CHILDREN WITHOUT CHILDHOOD.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 8779, 16 November 1906, Page 4

CHILDREN WITHOUT CHILDHOOD.

WHERE LABOUR DRAWS ITS

CONSCRIPTS FROM THE NURSERY.

(By MARTHA S. BENSLEY, in " Collier's Weekly.")

The machine has been, unjustly vituperated fcr centuries; b«t in modern production there i6 only one of its acts which 26 undoubtedly inspired by the Evil ona. It is by its connivance- that the task of clothing the world has been shifted to the shoulders of the children. The machine has stepped in and eaid to the worker : " See, I will do your work for you — you need no longer acquire skill. I will woavo your cloth, spin your thread, sew your eeams ; 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 I"

And since a child can — it does ! The levers are built near the ground to snake it possible, benches are placed before the high parts for children to ■taud on; and the little hands which &re of low value in the labour market d«> the works of skill.

Only one branch of the making of our clothes is free- from child labour — the production and gathering of the raw material.

In the pickiug of cotton, the shearing of wool, the reeling of silk, tbe gathering of feathers, furs and leather, the children have little or no part. But though the child does not 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 were 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, their fingers *pin the Great White Plague into the fibres or the thread, wind it over the bobbins, and weave it into the cioth. The cry that one hears, that the i^outhern mills 'where children work ate owned by Northern capitalists, is an. Idle hiding behind othere' shoulder*; for, however much the Northern millowners may try to influence legislation', the votes in the South' are cast by the onen of the South : and certainly it is not Northern children who work in Southern milte. And the fact that there are children in the South who enn run. the .mills, is one of the chief reasons why the mills are there. The South was prosperous once through slave 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 Lome, the sweat-shop, and the factory. Theto 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 becauee in it is used the most extravagant form of labour — the work of children.

If the child is where -there is work to be done, the child is likely to do the work. And as long as this work is merely the sewing for the immediate family, the child is not likely" to be overtaxed. But now that the xnakiug of clothes has become a specialised industry, not a task of each woman for

I her ov;n hu&band and children, but a ' | work -rji"' tlio lew lor tin* n.any — tho case j iis <li;Feront, and it has become just as necessary to control the garment trades j in tho home n<y anywhere else — perhaps i more so. j Tn this home industry it is the Italian children who >aro mostly exploited. In Italian, eyes, custom and tradition have made it unseemly for a woman to work in shops or factories. But in tho home !— that is a different matter. In any of the tenements on Elizabeth. Mott, or Mulberry Streets, if you ask tho janitor where the j *' lady " live* who finishes coate — you will be asked : / "Which oiis?" and usually ho will tell you of half a dozen, always forgetting to mention the members of his own family. At one place, in Lower Orchard j Street, the janitor said : " Every lady in do house-— she finish de coat !" j " The one I'm looking for lias a little ; girl about eight years old who helps , her." ! " Oh, dey all have de children—eight J — seven — four — all sizes — help all de i time!" ■ I "What do they do?" "Oh — pull de baste — put do button, • little t'ings — do all — everyt-'ing ! " j The long halls of these buildings are : linlighted; and the stairs are slippery with filth and slime, which is not only Of indigenous origin, but ie 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 in hot weather— not only the 6mells 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, j j they become veritable germ cultures on [ I 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 | i less danger than as though they were worn direct from the homes. There is nothing easier than to- unearth these " home finishers." No detective ability is needed in the matter, only eyes to see tFe 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 whose ownership is a matter, for litigation* Jews whom the Ghetto has crowded out; Greeks from the ships; Irish and Italians — I met a Mrs Gefferetti and her two little girls. As all three were carrying great 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, pot three . 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.

We 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 lip when the woman's worn hand steadied ftself against his window, but then he was painting the wounds in the hands of the 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 them I knocked.

• Already the bundles were unpacked — already one child and the mother were

busily at work, while the youngest waited, scissors in hand, till the first coat was ready to have the ba6tiugs pulled from it ! When I asked Mrs Gefferetti why the children were not in school, she LOOSED THE VIALS OF HER WRATH UPON MB. "These, my children, are they not niiiie? What is it. your laws have to do with them? It is my word is their law ! I shall do as it pleases me with them! See here is she is but twelve years, yet I have permitted her to go sometimes to the school ! That is enough for the Americans, that I have given thena Annie for their school — that must satisfy them. They can not have Lizzie too — Lizzie is but nine years. She shall remain at my home. 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! la it that; you wish me to starve?"

And as her words stormed out, her ueedle flew in and out of the coat she was finishing, and, though Annie and Lizzie sometimes raised frightened

eyes to me, their dirty little fingers were never still. Tho only thing that interrupted her fronzy of vituperation was a racking cough. There was tho fire of f<rrer as well as of wrath, in he-r eyes, but she could not stop her work even to vent her anger. She coaild not even die in idleness, but as she coughed out her life she breathed a revenge of contagion into 1 the clothes eho sewed, more powerful than he? words. And it was evident that soon eho would leave a legacy of feeble and ignorant offspring as a burden on the country.

As I went out of the court the old image maker snarled as my shadow fell upon his window. He was putting fcco much red on the cheeks of hi<9 buxum Mother of Sorrow — but then he was not copying the lips and cheeks of Mrs Gefferetti.

Mrs Gefferetti's feeling that the children go to school not for their own benefit, but as a ©op to the American Government, is very general among the Italians. And considering the failure of our system of education really to educate, they are hardly to be blamed. But the problem grows in seriousness when these children are forced into- industry. Take, for instance, th« ease of Angela Carmena.

