The first sickening feature of this general situation is the high
infant mortality among the children of the workers. Many children come
merely to sap the strength of the mother, suffer and die, leaving to
show for their coming and going only an increased burden of sorrow and
debt. The lower the family income, the more of these babies die before
they are a year old.
A survey of infant mortality in Johnstown, Pa., by the federal
Children's Bureau, gave these typical results for the year 1911:
Infant Mortality
Father's Earnings Rate
Under $521.................. 197.3
$521 to $624................ 193.1
$625 to $779................ 163.1
$780 to $899................ 168.4
$900 to $1,199.............. 142.3
$1,200 or over.............. 102.
Ample........................ 88.
These figures do not represent the total income of all families.
Neither will money buy as much in 1920 as it did in 1911. Seventy per
cent of the people of the United States have incomes of less than
$1,000. This means that from 142 to 197 children born into such
families die before they are one year old. The births and deaths of
these children represent just so much useless burden of anguish and
sorrow to the workers.
Despite this high infant death rate, the workers of the United States
still have more children than they can care for. There are enough of
them left over to provide 3,000,000 child laborers, who by working for
a pittance crowd their parents out of employment and force the
families deeper into poverty.
When all is said and done, the workers who produce large families have
themselves to blame for the hundreds of thousands of unemployed
grasping for jobs, for the strike breakers, for the policemen who beat
up and arrest strikers and for the soldiers who shoot strikers down.
All these come from the families of workingmen. Their fathers and
mothers are workers for wages. Out of the loins of labor they come
into the world and compel surplus labor to betray labor that is
employed.
Nor is this all. When a workman of superior strength and skill,
protected by his union, manages to maintain a large or moderate sized
family in a degree of comfort, there always comes a time when he must
strike to preserve what he has won. If he is not beaten by unorganized
workers who seek his job, he still has to face the possibility of
listening to the cries of several hungry children. If the strike is a
long one, these cries often down the promptings of loyalty and class
interest--often they defeat him when nothing else could.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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