Children in Bondage.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18367, 28 April 1925, Page 8

Children in Bondage.

The American Constitution is being' given another bad advertisement. It is one of' its- fundamental weaknesses 'that any alteration in it is extraordinarily difficult to make, and that at the same time its rigidity puts a veto on, certain laws, so that to get these laws passed it has to be amended. To carry an > amendment to the Constitution, Congress and three-qttartera of the State Legislatures have to bo persuaded. It is as if there were half a dozen provincial Legislatures in New Zealand, and their consent had to be obtained to a necessary piece of national legislation. The subject that is illustrating afresh this defect in the American Constitution is child labour. In Now Zealand this question gives comparatively little trouble: Parliament is the sole authority in legislation. American attempts to legislate on this question on Federal lines were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, and thoso who hare been fighting the battle of the children for years we're obliged - to take up the long task of amending the Constitution. The necessary amendment passed Congress, but rocent advices show that thirteen States have refused to ratify the amendment, which means that for the timo being the reform is dead. The. scandal is an old one. It has Been ventilated in American newspapers and magazines for years. The census rbport of 1020 showed that more than a million children botween the ages of ten and fifteen were "gainfully "employed," but a writer in "Cur"rcnt History" points out that the real number of children of all ages ia much larger. The National Child Labour Committee estimated last year that at least two million children under fifteen were employed for gain, and this writer considers that the number between the ages of seven and sixteen is three millions, and between seven and eighteen it is nearly six millions. Of course, not all of these children are to be pitied. In countries with more humane laws regulating child labour, numbers of boys and girls earn their living. What makes the employment of children in the United States so great a scandal are conditions which no humane person conld accept, including some that were abolished in Britain many years ago. There are, for instance, some six thousand children employed in and around coal'mines. Some of the conditions above ground are bad, but they are much worso underground. Boys from twelve to sixteen "toil in "a kind of Dantesqne inferno, isolated "in a terrible dark world. Here they "often are forced to work in mud and sometimes stripped to the "waistline because of the intense heat; "and sometimes groping through snf"foca ting gas and smoke. A more in"tolerable condition , could not exist "anywhere for the youth of America."

There arc also terrible evils in the svstem of home work, and in farm labour. In the New York slums children as young as three make artificial flowers. In sugar-beet fields children of five and six weed, pull, and pile the crop, and in some cotton fields children of four pick from sunrise to sunset. Education, of course, suffers.

Those who study American conditions will not be surprised to Wm that the child fares worse in the South than in the North. Slavery has loft a tragic legacy in low ideals of labour. Among the States that have refused to ratify the amendment are Georgia, North and South Carolina, and Louisiana. These conditions throw an interesting light on American life a£a whole. The United States are noted for high wages and a high standard of living among a large part of the population. The artisan juakes "good money" and often drives his own car. It is clear, however, that underneath this is a large mass of labour that is on the poverty lino, and it would be interesting to know what it thinks of Mr Hoover's ideal of a self-contained America protected by a still higher tariff wall. Also., it would be quite wrong to attribute all this exploitation of child labour to the greed of the capitalist. A great part of it is due to the greed of parents or to their inability to keep a heme going by their own unaided labour. It has been the same -in every country; ;i certain number of parents have stood in the way of reform. It is instructive to note that in this kind of child protection Britain is ahead of America. This is due partly to the fact that Britain is a smaller and more compact country, but it is also due to the greater elasticity of its political system. The amendment permitting Congress "lo "limit, regulate, and prohibit the "labour of persons under 18 years uu "age,'' has been defeated becauso, among other reasons, the States are very jealous of their rights, and resent interference by Congress. Another reason is that the American is intensely individualistic, and many Americans apparently think that tho right of the parent over his child is threatened by this amendment. There has been an improvement in conditions of child labour in various States, and although the promoters of the amendment have not given up the fight, it looks as if State, as opposed to Federal, action was the most promising avenue of progross. It is curious that American idealism has not been able to do more for the exploited child, and outsiders may be excused for thinking that if a tenth of the energy that has boon put into the Prohibition campaign ;fcad beon expended on bettering the child worker's condition, it would have been a good thing for tho nation.