CHILD SLAVERY.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XLVII, Issue 10805, 28 December 1926, Page 2

CHILD SLAVERY.

CONDITIONS IN HUNGARY. Child slavery, in the literal sense, exists to-day in Hungary, according to a report in “iPesti Burlap,” one of the leading newspapers of Budapest, which says that parents, driven to despera- | tion by want, are putting their children up at auction in the Zsibogo Market, in the City of 'Debreczin. Some of the®, it is said, are purchased by the more well-to-do farmers of the sur-

rounding country. Prices vary according to age. Children of from three to five years sell for about 500,000 crowns, more or less (about 14,000 to the £), whole as much as 1,000,000 crowns may be paid for older children —all according to “ Pesti Hirlap/’ The particular story drawing attention to this alleged social condition was reprinted in the VienmT u Arbeiter- -• ~~ » mjxl reads; in part as follows: -’derable excitement There was cons,.. -V - pebrecin odds and ends market u oiaan zin on Saturday when a poor . +u _ offered her children for sale, and atw ..

I ally sold them. The unfortunate woman Was the wife of Anton Branyil, a forest worker. She had brought three children, a. 14-year-old girl, a three-year-old girl, and a nine-months-old baby to market, and soon found buyers for two of them. The three-year-old girl. was sold for 300,000 crowns, and the bigger girl f or 900,000 crowns. INlobody wanted to buy the baby. ‘ ‘ The people in the market place were shocked by this unusual scene, and soon the seller of her children found herself the centre of an excited crowd. She explained that desperate misery had forced her to this extremity. She said that her husband had been injured in felling a tree, and since that time had been unable to work. He had not earned anything at all, and they had nothing on which to support their six children. S'o they had finally decided to sell three of them.

“The people listened sympathetically, but some persons recounted it to the police and asked that action he taken. Nothing was done, _ however. For a long time this sad episode was the chief topic of conversation in the market place. It was asserted that for Borne time the selling of children hv poor parents had been going on and that during the last few months it had become fairly common/’