She is a little girl of nine, and tho 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 be submitted to the contaminating influences of American civilisation as typified by James Street, where she lives; for through a long industrious day she sits at homo and sews pants to a present advantage to her family of about two dollars a week. The Carmehas havo not solved tho 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 shoos or stockings or more than two other garments — and any extraneous matter ■'olleoted upon their persons was evidently not interfered with, but was left to drop off of its own accord. B-eside a chair, Retta, Angela's younger sister, who was oaily six and not yet able to sew. stood and pulled bastings. She might have been an attractive child but for tho disease which

COVERED HER HEAD WITH

GREAT GREY FLAKES. These fell upon the floor and th© ga>rmeut on which she was working. Of course, these would probably be brushed off before this reached the customer ; and anyway this might only be a bad case o'f eczema of the head and not favus, which is a virulent infectious disease. I could not tell which it was, because to tho un medical mind favua is only distinguished by its odour, and in the' Carmena home there, was so ■many warring amells that no one of them could be isolated long enough for identification. And anyway favus does not necessarily mean death. But suppose it were favus? There were contagions about some of these tenements compared with which favus was as. the glow of perfect health.

This finishing of garments is so poorlv paid that only the quickest and most skilful workers can make a living at it even 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 combining their work with that other profession. In two of these houses I found little girls helping

' the women with their sewing. It certainly seems tiTat 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 b© free from physical contagion. There may be 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 automaticallyIn spite of the prevalence of child labour, it was difficult to see children actually at work in the homes. An agitating Child Labour Committee and an interfering Press have produced a I certain nervousness in the Italian mind. Of course, there ia 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 thero would be 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 bo caught at their task. Onoe a girl in a Hull House Club brought me two magenta cotton roeee flanked by three emerald green leaves, which ,she had made. I remember new that, though I avss touched and pleased with the gift, I hesitated to do violence to my colour sense- by putting them in my hair as she evidently expected. If I had known then as I know now the conditions under which flowers are made in the homes, nothing would have changed my hesitancy into compliance. Everyone who has worn artificial flowers has noticed the weird cdour that they emit 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 £hat I hesitated to intrude lest my entrance should crowd some of them out. Why should tho 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 bkssoms, sit little darkeyed, children. It is a beautiful, pleasing and artistic combination— that of the cl.ild 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 bram cells, and, when thought involuntarily ensues, the picture of the<?e children, stringing pink cotton rcse petals from seven in the morning till nine at night ceases to alluro 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 thero is a certain amount of skill required in [he making; and a little more money i6 to be got at it, for more children in proportion can be employed.- For instance, in an unlicensed tenement on Thompson Street was an Italian mother and her four children making pink apple blossoms. They had 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 them to his sister of thirteen, who attached the q;reen calix ; th© mother fastened on ITie stem, and a Hoy of eleven, \yho could count, tied the-rn into bunches. The four-year-old baby was not yet actively engaged in production — I do not* know, of course, ...1,.. i, o j;a „.„,+ !,_„ ,i.\. ~-l f«.r,... xi,.

cradle into the artificial flower industry — but for some reiscn he was paining — briefly, no doubt — in the land where children merely eat and play -nd grow. The- only colour in these five faces was that reflected from the nink cotton, petals, except in the cafie of the nine-year-old bov : and his cheeks were so flushed and ho

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 he has not yet returned. The rates of payment for those artificial flowers are very low. For instance, a firm on West Third Street 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 boy of one ; these are the only two who ! do not work on the flowers— the oldest, because ©ho works out, and the bab>, because of the still unperfected state of the industry which offers nothing suited to his abilities. The other children, aged respectively thirteen, eleven, eight, five and three, are all actively engaged. Together they make about six dozen bundles a day, for which they receive seven cents a dozen bunches, or about forty-two cents a day. Of couree, these children are not in school — why, in the name of progress, is the reading, writing or speaking of English necessary in such an occupation? A mere waste of brain power! Another Italian family, living on East Houston Street, has five 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 none of these children has been to school or (•peaks English, 1 These tliree families are exceptional only in the number of children working illegally. The whole Italian quarter is dotted with thceo greenhouses for the forcing of cloth and flowers at the cost of children's lives. Recently the making of hats has also 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 home production. For four successive evenings I visited one particular family south of Washington Square and found them busy on gloves — green kid gloves! The gloves are cut before they are given out by the contractor, and the work in the homo is to baste on the bits of leather or cloth about the opening and the button-holes, and baste the sides ready for the machine — A CHILD OF MNE CAN DO THIS

SUFFICIENTLY WELL

—and 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 nealcu are ai leas value to tiie community. It would alui-cist 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 who:n it deprives of work — but "in t. 1 fact that it destroys for small prcii^.c returns the future industrial value of the child. The worn-out garment worker — old while' he ie yet young- -is the logical development ol the exploited child. The man who must be supported after ho is forty is the child who at fourteen supported his father. If the burden of this man's support fell on th-oss who had profited by his youth, there would be some sort of justice in it; but it falls either 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 prim-, ary object is the protection and rearing of children, has become the scene of their most merciless exploitation. The law bag little control here in the matter of light, or sanitation, or hours. The child is left to the tender mercies of parental love, and from the days when babies were fed into the red-hot arms of Moloch, 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 th« impersonal wearer of tne clothes whom he does not see? Even if he knows the danger, will he care to J protect the consumer from tuberculosis, from favus, or from the nameless diseases of vice?