CHILDREN WITHOUT CHILDHOOD.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVI, Issue 14222, 19 November 1906, Page 11

CHILDREN WITHOUT CHILDHOOD.

(By MARTHA S. BENSLEY, in “Collier’s Weekly.”) The machine has been unjustly vituperated for centuries; but in modem production there is only one of its acts which is undoubtedly inspired by the Evil one. It is by its connivance that the task of clothing the world has been shifted to the shoulders of tho_ children. The machine has stepped in and said to the worker: “ See, I will do your work for you—you need no longer acquire skill. 1 will weave your cloth, ispin your thread, sew your seams; your only work is the touch of a hand on the lever, the placing of a thread, the guiding of a roll of . cloth—a child can do it!” _ • And since a child can—it does! The levers are built near the ground to make it possible, benches are placed before the high parts for children to stand on; and.the little hands which are of low value in the labour market do the works of skill. Only one branch of the making of our clothes is free from child labour —tbe production and gathering of the raw material. In the picking of cotton, the shearing of wool, ithe reeling of silk, the gathering of feathers, furs and leather, the children have little or no part. But though the child does hot appear in the cotton field, nor in the gin, nor in the baling rooms, it meets the raw material at the factory doors. According to the | estimate of 1903 there we*e thirty thousand children in cotton mills under fourteen. According to another estimate, there were sixty thousand. And as the cotton mill children are rotten with consumption, theiy fingers spin, the Great White Plague into the fibres of the thread, wind, it over the bobbins, and weave it into the cioth. The cry that one hears, that the Southern mills where children work ate owned by Northern capitalists, is an idle liiding behind others’ shoulders; fos, . however much the Northern millpwners may try to influence legislation, the votes in the South are cast by_ the men of the South; and certainly it is not Northern children who work in Southern mills. And the fact that there are children in the South who can run the mills, is one of the chief reasons why the mills are there. The South was prosperous once through clave labour—it is PROSPEROUS NOW THROUGH CHILD LABOUR. 'As yet we have discovered only three places in which to make this child-spun cloth into clothes—the home, the sweat-shop, and the factory. _ These are three stages of the same industry .which blend gradually into each other with only such dividing lines as are made by the law. In these three places the fifty thousand garment -workers of New York City make clothes for the .‘whole country. From a sanitary and economic standpoint the home is by far the worst of the three—partly because it is not planned as a workshop, and partly because in it is used- the most extravagant form of labour—the work of children. ... If the child is where there is work to he done, the child is likely to do the work. And as long as this work, is merely the sowing for the immediate family, the child is not likely to be overtaxed. But now that the making of clothes has become a specialised industry, not a task of each woman for her own husband and children, but a work of the few for the many—the ease b different, and it has become just ns necessary to control the garment trades in the home as anywhere else—perhaps more so. In this home industry it is the Italian children who are mostly exploited. In Italian eyes, custom and tradition have made it unseemly for a woman to work in. shops or factories. But in the home I—that is a different matter. In any of the tenements on Elizabeth, Mott, or Mulberry Streets, if you ask the janitor where the “lady” lives who finishes coats —you .will be asked; 1 “Which me?” and usually he will tell you of half a dozen, always forgetting to mention the members of his own family. At one place, in Lower Orchard ■Street, the janitor said: “Every lady in de house—she finish do coat!” “ The one I’m looking for has a little girl about eight years old who helps her.” “ Oh, dey all have do children—eight • —seven —four—all size—help all do time!” i “What do they do?” “ Oh—pull d© baste—put de button, little t’ings—do all—everyt’ing!” The long halls of these buildings are unlighted; and the stairs are slippery with filth and slime, which is not only of indigenous origin but is tracked in from the streets by the barefoot women and children. There is not in English a vocabulary sufficiently elaborate and varied to describe the odours which surge through these tenements ini hot weather—not only the smells of crowded humanity and filth, but the actual odour of disease—the very scent of . the germ. THE GARMENTS LIE IN THESE PLACES AND FESTER, they become veritable germ cultures on the foul floors with the dying workers bending above them. Of course, many of these garments are steamed before they go on the wearers’ backs, and as there are a number of disease germs that steaming will kill, there may be less danger than as though they were worn direct from the homes. There is nothing easier than to uniearth these “ home finishers.” No detective ability is noed_ed in the matter, • only eyes to see the garment-laden heads, and feet to follow where they lead. In the worst tenement quarter of the lower West Side, which is peopled by the offscourings of all nations—negroes “squatting” in old buildings whoso ownership is a matter for litigation; - Jews whom the Ghetto has crowded out; Greeks from the ships; Irish and Italians—l met a Mrs Geffcretti and her two little girls. As all three were carrying j;rcat bundles of coats on their heads, I turned and followed them through a little street, to a little lane, and into a blind little court, not throe minutes’ -walk from Fifth Avenue. This had once been somebody’s backyard, but now it is overlooked by three tiny tenements, strewn with garbage and choked with refuse, and through it trickles a stream of sewage. Wo had to stop at the entrance of the court to avoid an outpouring mob of fighting; screaming children; and I glanced through the window of an old image maker, who with the faces of the working children at his elbows, and the roar of many quarrels in his ears, still fashions figures of the Merciful Christ and the Compassionate Virgin. He did not even glance up when the woman’s worn hand steadied itself against his window, but then ho was painting tho wounds in the hands of tlio Crucified Christ, and that is particular work. I followed them slowly up the stairs, stopping when the mother had to rest on each landing—up to the top of the building: and after the door had closed behind tnem I knocked. Already the bundles were unpacked—already one child and the mother were busily at work, while the youngest waited, scissors in band, till the first coat was ready to have the bastings pulled from it 1 When I asked Mrs Gefferettl why the children wore not in school, she LOOSED THE VIALS OF HER WRATH UPON ME. ♦f These. my children, are they not

