The wrong and injustice of child-labor is equal for both sexes and no
law can be too stringent or too severely enforced against it. The
social waste of using youth exclusively in wage-earning pursuits can
easily be proved, in the case of girls, to extend to years older than
in the case of boys. The family cannot be maintained in stable
condition, and certainly can not progress in social value, unless the
majority of young girls are given the right attitude toward it and
time to prepare for its opportunities and responsibilities. If, as is
generally now believed, the legal majority and voting age for boys and
girls should be the same, namely, twenty-one years, then the girls, as
potential mothers, must have a distinct and specialized protection up
to that legal majority from all that harms health, prevents
safeguarded recreation, or turns life-currents away from the home to
the factory. The death-rate of babies when mothers work in factories
or shops with no provision for special rest is one testimony to the
social improvidence of our present industrial use of older women. The
life-long invalidism of many women, the childlessness of multitudes,
the statistics of home conditions revealed by Children's Courts
furnish testimony of like character. The unknown toll of loss of
personal aptitude for family life leading to broken homes, or to
hopeless struggles against invasions by poverty of the right of common
men and women to a home, are proof positive that a change in economic
conditions is demanded in the interest of family life.
=Social Measures Needed to Prevent These Evils.=--These social evils
connected with child-labor and the neglect in the industrial world of
youth and its needs are not to be mended by helps to individuals
alone. More radical measures are required for the protection of
society's most precious asset, the health, happiness and leisure of
all its children.
"Education," says the ancient sage, "is the ladder that every child
must climb in order to become all that he is meant to become; and
therefore children are made unfit for other employments in order that
they may have leisure to learn." To this may be added, the type of
education that fits the average girl for high usefulness as a
housemother is an absolute need if the average home life is to be made
a centre of freedom and of happiness. Those, therefore, who are
working against child-labor and against the unrestricted use of
mothers of young children and of potential mothers, in wage-earning
industry, are working directly, and with great power, for the
preservation and stability of the family. Those also who are working
through the formal education of the schools for the insertion of study
and practice along lines of home-making are making a complementary and
valuable contribution toward the inner unity and the outer success of
the family.
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.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account