Solution of the Child Labor Problem/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI
A PROGRAMME FOR CHILD LABOR REFORM
I. The Campaign for Negative Legislation
A vigorous attempt has been made to cope with the child labor problem by organizing a Child Labor Campaign, the object of which may be summed up in one word—Legislation. Philanthropists, social workers, and public-spirited citizens, roused by the tales of child work in mine and factory, have turned eagerly to the American cure-all, negative legislation, and have secured the passage of laws which forbid children under a certain age to work, and which penalize the employer who violates the law.
Such laws are demanded and enacted in the name of the children, but do the children benefit by their existence? Suppose a law to be passed and enforced which results, as in Illinois, in decreasing the number of children employed from 19,225 in 1902, to 9,925 in 1908.[1] Are the children who were dismissed from work in a more advantageous position than they were before the law was passed? In the majority of cases, they are not.
Child labor laws penalize the employer. The employer dismisses the child. What follows? If the dismissed child dislikes the school, as children who have been at work almost invariably do, he turns to street life. If the family of the dismissed child is in need of his income, he, with the other members of the family, suffers from under-nutrition after that income ceases. In either case, the dismissed child is the loser. While the reformer goes into ecstasies over the statistics of decreasing child labor, the victims of the decrease either run the streets, go hungry, or suffer from both evils.
The statements in the last paragraph are not without foundation. School teachers in industrial districts say very frankly that there is nothing in the schools for the average boy after he has passed the age of twelve. The same teachers will be just as frank in saying that almost never do boys who have once known the freedom of work return to the discipline of school. The same thing is to a lesser degree true of girls. Without question the school fails to retain the interest of the child. On the other hand, an investigation of prices will show that $1.50 a day (the common labor wage) is not a munificent income for a city family of two adults and several children. The distaste for school life; the attractiveness of street life to dismissed children; and the paucity of common labor incomes are real facts that must be faced in solving the problem of the child worker.
The position of the dismissed child is not improved, and may readily be made worse by the enforcement of modern child labor legislation. The attempt to penalize the employer results in penalizing only the child. Anyone familiar with factory reports knows that, in the words of one inspector, "We can't find them. All we do is to jolly them along." Penalties are seldom imposed on the employer, but the average dismissed child is severely penalized by the dismissal. Thus the attempt to penalize the employer in favor of the child, results in an immediate penalizing of the child.
It is not for a moment contended that there are no working children who, when dismissed by the factory inspector, return to school. Such instances abound in any large industrial center. But in the great majority of instances, the child who is dismissed does not go back to school, but does suffer grievously from the effects of street life, or malnutrition, or else seeks and finds other employment.
The reasons for this shifting of the burdens of the penalty from the employer to the child may be discovered by examining the laws of the various states. The child labor law in most states is a purely negative, coercive instrument. It says, "Thou shalt not," without following this destructive command by a constructive "Thou shalt." In that lies its chief defect. The law forbids the child to work, without furnishing any adequate substitute for the work. It deprives the child of one opportunity, but puts no other in its place.
II. The Problem in Brief
Briefly summarized, the facts are these: The manufacturer does not need the child. The work of the children can be done with equal if not greater cheapness and efficiency by mechanical devices or by adults. The child does need a school training that will fit him to participate efficiently in some form of life activity. A great number of parents need the earnings of their children. They would not starve to death without them, but they would be deprived of a part of the food and shelter necessary to maintain bodily vigor. Society needs the child, developed eventually into an efficient worker, a good citizen, and a thinking, social being.
How can this desired end be attained? What steps are necessary,—
Such results can be attained only by paths radically different from any thus far followed by child labor reformers. In the first place, the school must be made attractive, and the school work must interest the child. In the words of an educational leader, "I look to see the time when our schools will offer as many and as different choices to the children, as the world of business does to-day."
Incompetent teachers, defective equipment, and repressive discipline drive the children from the schools. Commissioner Andrew S. Draper of New York State says,—"I confess that it startles me to find that certainly not more than two-fifths and undoubtedly not more than a third of the children who enter our elementary schools ever finish them, and that not more than one-half of them go beyond the fifth or sixth grade." This statement is corroborated by the following sentence from Professor Edward I. Thorndike of Teachers College, Columbia University:—"At least twenty-five out of one hundred children of the white population of our country who enter school stay only long enough to learn to read simple English, write such words as they commonly use, and perform the four operations for integers without serious errors."[2]
The children of America are not in the schools because the schools fail to prepare for life work. They do not assist in complete living, but train their pupils to follow one narrow intellectual path. The parents feel, and justly, that for many children, the school years are well-nigh wasted. The children resent the discipline, despise the curriculum, and eagerly avail themselves of the first opportunity to work.