mine? What is it your laws have to do with them? It is my word is their law! I shall do «f it pleases me with them! . See hero is Tvnnie; she is hut twelve years, yet I have permitted her to go sometimes to the school! That is enough for the Americans, that I have given them Annie for their school—that must satisfy them. They can not have Lizzie too—Lizzie is but nine years. She shall remain at my borne. By your questions .you insult me!, And it is that my children must eat. Would the Americans feed us if I sent them to the school? No! Is it that you wish mo to starve?”

And as her words stormed o.ut, her needle flew in and out of the coat she was finishing, _ and, though Annie and Lizzie sometimes raised frightened eyes to mo, their dirty little fingers were never still. The only thing that interrupted her frenzy of vituperation was a racking cough. There was the fire of fever as well as of wrath in her eyes, but she could not stop her work even to vent her auger. She could not even die in idleness, but as she coughed out her life she breathed a revenge of contagion into l the clothes she sewed, more powerful than her words. And it was evident that scon she would leave a legacy of feeble and ignorant offspring as a burden on tbe country. As I went out of the court the old imago maker snarled as my shadow fell upon his window". He was putting too much red on the cheeks of hio buxum Mother of Sorrow—but then ho was not copying the lips and cheeks of Mrs Geiforetti.

Mrs Gefferetti’s feeling that the children go to school not for their own j benefit, but as a sop to the American j Government, is very general among rho Italians. And considering the failure of our system df education really to educate, they arc hardly to be blamed. But the problem grows in seriousness when these children are forced into industry. Take, for. instance, the case of Angela Carmena. She is a little girl of nine, and the teacher into whose class the truant officer succeeded in forcing her wrote me that the child had been in school only the few' days during the year when the teacher saw to it personally that she came. Ordinarily, however, there is little danger that Angela will ho submitted to the contaminating influences of American civilisation as typified by James Street, wdiore she lives; for through a long industrious day she sits at home and sows pants to a present advantage to her family of about two dollars a week. The Carmenas have ' not solved the problem of _ cleanliness under tenement-house conditions, and their tendency to express clothing in the lowest posible terms in the_ hot weather, made this obvious. Neither Angela nor her mother nor any of her little brothers or sisters wore shoes or stockings or more than two other garments—and any extraneous matter collected upon their persons v, r as evidently not interfered with, but was loft to drop off ct its own accord. Beside a chair, Rotta, Angela’s younger sister, who was only six and not yet able to« sew, stood and pulled bastings... She might have been an attractive child but for the disease which COVERED HER HEAD WITH GREAT GREY FLAKES. These fell upon the floor and the garment 1 on which she was working. Of course, these would probably bo brushed off before this reached the customer; and anyway this might only bo a bad Case of eczema of the head and not favus, which is a virulent infectious disease. I could not tell which it -was, because to the unmedical mind favus is only distinguished by its odo'ur, and lu the Carmena homo there was so many warring smells that no one of them could bo isolated long enough for identification. And anyway favus does not necessarily m.ean death. But suppose it were favus? There -were contagions about some of these tenements compared with which favus w'as as the glow' of perfect health. This