It is not my purpose to deal specifically with all the various forms of
child labor. That would require a much larger volume than this to be
devoted exclusively to the subject. Children are employed at a tender
age in hundreds of occupations. In addition to those already enumerated,
there were in 1900, according to the census, nearly 12,000 workers under
sixteen years of age employed in the manufacture of tobacco and cigars,
and it is certain that the number actually employed in that most
unhealthful occupation was much greater. In New Jersey and Pennsylvania,
I have seen hundreds of children, boys and girls, between the ages of
ten and twelve years, at work in the factories belonging to the “Cigar
Trust.” Some of these factories are known as “kindergartens” on account
of the large number of small children employed in them.[125] It is by no
means a rare occurrence for children in these factories to faint or to
fall asleep over their work, and I have heard a foreman in one of them
say that it was “enough for one man to do just to keep the kids awake.”
In the domestic manufacture of cheap cigars, many very young children
are employed. Often the “factories” are poorly lighted, ill-ventilated
tenements in which work, whether for children or adults, ought to be
absolutely prohibited. Children work often as many as fourteen or even
sixteen hours in these little “home factories,” and in cities like
Pittsburg, Pa., it is not unusual for them, after attending school all
day, to work from 4 P.M. to 12.30 A.M., making “tobies” or “stogies,”
for which they receive from eight to ten cents per hundred.
In the wood-working industries, more than 10,000 children were reported
to be employed in the census year, almost half of them in saw-mills,
where accidents are of almost daily occurrence, and where clouds of fine
sawdust fill the lungs of the workers. Of the remaining 50 per cent, it
is probable that more than half were working at or near dangerous
machines, such as steam planers and lathes. Over 7000 children, mostly
girls, were employed in laundries; 2000 in bakeries; 138,000 as servants
and waiters in restaurants and hotels; 42,000 boys as messengers; and
20,000 boys and girls in stores. In all these instances there is every
reason to suppose that the actual number employed was much larger than
the official figures show.
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