THE FUNCTION OF EDUCATION IN ABOLISHING CHILD LABOR

BY OWEN R. LOVEJOY,

General Secretary, National Child Labor Committee.

Reforms of the abuses of child labor are accomplished by two methods: compulsion and attraction. The factors in the problem are three, the employer, the parent and the child. The beginnings of social activity against child labor in this as in other countries, have been largely by repressive measures. Perhaps this is necessarily so, though it would be unfortunate to regard them as other than initial steps.

Gradually and almost unnoticed the employment of children, many of them extremely young, has become a part of our industrial system. This was not, we believe, because of any abnormal excess of greed or cruelty, as often charged, but by the operation of a natural economic law coupled with the general lack of public recognition that America has ceased to be exclusively an agricultural country and has become intensely industrial. The sturdy farmer, merchant or professional man, who boasts himself the glorious example of all child labor because he went to work at eight years old and has been self-supporting since, for many years dominated the situation. His assumption that all child labor is to be promoted because work on the farm or in the country store, or in his father's or neighbor's office was a benefit to him, expresses the point of view of a large number of our citizens towards a system grown to such proportions that, by the latest census estimates not less than 688,207 children under sixteen, 186,358 of whom are under fourteen years of age, are in industries other than agricultural.

This report, acknowledged by the Census Bureau to be imperfect because of lack of facilities for collecting accurate data, has practically omitted some industries in which child labor is particularly involved. For example, a recent report of the Bureau of Labor in New York State shows a large number of children, some as young as four or five years, employed in the various home industries in New York City, whereas none of these children under

ten years are reported by the Census Bureau. Twelve cities are shown in the census to have 668 newsboys. None are reported for other cities. But by returns we have just received from authentic sources in thirty-three cities, there are now not less than 17,000 children engaged as newspaper carriers and newsboys, many of them as young as six and eight years of age. The City of Boston alone shows three times as many as the census reports for the entire United States.

Legislation Necessary

Obviously, with such a condition facing society, adding every year several thousand youth to the army of those unfitted for any but the most unskilled and precarious occupations, it has been necessary to seek measures that shall be more immediately effective than the tardy general appreciation of the proper use of the years of childhood. Among the first activities of the National Child Labor Committee was a careful and systematic field study in a number of sections and in various industries, of the extent of child labor and the specific conditions in which many children are employed. Although the reports we have collected frequently disprove the sensational stories of cruelty and oppression that have so often shocked the credulous, they have confirmed the convictions of school officials and other interested authorities, and the reports of serious students in earlier days. The net revelation of the various investigations has been sufficient to convince legislators of the necessity of putting a legal check on the system without waiting for a complete and scientific arraignment of the evil. The result has been that at present, in every state of the Union, with one exception, some form of legal prohibition or regulation of child labor has been enacted.

Nor have these legislative acts been adopted against the united protest of those representing the industries affected. There is a growing disposition among employers, who recognize the shortsighted policy of child employment, to seek the aid of society in bringing their competitors up to their own higher standards.

Many prohibitions secured have been chiefly based on a sense of pity for the wrongs of childhood, but more recently society is becoming conscious that her first asset, citizenship, is being weakened, and next in importance, industry is being cheapened

and impaired. These larger social aspects are being constantly made more prominent in attempts to secure legislative prohibition of child labor, or its more complete regulation. Through public interest, the beginnings of which date from the earlier activities of trade unions, women's clubs, consumers' leagues and many earnest. individual workers, there have been enacted important child labor laws in the past four years in thirty-four states. In the legislative sessions of 1906-07, eighteen states enacted new laws or revised existing laws. Eight of these states are Southern. Since January 1st, 1908, important changes in these laws have passed the Legislatures of Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia, Mississippi and Oklahoma,1 while important bills are pending in New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, New Jersey and the District of Columbia.

Compulsory School Laws

But despite this somewhat formidable record of legislative enactments, we must not be misled. The end we seek, namely, adequate preparation of the American child for citizenship, is not attained, but only made possible of attainment by such prohibitions; and it is significant that although child labor laws reduce the number and force an improvement in the condition of working children, the field of usefulness of such measures is limited by their repressive nature. By multitudes of people affected, whether employers, parents or children, these laws are resented and looked upon as detrimental, while a small army of officials is required to secure their enforcement against the connivance of these three interested factors.

