of fancy, room was afforded for a display of taste as well as enterprise and intelligence, for which the Paisley weavers were justly conspicuous. Sobriety and frugality being their general character, good wages enabled almost every weaver to possess himself of a small capital, which, joined with their general intelligence and industry, enabled and induced many to spend days and even weeks together, in plodding over a new design, assisted frequently by their obliging neighbors, knowing that the first half-dozen weavers who succeeded in some new style of work were sure to be recompensed ten-fold.

"Nearly one-half of Paisley at that period was built by weavers, from savings off their ordinary wages. Every house had its garden, and every weaver, being his own master, could work it when he pleased. Many were excellent florists; many possessed a tolerable library, and all were politicians. So that, about the period of the French Revolution, Mr. Pitt expressed more fear of the unrestricted political discussions of the Paisley weavers than of ten thousand armed men. Had Paisley been then, what Paisley is now, crowded with half-informed Radicals and infidels, his fears would have been justified. But truth and honest dealing could fear nothing from a community constituted as Paisley was; and never perhaps in the history of the world, was there a more convincing proof of the folly of being afraid of a universal and thorough education, especially when impregnated with the religion of the Bible, than in the state of Paisley at that period."

Significantly enough, the period of Paisley decadence began with the manufacture of a sham, an incentive to human vanity

and pretence. Our author continues: "The introduction of imitation Indian shawls about the year 1800 required that each weaver should employ one, two or three boys, called draw-boys. Eleven or twelve was the usual age, previous to this period, for sending boys to the loom" (it should be recalled here that this was work at home under the eye of the parent and did not conflict with school attendance, as we shall see). "But as boys of any age above five were equal to the work of drawing, those of ten were first employed; then, as the demand increased, those of nine, eight, seven and six, and even five.

"Girls, too, were by and bye introduced into the same employment, and at equally tender years. Many a struggle the honest and intelligent weaver must have had between his duty to his children and his immediate interests. The idea of his children growing up without schooling must have cost him many a pang, but the idea of losing two shillings sixpence, or three shillings a week, and paying school expenses beside, proved too great a bribe even for parental affection, and, as might have been expected, mammon in the end prevailed, and the practice gradually grew too common and familiar to excite more than a passing regret. Children grew up without either the education or the training which the youth of the country derive from the schoolmaster; and every year since 1805 has sent forth its hundreds of untamed boys and girls, now become the parents of a still ruder, more undisciplined and ignorant offspring. Nor was this all. So great was the demand for draw-boys that ever and anon the town-crier went through the streets, offering not simply two shillings sixpence, three shillings, or three shillings sixpence, for the labor of the boys and girls, but bed, board and washing, and a penny to themselves on Saturday night. This was a reward on disobedience to parents; family insubordination with all its train of evils followed. The son, instead of standing in awe of his father, began to think himself a man. when he was only a brawling, impudent boy. On the first or second quarrel with his father he felt he might abandon the parental roof for the less irksome employment of the stranger. The first principle of all subordination was thus early broken up."

Our author goes on to show at some length how the market became overstocked with goods and with cheap labor, with the result of a permanent reduction of adult wages, and closes his description

thus: "Thus was the employment of their children, from five to ten, by the weavers of Paisley, at first an apparent advantage, but in the end a curse, demonstrating that, whatever may appear to be the interest of the parents this year or next year, it is permanently the interest of them and their offspring to refuse every advantage in their temporal concerns, which tends to defraud youth of the first of parental blessings, education; and that Providence has bound in indissoluble alliance, the virtue, the intelligence and the temporal well-being of society. In 1818-19, during the Radical period, there were found full three thousand Paisley-born, and Paisley-bred, who could not read; and the decline of intelligence has been followed by the decline of that temperance, prudence and economy which are the cardinal virtues of the working classes, by which alone they can elevate their condition or preserve themselves from sinking into the most abject poverty."