The school training which should count for so much in the development of an efficient citizenship fails to fulfill its function, and its failure is manifest in the hundreds of thousands of children who gladly leave school before reaching the eighth year, and in the millions of ineffective and ruined lives which might have been strong and virile had the proper training been provided in the schools. This school problem can be solved by increased public interest and increased appropriations. Several American cities have extensive elementary courses in manual training designed to interest and instruct the child in hand work. Germany is a generation in advance of the United States in the provision of applied education. The way is plain: the will alone is lacking.
Is the problem equally simple when one faces the family kept above the line of malnutrition by the earnings of child workers? What steps can be taken to maintain the family at an adequate standard of living, and yet place before the children an opportunity for education?
Should the family be assisted? How can it be assisted?
The United States is facing this problem, one of the most difficult of modern questions—the question of the relation of the government to the individual; and the extent to which the individual should depend on the government for support. Every state in the Union has broken through the tradition pale of non-interference with individual activity, by enacting a law forbidding children to work before reaching a certain age, and commanding them to attend school until that age is reached. These laws virtually deprive the family of anticipated income by forbidding work for wages, and by taking children away from the home, thus depriving the parents of their help in the home during school hours.
The government deliberately deprives the family of potential income. Must it not, in justice, make some restitution in the numerous cases where family income is insufficient to meet family needs? If it is socially advantageous that every child should be thoroughly educated, it would seem socially just that the government make some return to the needy family of such a child while education is being supplied.
This problem has been extensively dealt with abroad, where three methods have been devised which, directly or indirectly, assist in the maintenance of family standards.
1. The minimum wage.
2. Compulsory insurance.
3. School feeding.
The efforts to establish a minimum wage are best exemplified in the legislation of New South Wales (Australia), and of New Zealand. The laws originated in the attempts of the government to maintain the workers and their families in the face of a sweat-shop competition which was being aggravated by immigration.
The employer or the employees in any industry might, under the law, call upon the authorities for the appointment of a minimum wage board, whereupon the local court appointed such a board, consisting of employers, employees, and third parties.
The board held public sessions, took testimony, and determined a fair minimum wage for that particular trade, and after the decision of the board was made and published it became unlawful to pay wages below the rate fixed by the board for the trade in question. This decision of a quasi-public board at once had the force of law and was upheld by the courts. On the whole, the boards have met with a very fair degree of success. One of the most surprising facts in connection with the operation of the law is that in a number of cases boards have been asked for by employers as a protection against sweat-shop competition.
While the boards are far from affording a complete solution for all economic ills, they, nevertheless, have resulted in raising the standard of life and wages in many of the lowest standard trades, and in providing for workmen a minimum standard of economic decency in the form of a minimum wage.[3]
The second form of protection for low standard families, compulsory insurance, has been most completely developed in Germany. Here, for a generation, all workers whose income was less than a specified amount, have had to insure against sickness, accident, and death. This compulsory insurance forms a part of the extensive programme of social legislation which Germany has promulgated for the protection of her industrial workers.
The insurance funds are maintained in part by the workers, in part by the employers, and in part by the government. Under the compulsory provisions of the law no man can by his incapacity or death plunge his family into poverty or throw them upon the community for support. Insurance is provided for the protection of those dependent upon him, just as fire departments and public schools are provided for protection and assistance in completer living. The health and physical well-being of children in Germany are thus considered in no way less important than their protection or education.
The promulgation of such a system over so vast a territory as the German Empire naturally resulted in some dissatisfaction and hardship. Although the compulsory insurance was administered through existing private associations under government supervision, there were many unforeseen details and unlooked-for hindrances. The law as it at present exists has been several times amended, but its important provisions remain intact, and the compulsory insurance system of Germany stands as a monument to the wisdom and far-seeing statesmanship of the German legislators who, with Bismarck, were responsible for their preparation.[4]
School feeding, the third form of protection for needy families, has passed the experimental stage, and is extensively practiced in all of the civilized countries of Europe. The method of feeding varies from city to city, but the principle is the same as that so widely held in Paris,—"The children must be fed." This reply, made to every argument, is an insistence upon the principle that education without bread is as useless as education without life.
The school-feeding system usually requires those who eat the school lunches to pay for them if they are able. If they are unable to pay the meals are given free and an investigation is made into the conditions surrounding the home.
