WOMEN AND CHILDREN IN THE COTTON MILLS
Women and Children in the Cotton Mills IN JANUARY, 1907, Congress authorized the Secretary of Commerce and Labor to investigate the conditions of women and children wage earners in the United...
...and of general unsanitary conditions in an industry peculiarly favorable to the spread of tuberculosis...
...In these states are found over four-fifths of all the workers in this industry...
...There are no rest rooms in any of the mills, and no law with reference to them, except an extremely feeble one in Rhode Island...
...Deplorable Conditions Disclosed SINCE THE INDUSTRY employs so large a percentage of the American mothers of the next generation, girls under 16, and "women" between the ages of 16 and 21 (we call them girls too when they are in high school and college), we as a nation are specially interested in the sanitary conditions under which they do their work...
...of children under 12 working through the night, sometimes with only four hours of rest out of twenty-four...
...In North Carolina, where a child may go to work at 13 providing he has been in school four months during the previous year, whether or not he can read or write, one in every six of the native white children between the ages of 10 and 14 is illiterate...
...This is because the effects of good child labor laws and of adequate provisions for their enforcement are so plainly shown...
...The first volume deals with the Cotton Textile Industry which, in 1905, employed 125,000 women,—60,000 more than any other manufacturing industry,—and 40,000 children, or more than any other four industries combined...
...In Mississippi, where at the time the investigation was made, there was no child labor law, one employee in every four in the mills was under 16 years of age...
...Second, in this report, side by side with stories of abuses, are statistics showing how prevalent the abuses are...
...The number is 25,437 and it includes neither children of foreign birth nor negroes...
...The number of women workers provided with seats varies from 27 per cent, in Georgia to 85 per cent, in Rhode Island...
...From the factories in the states mentioned, 198 were selected for study, some large, some small, some in cities, some in towns, and some in country districts, the effort being to select a representative group...
...In December, 1910, the first of the twenty volumes of the report was published It was a long delay, excusable no doubt, but serious considering the vital character of the investigation...
...Looking through the report for information in this regard, we find much to justify the fears that led to the investigation...
...We may therefore approach the story with confidence that it does not exaggerate conditions...
...A Call to Action I DO NOT KNOW how that part of the report which deals particularly with children appeals to others but to me it is a message of encouragement and a call to be up and doing in the interest of child labor legislation...
...This makes it difficult to distinguish between those accidents due to carelessness of the employees and those due to unprotected machinery...
...We find that no standard has been establised for the quality of the air in factories as in England where 9 parts of carbon dioxide in 10,000 parts of air is the limit...
...The investigation was made in the fall of 1907 and the spring of 1908...
...In no one of the states is there adequate provision for recording accidents...
...The record is not wanting in splendid examples, particularly in the South, of individual efforts to improve conditions...
...To this question the following answers may fairly be made: First, government reports are always conservative...
...We find that while it is perfectly possible to reduce the amount of lint and dust by employing a sufficient number of sweepers and scrubbers, and by shutting off the card rooms and other places where lint is greatest, from the rest of the factory, this is seldom done...
...In Massachusetts where there is a good child labor law and comparatively ample provision for its enforcement, only one employee in thirty was under 16 and of these only about one in thirty was employed against the law...
...Women and Children in the Cotton Mills IN JANUARY, 1907, Congress authorized the Secretary of Commerce and Labor to investigate the conditions of women and children wage earners in the United States...
...Volume I, Cotton Textile Industry (1,044 pages), and Volume II, Men's Ready-made Clothing (878), now for sale by Superintendent of Documents, Washington, D. C. Price 75 cents a volume...
...In this state children of eight were found upon the factory pay rolls...
...In the placing of the closets there is often little provision for privacy, the record in this respect being most disgraceful...
...In Massachusetts where a child cannot go to work even at 14 unless he can read and write, only one native white child in five hundred between the ages of 10 and 14 is illiterate...