finishing of garments is so poorly paid that only the quickest and most skilful workers can make a living at it oven when they are helped out by numerous offspring. Also it is a trade possible for unskilled fingers to take up at any moment. For these reasons some of the women of the streets who are least successful, or are worn out in their profession, go into it to eke out an existence; and some of the regular homo finishers cannot make a living without oombinirig their work with that other profession. In two of these houses I found little girls helping the women with their sewing. .It certainly seems tFat these rooms are not the places, either for the children, who should have a chance to be free from moral filth, or for clothes, which should be free from physical contagion. There may he something inherent in the nature of children which -will save them—but there is little native virtue in a piece of woollen cloth, that it should preserve purity automatically. In spite of the prevalence of child labour, it was difficult to see children actually at work in the homes. An agitating Ghiid Labour Committee and an. interfering; Press have produced a certain nervousness in the Italian mind. Of course, there is no way that a worker can learn what the laws are except by running up against them—no free schools which teach them, no public place where they are posted, no official to interpret them to any except the offender. But then, perhaps, arrest and punishment are the most thorough teachers after all. I would go into a home where the floor -was strewn with garments, where the whole family had been feverishly plying their needles; but when I entered there would bo a rapid fire of Italian, and, though the clothes of the little children would be covered with incriminating threads, though their hands held guilty needles, and unlawful scissors fell from their laps, they were seldom to be caught at their task. Once a girl in a Hull House Club brought mo two magenta cotton roses flanked by throe emerald green leaves, which she had made. I remember now that, though I was touched and pleased with the gift, I hesitated to do violence to my colour sense by putting them in ray hair as she evidently expected. If I had known then as I know now the conditions under which flowers are made in the homos, nothing would .have changed my hesitancy into compliance. Everyone who bins worn artificial flowers has noticed the weird odour that they omit in damp weather, and probably has said with a wry face: “How that glue smells!” Well, perhaps it is the glue—and then, again, perhaps it isn’t. I have seen FLOWER-STREWN ROOMS IN THE ITALIAN QUARTER which were so filled with odours that I hesitated to intrude lest my entrance should crowd sonic of them out. Why should the smell of glue be the only one of the acquired odours of the handmade rose which the moisture quickens? If it were only possible to disassociate one’s senses and to send the eyes alone into these artificial flower gardens, the first effect at least would be pleasant. There, .with their hands full of brilliant blossoms, sit little darkeyed children. It is a beautiful, pleasing and artistic combination—that of the child and the flower ; and one could almost wax poetic over it, if only one’s obtrusive mind could be kept dormant. But somehow the optic nerves do seem to connect with the brain cells, and, when thought involuntarily ensues, the picture of those children stringing pink cotton roko petals froin seven in the morning till nine at night ceases to allure and charm. The Italian quarter is honeycombed with these homes where they make artificial flowers. Ordinarily they are a trifle better class than the places where garments are finished, for therein a certain amount of skill required in the making; and a little more money

