Page:Solution of the Child Labor Problem.djvu/21

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
14
CHILD LABOUR PROBLEM.

show her that thirteen plus three and one-half did not make fourteen.

At last the night shift "came off" and this frail bit of humanity, who had worked three and a half years between her thirteenth and fourteenth birthdays, walked stolidly into the mill to stand for eleven hours in front of a spinning-frame, listening to the whirring of the machinery and watching the gliding of the threads.

That side of the picture, the child's side, is the one most frequently emphasized, but there are other aspects of equal importance. A boy of eighteen had been working for seven years in a soft-coal mine.

"Yes, I can write,—only my name, though. Read? Sure; I read the paper most every day, but it's slow work."

"Didn't you go to school? "

"To school? Did I? Well, I guess I did. It was in one door and out of the other. How is a feller going to school if he starts at eleven in the mines?"

The school is also interested in child labor.

Then there is the manufacturer's side of