INDENTURED CHILDREN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19321, 7 May 1926, Page 15

INDENTURED CHILDREN.

AMERICAN DISCLOSURES. MEANS OF CHEAP LABOUR. [from our own correspondent.] SAN FRANCISCO. April 7. Child indenture is legalised in one-fourth of the States of this great free land of law and order, according to a report criticising this mediaeval practice just issued by the Federal Children's Bureau. In 12 States the helpless child of unfortunate parents may be put out under contract until it is of age, where its protection from abuse and ill-treatment is about equal to that afforded an illtempered mule, except that the child, unlike its brute contemporary, has 110 physical means of retaliation. The underlying principle of all of these laws, which are inherited from the enlightened days of Henry VIIL, is that a fanner or housewife can obtain cheap help bv supplying board and room to unfortunate children." These indentured children usually are freed at the age of 18 or 21 with a small amount of money—£lo or less—and an outfit of clothes. Agents of the Children's Bureau have found children in Pennsylvania under indenture contracts that keep them virtually bound until 1940. Since the Federal Child Labour Amendment Act is unlikely to be ratified, activities are now being turned toward wiping out some of these mediaeval atrocities In most States new legislatures are being fleeted, and efforts will be made to obtain repeal of these laws in various States next, winter. States which legalise child indenture — notno laws are worse than others-—are Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, West Virginia, Indiana, Michigan. Nevada and Wisconsin, the old free-soil States being fairly in the majority. Of tile children bound out in Pennsylvania, Federal Bureau agents discovered that more recent indentures provide for rix months' schooling, clothing and sums of money ranging from 5s to £5, were provided under various indenture forms in vogue there. In Wisconsin one boy recovering from pneumonia was bound out to do farm work.