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 at 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

pass a law which will be in some respects a model for the rest of the Union. Thus far have we advanced in fifteen months in the way of legislation.1

Special Claim of Childhood

The consideration of the child, as a child, of his rights as a child, of his claims as a child to protection and care, is fast demolishing the old laissez faire philosophy which has so long been the curse of Southern political thinking. Of course the first step was the establishment of the common school system. I can remember when it was considered almost as much a disgrace, in Virginia, for a parent to send his child to the common school as to have to go to the poor-house himself. How far we have come in a few years, to the confessed duty of the state to provide an education for every child, white or black, and to the next immediate step, of compelling the ignorant and indifferent parent, to send his children to school!

The next demonstration of the leadership of the child was the agitation of the child labor question. It all dates in the South, from the beginning of this new, young, century of ours. Now there is not a single Southern state without a child labor law. Nor will it be long before legislation shall be perfected here, for compulsory education everywhere, with factory inspection provided. The employer of children will soon find himself so much an outcast, in public opinion, that he will fear to face a jury of his fellow-countrymen to answer for that crime. A few healthy prosecutions will have a marvelous effect in the South.

The distinction between childhood and manhood has begun to be recognized in other ways. The servant of this Committee, in the disbursement of a special fund entrusted to him, has been able to accomplish something along the line of distinguishing between the adult criminal and the child criminal, for instance. One of the encouraging facts connected with social remedial legislation is that a small amount of time and effort and means in awakening public interest in a good cause, may do a vast deal of good, especially if there be no commercial interest directly opposed, as in the child labor reform. In North Carolina a reformatory for wayward youth has been established, following the example set in

Child Labor bill passed both House, but was vetoed by Governor Haskell, June 10, 1908.