A general act in England, "the Provision of Meals Act," empowers local school authorities to establish systems of school feeding and to pay for the meals by levying a specified percentage on the annual valuation of local property.
Under this act, Bradford has adopted a system of feeding its children. As an experiment forty children were fed during the summer of 1907. "The improvement [in the general appearance and carriage of the child] was more or less apparent in all, and very obvious in some of the children who visibly filled out and brightened up." "The reverse process was equally apparent when the children were seen after the summer holiday, during which no special meals had been provided." The advantages of this experimental feeding were so manifest that a central kitchen was established and a regular system of feeding instituted.
The experience of Bradford has been duplicated in other towns where school feeding has been attempted. The children fill out, freshen up, and do better work on one square meal a day.
The provision of meals is an extremely temporary remedy. It puts off from day to day the hardships which the children see before them during the summer holidays. It is, however, of sufficient weight to make education possible for indigent children.
To these three methods for improving the conditions of indigent children may be added a fourth, which has been proposed on several occasions by American thinkers. Following this method, all children must attend school up to a certain age,—for example, fourteen years,—but at the point where the child has wage-earning power, perhaps ten years on the farm and twelve years in the city, the public authorities shall pay to the parents of such children who attend school a weekly wage equivalent to that which the child might earn in the factory, provided that the parents shall first demonstrate to the satisfaction of the authorities that a minimum standard of efficient living cannot be maintained by the family without this support.
The plan has obvious disadvantages. The difficulties of accurately determining a minimum standard of efficiency are very great, as conditions vary with the individual and the community. A system might be started whereby parents could live from the school earnings of a numerous family. These and other objections will present themselves to those familiar with poor law enactment and enforcement.
On the other hand, under existing conditions, thousands of families are deprived of some of the necessaries of life when they are deprived of their children's earnings. Compulsory school attendance, while of unquestionable public benefit, works serious hardship upon many an individual family.
The knowledge so far secured would incline the student to reject this fourth proposal, and to insist that a combination of the three foreign methods of dealing with the problem would be most effective in the United States.
The first step in the consummation of such a programme is to secure and maintain a wage which will provide a minimum of subsistence. The enforcement of such a wage would be particularly advantageous in sweated industries which do not afford an opportunity for the workers to combine and make effective their demands. The form of the law and the method of its enforcement might well be governed by Australasian experience.
In the second place, some system of compulsory insurance should be adopted which would guarantee the family against unforeseen contingencies such as sickness, accident, and death, all of which prove so disastrous to necessitous families. In the enactment and enforcement of such a law we might well be governed by German experience.
In the third place a school lunch should be provided and served at cost to those who choose to pay for it, while in cases where children are underfed through parental neglect or inefficiency, the lunch should be free of charge. The widest European experience affords a basis for the provision of lunches.
For national defense two schools are provided, one at Annapolis and one at West Point. In these schools, food, clothing, and the most painstaking training are provided for the boys who are expected to become the military defenders of the nation. It is seldom that the nation is compelled to resort to the military in order to maintain itself, but every moment of every day the nation is absolutely dependent upon industry for that maintenance.
Is it a necessary thing to give food, clothing, and training to the military defenders of the nation? How much more imperative that the necessaries of life should be provided for its industrial defenders. The military struggle is an occasional one, but the industrial struggle is a constant one, and far more depends upon it than upon military events.
The industrial competition with foreign nations, particularly with Germany, demands capable efficient workers in large numbers. Up to the present time the demand has far exceeded the supply.
III. The Programme
The foregoing discussion makes the Programme for Child Labor Reform almost obvious. The programme revolves around three steps:—
2. A reform in the school that will:—
(a) Make a child want the school.
(b) Develop efficient citizens.
It is only when the child has been physically and intellectually provided for, in the manner indicated, that any permanent good can be done by the modern child labor legislation which merely forces children out of the factories.
THE END
- ↑ "The Present Situation in Illinois." By E. T. Davies, Chief Factory Inspector of Illinois. Conference on Child Labor, National Child Labor Committee, 1909. P. 154.
- ↑ Laggards in Our Schools. By Leonard P. Ayers. New York: Chautris Publishing Committee, 1909. P. 9.
- ↑ Labor Movement in Australia. By Victor J. Clark. New York: Holt & Co,, 1906. Chap, vii, Minimum Wage Boards.
- ↑ State Insurance. By Frank W. Lewis. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin Co., 1909. Chap. iv.