...of atmospheric conditions adapted to the needs of cotton and not to those of human beings...
...It is for you to see that this report which has been made at great expense is read, discussed and given wide publicity...
...Yet all of the children in this mill were reported by the officials of the mill to be over 12 years of age, and the statement could be disproved in only two cases...
...We find, for instance, that although for the sake of the cotton, the air in most of the rooms must be kept artificially moist and that the clothing of the operatives is likely to beeome very damp, there are dressing rooms provided for women in only 8 of the 198 establishments visited...
...One of these children is an emaciated little elf 50 inches high and weighing perhaps 48 pounds, who works from 6 at night till 6 in the morning...
...of children illegally employed even where the legal age is as low as 12...
...Third, in addition to the general editorial statement in the preface that owing to the difficulty of ascertaining ages, the number of children reported as illegally employed's without doubt too small, we find repeatedly throughout the report statements such as this from individual investigators: "I know beyond a reasonable doubt that there are 10 or 12 children under 12 working in the mill (one in North Carolina), 7 or 8 of them at night...
...In Maine, on the other hand, where there is a 14 year limit but only one factory inspector for the entire state, one employee in every twelve was found to be under 16 and more than half of these were illegally employed...
...In 7 factories in the North and 53 in the South, the water-closets are so situated as to affect the air of the mills...
...In these factories there were employed about 80,000 people or not far from one-third of all the workers in the ten states...
...In 5 Northern factories and in 76 Southern factories the water-closets are reported as in "bad" as distinguished from "fair" or "good" condition...
...In 38 mills in the North, and in 152 in the South, spitting on the floor was customary in spite if the fact that tuberculosis is extremely prevalent...
...A Terrible Story IT IS A BLACK RECORD...
...Of the 1,500 copies of the first volume published for free distribution, 1,000 are to be withheld until the set is complete...
...of tiny creatures serving as "helpers," having been brought into the factories by older brothers and sisters for the purpose of increasing the family earnings or of currying favor with employers...
...Now it appears that the report is not to be nearly so widely nor so promptly circulated as was hoped...
...There are stories of technical schools, of libraries, of clubs and kindergartens, but side by side with these are stories of poor schools, of children excused from school when the mills are short of help and many others which show the futility of leaving the matter of education to individuals...
...One mill owner in Mississippi is said to have sent eight teachers in the school of his town to Chicago for a six weeks' summer course and to have paid all their expenses...
...The common drinking cup is universal...
...Finally, a word to those women of America whose leisure is gained at the expense of the labor of other women and of children in the factories...
...Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the United States...
...a story of children working in factories when they should be at school...
...As only the second volume of the report is out up to the present time, it will probably be months, if not years, before the twentieth is published...
...A few of seven were found at work and one of six, probably supporting his widowed mother or disabled father, but these last were not on the pay rolls...
...This was done after long continued importunity from a group of people, familiar with industrial conditions, who feared that the United States was facing what England had already met,—widespread physical degeneration among its factory workers...
...Conditions were studied in ten states, four in the North,—Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island—and six in the South,—Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi...
...In only three of the four Northern states, and in one of the Southern states are there legal provisions for fire escapes...
...But, some one asks, "Is this not a record of individual cases from which it is unfair to draw general conclusions...
...In only one state, Massachusetts, is there a legal provision that employers must furnish cuspidors...
...Twenty volumes...
...It is said also that no serious attempt is made to limit the humidity of the air to that which is necessary to keep the cotton in good condition...
...And, finally, those who asked to have the investigation made feel that the report is ultra-conservative...
...This means that there is no opportunity for the changing of damp for dry clothing before leaving the factory, and that the outer garments must be kept all day in the damp work rooms...
...An almost equally large percentage of child workers was found in South Carolina where there was a 12 year limit but where children under 12 were allowed to work if they were dependent on their own earnings or had widowed mothers or disabled fathers, and where there was no factory inspection...
Vol. 3 • March 1911 • No. 11