In the South

It has been my custom at these annual meetings to give a brief description of child labor conditions in the field assigned to me, the Southern States. Every such description, founded on actual observation at first hand, has been disputed and the facts denied. That however denotes progress. The ground of apology for the child labor system has shifted in these last few years from a defense of the system as a good thing for the child and for society to a denial of the abuses of the system and the claim that the evil is fast disappearing. This year our Committee has been conducting some investigations in three of the Southern States, Virginia, Mississippi and South Carolina, the first with an age limit of twelve years, and fourteen for night work; the second with a minimum age limit of twelve, but with the provision that the child of dependent parents may be employed at any age, and the third without any child labor law now in operation. From all three states. comes the indubitable evidence of the violations of law, where the law exists, of appalling illiteracy, apparently increasing, and of the wholesale employment of children, with the resulting evils of family disintegration, of early marriages, of wife desertion, of degenerate children.

It is not too much to say that the process that has been described as going on in Paisley is now being repeated with alarming rapidity

in eight hundred communities of the South. Let me quote from a humane and intelligent manufacturer, whom we hoped to have with us at this meeting. Speaking of the early marriages that prevail, Mr. Garnett Andrews, who is in favor of a fourteen-year age limit now, and an eight-hour day as soon as competition can settle upon that basis, said in advocacy of legislation preventing the marriage of children: "I have this thing come before my observation frequently. Right near my mill is a cavalry post; these soldiers, irresponsible young chaps, come around there courting the girls; go to paying attention and keeping company with some girl and marry her. We have had girls married out of our mill at fourteen years of age. And not long ago there was a girl came over there for work with a child in her arms. She was but fifteen and had on short skirts. That was a crime against civilization, against God and against everything else. There are a whole lot of collateral facts that chime in with this labor question. I do not know of one more important than this, even the age-limit they are setting here."

Legislative Progress

I am glad, however, to be able to report progress along the line of child labor legislation since the date of our last annual meeting. North Carolina has raised the age limit from twelve to thirteen and to fourteen for night work, the manufacturers refusing to grant the demand for any reduction of the hours from the frightful sixty-six a week, though some mills have voluntarily reduced them. A local option compulsory education law was also enacted in North Carolina, the manufacturers agreeing, though I have not learned that any of the mill communities have yet been persuaded to put themselves under the operation of this wise and humane law.

Arkansas has raised the age limit from twelve to fourteen, and that for the children of dependent parents from ten to twelve. In South Carolina the manufacturers had agreed to reduce the hours from sixty-six to sixty a week, gradually, reaching the culmination in 1909. The South Carolina Legislature thought that the sixty-hour week would be a good thing in 1908. But both sessions adjourned without having passed the compulsory education law which the manufacturers have favored so long. I could wish that

they were as influential sometimes in passing good legislation as they have been in preventing it. Florida passed its first child labor law, largely as the result of the combination of the labor unions with the women's clubs of that state. It recognizes the twelveyear age limit for all occupations except agriculture and domestic service, and there would have been a fourteen-year age limit except for the opposition of one oyster-packer, who was in the habit of importing Bohemian children from Baltimore for his business. He has since become a convert to the law, for the sake of his rivals in other Southern states. Tennessee enacted a sixty-hour week, and the Tennessee manufacturers, at the Southern Textile conference, recommended advanced child labor legislation to the other Southern states. Unhappily, one of these manufacturers, who has a mill in Mississippi, appeared before the legislature in opposition to the very provisions for which he had voted at the textile conference, including the fourteen-year age limit. Mississippi has passed its first child labor law, leaving now no Southern state without legal protection for the working children, and only one state in the Union, Nevada, without a child labor law. The manufacturers' lobby, however, succeeded in reducing the requirements for factory inspection to a minimum and in cutting down the agelimit from fourteen to twelve.

Alabama has moved forward a long distance, cutting off the ten-year old children who were allowed to work under the old law, making the age limit sixteen for night work, with an eight-hour night for children under eighteen, with a sixty-hour week for day work for children under fourteen. Children under sixteen are required to attend school three months of each year as the condition of their being employed in any manufacturing establishment. The inspector of jails and almshouses was made factory inspector also, and though he has not sufficient assistance to be effective in this work, the beginning of factory inspection has been made. The new Georgia law has just gone into full effect at the beginning of this year, and in Virginia the age limit has been progressively raised to thirteen in 1909 and to fourteen in 1910, while a new provision has been added to the law making the employment of children under the legal age prima facie evidence of guilt on the part of both parent and employer. If my advices from Oklahoma are correct, the youngest of the Southern states is preparing to