CHILD LABOR IN AMERICA.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3135, 18 September 1922, Page 8

CHILD LABOR IN AMERICA.

A majority of the State oi' America* have forward looking and effective lawbß i.i child protection; that some others! have enacted legislation that at least! goes part way. But there is a min-jl ority that are still in the middle ages' in their attitude to childhood. : . ing the subject. .Mr Hoover, Secretary of Commerce, favored an amendment of the Federal constitution to enable Congress to deal with it if these back States, in which about ,'W0,0()0 children arc employed, do not enact effective laws. He justified his view by saying:—"The moral and economic results of debilitated, illiterate, and untrained manhood and womanhood that ii.usl spring from these cesspools where child labor is encouraged and is legitimate, infect the entire nation.'' .Mr Hoover, however, expressed a strong preference loi action by the States individually, and added:—"l know of nothing more disheartening than the impulse and justification given to I he centralisation oi government by continuous failure of local government in matters that affect the nation as a whole. With the growing population and growing complexity of our industrial and social lift;, the constant resort to federal control lor solution of difficulties will yet undermine the very basis oi social progress by the destruction of the sense.of local responsibility." In concluding. Mr Hoover made some observations of general applicability. He said:--"Clearly, if economic waste is reprehensible, waste of child life whethei viewed economically or in terms of common and universal hettcrinon is a 'blight that in its measure it- more deplorable than war. "It may be worth recounting that system of indiividuaplism can only stand ii' we can make effective the supreme ideal of America. This ideal is that there shall be an equality of opportunity for every citizen to reach that position in the community to which his intelligence, abilities, character and ambition entitle him. I am a strong believer in this progressive individualism as the only road to economic, social and spiritual safety and to human progress. "Without this tempering ideal that Americai has evolved, individualism will not tstand. There is no equality of opportunity where children are allowed by law and compelled by parents to labor during the years they should receive instruction ; there is no equality of opportunity unless this instruction -s made compulsory by the State. There is no equality of opportunity for children whose parents are not restrained by law from exploiting them, and compelled to give them participation in the beneficent privileges that the Stat.' provide*, for them. "Lest t-ome would think because of the deep feeling of many of us upon ibis subject that these statements can be credited as evidence of the failure of America, let me also add: Out oi' some 20.000,000 children between five and !(i years of age in America the use ol' child labor so far as it retards proper development and education of children, probably aflXds less than 300,000 below the ideals of America, hut no other nation can show so small a propurl ion."