of textile goods, have in the past few years turned their attention to the manufacture of goods of higher grade, introducing more complicated machinery and calling for more intelligent and more. careful operation. This change has in itself resulted in displacing children and giving employment to operatives of an age at which they may reasonably be expected to "take some thought." One such company, now operating entirely without the employment of children, has been able to declare a dividend of sixty per cent. for the past year. There seems little doubt that cheap workmen may turn out a cheap product, but for the higher grade of goods, with a correspondingly higher profit, the manufacturer cannot afford to employ low grade help. The president of a large textile corporation in Rhode Island recently said to me in this connection: "We would not employ children under fourteen years of age even if the law permitted it. Young children constitute a positive loss to the employer."

The Foreigner

That there is need of strict enforcement of laws for compulsory education and for restriction of child labor comes to the average New England citizen who traces his ancestry back to revolutionary or colonial days as something of a shock. That the American spirit of family pride, which could of old be largely relied upon to secure every advantage for the rising generation, must now be bolstered up with legal props, is cause for wonder, and is sometimes doubted. But one must not forget how the changing times have changed the make-up of the population of the Northern States. When we realize that in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut more than one-third of the population is of foreign birth and much more than one-half is of foreign parentage, we can readily see why long-cherished American ideals are in danger. When a further study of statistics shows that a vast majority of the new-comers to those states are from the shores of southern Europe, where neither Saxon nor Teutonic influences have prevailed, the need for constant activity on the part of the educational and legal forces of the state is even more manifest. Like the sleeping Turks of the time of Marcos Bozzaris, the dwellers in the leading industrial towns of New England are awakened by the cry "The Greeks! they come, they come!"

The percentage of increase of population of foreign parent

age in Massachusetts alone during the ten years from 1896 to 1905 shows a gain of 1,242 per cent. from Greece as against a gain of only 22 per cent. from all Saxon and Teutonic lands.

To safeguard the citizenship of the future and to protect those ideals which are so precious to every American, we must continue our work of child labor reform, ever keeping shoulder to shoulder with the educational leaders who are to provide for every child the practical training to which he has an inalienable right.

COMPULSORY EDUCATION, THE SOLUTION OF CHILD

LABOR PROBLEM1

BY LEWIS W. PARKER,
Greenville, S. C.

A recent number of THE ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science is devoted to the child labor problem, and upon reference to that publication it appears that credit is claimed for various states and communities as being the first to agitate this issue in the South. Among others claiming priority, the Rev. C. B. Wilmer, of Georgia, claims priority for his state, and dates the agitation on the subject from the year 1901. If this is the earliest date yet established I must say that you are all in the wrong and that South Carolina in this, as in many other questions, can claim priority. Not only can the claim be made in behalf of South Carolina, but by the cotton manufacturers of South Carolina. For many years prior to 1901 the probable evil results of the employment of children in manufacturing had been fully recognized by many of the cotton mill owners of the state, and steps had been taken, certainly to lessen if not altogether to remedy the evil. In the publication above mentioned, Mrs. Florence Kelley, the secretary of the National Consumers' League, a devoted and zealous advocate of legislation in the interest, as she conceives, not only of children but of American citizenship, refers to the hypocritical attitude of those who would contend that in this country we have not the evil and therefore need do nothing about it.

I certainly have no desire to be characterized as a hypocrite and therefore should not for one moment contend that the evil of the employment of child labor does not exist, nor would I for a moment contend that nothing need be done about it. On the contrary, any intelligent observer must recognize the evil, though opinions may differ as to the remedy and as to the character of the relief to be applied. I believe it is Thomas Carlyle who defines orthodoxy as "my-doxy" and heterodoxy as "your-doxy." Certain

1See Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Meeting for a discussion of this article.

it is that an unfortunate proportion of those who would characterize themselves as reformers are uncharitable in their conception of the attitude of those who may doubt the wisdom of the policies advocated. They are too apt to brush away any suggestions from others -who may be, from practical experience, more familiar with conditions than they-with the statement that those others are hypocritical or are false in their statement of facts, or are misleading in their deductions from the facts.

A noted reformer stated that no reform could be accomplished without exaggerations. Certainly the advocates of child labor legislation have accepted this statement, for statements made, both as to the extent and as to the effects of child labor, have been much exaggerated. Still, with all this, as I have stated, the evil does exist and there is no advantage or necessity in attempting to minimize it if a correction can be found.

My own connection with cotton manufacturing in the South does not date farther back than twelve years, but within that time I have seen a tremendous development of the industry. In my own State of South Carolina I have seen the number of spindles in operation more than trebled in that period, and consequently the number of employees increased in a somewhat less proportion. With such unparalleled development of the industry I have seen therefore its expansion beyond the immediate possibilities of a proper labor supply, and consequently I have been aware of the temptation to the manufacturer to employ those not suitable for work in the industry.

It would be folly to contend that the proportion of children in the Southern cotton mills was no greater than in the cotton mills of other portions of the Union. The causes of this, however, are evident, and almost equally evident is the method of relief. If he be a public benefactor who makes two blades of grass to grow where but one grew before, equally is he a benefactor who gives occupation to those who were previously without occupation. The close of the war found a large population in the South without means of support. The struggles of the reconstruction period but increased the unfortunate condition of a large portion of our Southern population, who were engaged, to a very large extent, in agricultural pursuits. The steady decline in the price of cotton, the chief product of our labor, served to still further increase our misfortunes. When

there was opened up to our population a means of livelihood through the development of the cotton mill industry, there was naturally an influx to cotton mill communities by those who had been unsuccessful in agricultural and other pursuits.

When it is remembered that in a period of twenty-five years the cotton mill industry has developed forty-fold, and that consequently the proportion of population engaged in the industry has so greatly increased, it is not strange that there should have been in connection with it certain evils. More strange is it that there was on the part of a large proportion of the Southern manufacturers a recognition at a very early date of those evils and an earnest effort, almost from the start, to correct and anticipate such evils. We find that almost from the commencement of the development in the early eighties the necessity of the education of the employees and of their moral and intellectual uplift was recognized. Indeed, as far back as the early fifties, the pioneer of the cotton mill industry in South Carolina, the president of the Graniteville Manufacturing Company, in making his report to the stockholders as to the causes which had made the industry up to that time unsuccessful in South Carolina, mentioned as one of them "the lack of proper effort for the religious and moral training of the operatives." A recognition of this necessity therefore existed when the industry took on a new life in the early eighties, and it is no exaggeration to say that in the development of the first mills during. that period, as in the construction of practically each mill thereafter, the schoolhouse and the church were an accompaniment to the construction of the mill building itself.

The poverty of the people of the South has made it impossible for them to do all that has been done in other communities towards the education of the population. Certain it is, however, that in no section of the Union has there been a truer recognition of the necessity of this education. When at times reference is made to the large proportion of illiteracy existing among us, we are too apt to express our feeling of humiliation, rather than to express that other more proper sentiment, namely, pride at the way in which we have overcome the difficulties attendant upon the procuring of an education in the South, and pride in the record which we are making in that respect.

The census of 1900 is in many respects a glorious exhibit