is to be got at it, for more children in proportion can he employed. For instance, in an unlicensed tenement on Thompson Street was an Italian mother and her four children making pink apple blossoms. They bad evolved a very satisfactory system of division of labour, as they sat around the table in the lamp-light. A boy of nine strung the cotton petals ,on their wire centres, then passed thoni to his sister of thirteen, who attached the green calix ; the mother fastened on The stem, and a boy of eleven, who could count, tied them into bunches. The four-year-old hahy was not yet actively engaged in production—l do not know, of course, why lie did net lion di- r < , ' , + to-"’”" x '© cradle into the artificial flower industry—but for same reasoiy he was pausing—briefly, no doubt—in the land where children merely eat and play and grow. The only colour in these five faces was that reflected from the pink cotton petals, except in the case of the nine-year-old boy; and hie cheeks were so flushed and he COUGHED A DRY LITTLE COUGH, with such regularity that I took*hold of his hand inquiringly. It was hot with fever, and his eyes were bright as though with fires back of them. Later he had to be sent to. a sanitarium in the country by a charitable institution, and I believe bo lias not yet ioturned. I The rates of payment for these artificial flowers are'very low For instance, a firm on West Hurd ijuroot employs among others a family living in an unlicensed tenement in the next block. There are seven children, the oldest a girl of fifteen, the youngest a hoy of one; these are the only two. who do not work on the flowers- —the oldest, because she works out. and the baby, because of the still unperfectcd state of the industry which offers nothing suited to lus abilities. The other children, aged respectively thirteen, eleven, eight, five and three, are all actively engaged. Together they make about six dozen bunches a. day, for which they receive seven cents a dozen hunches, or about forty-two cents a day. Of course, these children are not in school —why, in the panic of progress, is the reading, writing or, speaking of _ English necessary in such an occupation? A more waste of brain power! Another Italian family, living on East Houston Street, has fire children, aged respectively twelve, eleven, nine, seven, five, all of whom are working at home either on flowers or on clothing, when it is not the flower season. And non© of these children has been to school or speaks English. ~ , These three families are exceptional only in the number of children working illegally. The whole Italian quarter is dotted with these greenhouses for the forcing of cloth and flowers at the cost of children’s lives. Recently the making of hats has alec been given out to the tenement homes, but though I have heard that children are employed on them, I have not succeeded in finding any of them at work. Ten, too, there is the making of kid gloves, a considerable part of which is ■homo production. For four successive evenings I visited one particular family south of Washington Square and found them busy oA gloves—green kid gloves! The gloves are cut before they are given out-by the contractor, and the work in the home is to baste on the bits of leather or cloth about the open-' ing and the button-holes, and haste the sides ready for the machine— A CHILD OF NINE CAN DO THIS SUFFICIENTLY WELL —mid little Luigi Bardino. who is only eight, spent most of his time in May and June on this work. American, women must be in dire need of green kid gloves when a child’s education and health are of less value to the community. It would almost seem to the thoughtful that this sacrifice should not be forced upon, society by undiscerning feminity—that if it were a choice between the elimination of Luigo Bardino and the green kid gloves, we might be willing to wear mittens or to go barehanded.

The extravagance of this child labour is not in the immediate money that is paid for it—not in the grown men and women whom it deprives of work—but in the fact that it destroys for small present returns the future industrial value of the child. The worn-out garment worker—old while ho is yet young—is the logical development of the exploited child. The man who must be supported after be is forty is the child who at fourteen supported his father. If the burden of this man’s support fell on these who had profited by his youth, there would be some sort of justice in it ; but it falls cither on the shoulders of his children, in their turn; or on the community, which is manifestly wrong. ' And it is in the tenement houses where the worst conditions of child labour prevail. The home, whose primary object is the protection and rearing of children, has become, the _ scene of their most merciless exploitation. The law has little control here in the matter of light, or sanitation, or hours. The child is left to the tender mercies of parental Jove, and from the days when babies were fed into’ the red-hot arms of Mploch, parental love has,been no safeguard. And if the parent does not consider the life of his child whom he does see, how will he consider the life of the impersonal wearer of the clothes whom ho does not sec? Even if he knows the danger, will he care to protect the consumer from tuberculosis, from favus, or from the nameless diseases of vice?