In most instances this negative has been accompanied by positive legislation for compulsory school attendance. In all the states having child labor laws, compulsory school attendance laws have been enacted, except in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. That such laws are effective is strikingly attested by the steady growth of the number of commonwealths adopting them.

In 1870 less than 5 per cent. of the population were subject to compulsory school laws. To-day over 72 per cent. are subject to these laws. But this fact is of slight significance compared with the distribution of the benefits of public education. The

1Oklahoma bill vetoed by the Governor June 10th.

United States Department of Education in 1900 reported that over 50 per cent. of all public school pupils were in the first and second grades and were less than nine years of age; 87.5 per cent. were in the first five grades and under twelve years of age. Referring to the amazing achievement of a system of education which enrolls over 16,000,000 pupils and is maintained at an annual expense of over $300,000,000, the Commissioner of Education in his report for 1908 says:

The mere ability to read and write indicates, however, a very slight remove from crass ignorance, and a large proportion of our people are in danger of stopping at this point. The early withdrawal of pupils from school is a fact universally recognized, although up to this time there have been few systematic investigations as to the extent and the causes of the evil. Such investigations as have been attempted relate to particular cities, differing widely in respect to growth and movement of population. It is, however, significant that they all indicate a marked decline in school attendance between the fourth and fifth school years or grades, and continued decrease thereafter.2

The findings of the Massachusetts Commission on Industrial and Technical Education have been largely quoted. They are significant of what may be expected to occur in other states at the end of the compulsory school period. In Massachusetts there are 25,000 children between fourteen and sixteen not in school, fivesixths of whom did not complete the grammar school, one-half did not complete the seventh grade, and one-fourth did not complete the sixth grade.

Deserters from School

Charles F. Warner, Principal of the Mechanics' Arts School, Springfield, Mass., made the statement that from the army of 20,000,000 children attending the public schools of the United States during the school year ending 1907, there would be at least 5,000,000 deserters before the roll would be called at the beginning of the following school year. It is of the greatest importance to discover the cause of this desertion; why there is such a decrease in school attendance after the fourth grade; why such impatience for the last day of the compulsory school period to come; what the attractive feature out of school and upon what the deserting pupils enter.

The majority of these pupils become, temporarily or per

2Report of Commissioner of Education for the year ending June 30, 1906.

manently, wage-earners, either from family necessity or because work promises to be less monotonous and irksome than school attendance. The responsibility seems to lie mostly with the child, for out of 3,157 families investigated, 76 per cent. could give the children industrial training and would gladly do so if it were offered. In many instances the parents were found to be spending, in supplementary lessons, such as commercial branches and music, as much as the child's income.

Wasted Years

This investigation also showed that these children's wages are of little value, for they seldom receive over five dollars a week before they are seventeen, and reach the maximum wage of eight to ten dollars at twenty years of age. It is estimated that for every one going into an occupation that has any advantages for the employee, four enter a cotton mill, or become messengers or cash girls. Moreover, it is rare that one goes from an unskilled to a skilled trade. Out of the fifty cases between seventeen and twenty years of age employed in Cambridge in skilled industries, only one had formerly been employed in unskilled labor, other than errand and office work. A boy is rarely found in printing houses who was formerly employed at other work, and this is true of mechanics, plumbers, painters, glass workers, plasterers, masons, and stone-cutters. A comparison was made of the aggregate wages at eighteen years of age, of children leaving school at fourteen and at sixteen. The results showed that even with the faulty education now afforded, the child of sixteen goes from school so much better equipped as a wage earner, that in two years his earnings aggregate more than those of the child who left school at fourteen and has been working four years.

Why do children leave school for such unsatisfactory and poorlypaid employment? The reason for the desertion from school seems mainly to be the positive dislike of school life and a wish to be active. Influenced by their companions, children have a strong ambition for money of their own. Our problem is to supply the attractive power in our educational system that will prove the complement of prohibitive legislation and compulsory elementary education. A compulsory elementary education which results in such distaste for school that children prefer to enter some unskilled