You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age. Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Saturday March 19, 1904
From The Labor World: Jenks Pleads on Behalf of Steel Trust to Save Child Labor
R. J. W. Jenks speaking before the House committees on Labor:
For God's sake, don't legislate to stop a boy working! He is not going to kill himself. [They] are kept in school so long we cannot get them.
"For God's sake, don't stop a boy from working!"
The Labor World tells the incredible story wherein the Steel Trust reveals the truth about themselves:
CHILD LABOR IS WHAT THE TRUST WANT NOW
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"DON'T LEGISLATE TO STOP A BOY WORKING," SAYS JENKS.
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Boys are Kept in School so Long The Trusts Can Not Get Them. Trust Manger Believes That Child Labor Is Right. Cheapens Cost of Production, Which Is Aim In Modern Production. All Trusts are in Politics.
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Washington, D. C., March 17.-R. J. W. Jenks, general Manager of the American Steel Hoop Company's mills, speaking last week for the Steel Trust before the House Committees on Labor regarding the eight-hour bill, did more than oppose that measure. He advocated child labor.
"For God's sake," he cried in passionate pleading, "don't legislate to stop a boy working! He is not going to kill himself."
"Boys," according to this broad-minded and warm-hearted friend of youth, "are kept at school so long we cannot get them."
It is not stated that Mr. Jenks wept as he pictured the pathetic plight of the Steel Trust in not being able to get children of sufficiently tender age to toil in its mills-at wages suited to their small number of years, of course-but who can doubt that, as his noble ideas welled from his lips, there was moisture in his eyes?
Mr. Jenk's belief that labor would be beneficial and not injurious to the boys now wasting their time at school is no doubt sincere. Labor, in his view, is mere pastime. "Ten or eleven hours a day working in a rolling mill," he asserted, "is only good, healthy exercise."
Here we have a soul-brother to the pious Mr. Baer, of the Coal Trust-which employes plenty of children at the breakers-and who regards himself and other gentlemen of his kind as "Christian men, to whom God in His infinite wisdom has entrusted the property interests of the country."
Fortunately for the schoolboys, and for men, too, the committee does not wear trust spectacles. It has a conscience. It believes that children have a right to education and were born for something better than to be little slaves to "captains of industry." It believes, too, in the right of men to organize for self-protection, so that they also shall save themselves from slavery.
Naturally it agonizes the Jenkses and the Baers to see their employes formed into trade unions, which raise wages and shorten the hours of labor, and enable fathers to support their children. But for these trade unions the children would have to support themselves, and grow up in a state of ignorance that would have a most favorable effect upon dividends by lowering wages.
The Steel Trust, like the Coal Trust, is in politics. It supports the Republican party from which is obtained "wise, judicious and conservative legislation," and ever ready help in opposition when legislation in the interest of the worker and consumer is proposed. Mr. Jenks is frank. His voice is truly that of the Trust for which he speaks. And the platform he offers to the party for the trusts is straightforward:
No restriction on the hours of labor, and
For God's sake don't legislate to stop a boy working! Boys are kept at school too long.
[emphasis added]
SOURCE
The Labor World
(Duluth, Minnesota & Superior, Wisconsin)
-of March 19, 1904
Note: While
The Labor World was published in Duluth, the paper declared itself:
DEVOTED TO THE INDUSTRIAL WELFARE OF THE HEAD OF THE LAKES
DULUTH AND SUPERIOR, SATURDAY, MARCH 19, 1904
Therefore, from now on, I will be giving equal credit to Superior, Wisconsin, for this fine labor newspaper, published every Saturday.
Photo: Child Laborer by Lewis Hines
Furman Owens, 12-years-old. Can't read. Doesn't know his A,B,C's. Said, "Yes I want to learn but can't when I work all the time." Been in the mills 4 years, 3 years in the Olympia Mill. Columbia, South Carolina.
http://historyofnonviolence.wiki.lovett.org/...
Note: photo taken after 1904 (1908-1912). Used here to represent all the boys that Jenks was attempting to save from spending too much time in school.
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Wednesday March 19, 2014
More on the work of Lewis Hine and the National Child Labor Committe
Lewis Hine
Lewis Hine, a New York City schoolteacher and photographer, believed that a picture could tell a powerful story. He felt so strongly about the abuse of children as workers that he quit his teaching job and became an investigative photographer for the National Child Labor Committee [founded in 1904]. Hine traveled around the country photographing the working conditions of children in all types of industries. He photographed children in coal mines, in meatpacking houses, in textile mills, and in canneries. He took pictures of children working in the streets as shoe shiners, newsboys, and hawkers.
In many instances he tricked his way into factories to take the pictures that factory managers did not want the public to see. He was careful to document every photograph with precise facts and figures. To obtain captions for his pictures, he interviewed the children on some pretext and then scribbled his notes with his hand hidden inside his pocket. Because he used subterfuge to take his photographs, he believed that he had to be "double-sure that my photo data was 100% pure--no retouching or fakery of any kind." Hine defined a good photograph as "a reproduction of impressions made upon the photographer which he desires to repeat to others." Because he realized his photographs were subjective, he described his work as "photo-interpretation."
[paragraph break added]
Source
"Teaching With Documents:
Photographs of Lewis Hine: Documentation of Child Labor"
http://www.archives.gov/...
See also: Display of the Work of Lewis Hine
http://www.historyplace.com/...
National Child Labor Committee
The National Child Labor Committee was organized on April 25, 1904 at a mass meeting at Carnegie Hall in New York City attended by men and women concerned with the plight of working children. They moved quickly to form an organization, to gain the support of prominent Americans and to identify the extent and scope of the problem.
In 1907 the NCLC was chartered by an Act of Congress, and immediately began to garner support and move towards action and advocacy. One of the first steps took place in early 1908 with the hiring of a tailor’s son from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, a budding anthropologist and photographer, Lewis Wickes Hine. His photographs would awaken the consciousness of the nation, and change the reality of life for millions of impoverished, undereducated children.
In 1912, one of the first goals of the NCLC was achieved: the establishment of a Children’s Bureau in both the U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Department of Labor. From 1910-1920, while publishing and disseminating the photographs of Lewis Hine, the Committee worked for passage of state and federal legislation to ban most forms of child labor, and to promote compulsory education in all states.
SOURCE
National Child Labor Committee
http://www.nationalchildlabor.org/...
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Fingers to the Bone: Child Farmworkers in the United States
Footage by U. Roberto Romano
The fight against child labor is not yet completed in the USA.
Ask your congress person to support the CARE Act:
http://hrw.kintera.org/...
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