Children employed as varnishers in cheap furniture factories inhale
poisonous fumes all day long and suffer from a variety of intestinal
troubles in consequence. The gilding of picture frames produces a
stiffening of the fingers. The children who are employed in the
manufacture of wall papers and poisonous paints suffer from slow
poisoning. The naphtha fumes in the manufacture of rubber goods produce
paralysis and premature decay. Children employed in morocco leather
works are often nauseated and fall easy victims to consumption. The
little boys who make matches, and the little girls who pack them in
boxes, suffer from phosphorous necrosis, or “phossy-jaw,” a gangrene of
the lower jaw due to phosphor poisoning. Boys employed in type foundries
and stereotyping establishments are employed on the most dangerous part
of the work, namely, rubbing the type and the plates, and lead poisoning
is excessively prevalent among them as a result. Little girls who work
in the hosiery mills and carry heavy baskets from one floor to another,
and their sisters who run machines by foot-power, suffer all through
their after life as a result of their employment. Girls who work in
factories where caramels and other kinds of candies are made are
constantly passing from the refrigerating department, where the
temperature is perhaps 20 degrees Fahr., to other departments with
temperatures as high as 80 or 90 degrees. As a result, they suffer from
bronchial troubles.
These are only a few of the many occupations of children that are
inherently unhealthful and should be prohibited entirely for children
and all young persons under eighteen years of age. In a few instances it
might be sufficient to fix the minimum age for employment at sixteen, if
certain improvements in the conditions of employment were insisted upon.
Other dangers to health, such as the quick transition from the heat of
the factory to the cold outside air, have already been noted. They are
highly important causes of disease, though not inherent in the
occupation itself in most cases. A careful study of the child-labor
problem from this largely neglected point of view would be most
valuable. When to the many dangers to health are added the dangers to
life and limb from accidents, far more numerous among child workers than
adults,[133] the price we pay for the altogether unnecessary and
uneconomic service of children would, in the Boer patriot’s phrase,
“stagger humanity,” if it could be comprehended.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account