Child Labor 1912

The Child that Toileth Not. The Story of a Government Investigation that was Suppressed With one hundred and twenty-one illustrations by Thomas Robinson Dawley, Jr. Former Special Agent, Bureau of Labor, Department of Commerce and Labor, Washington D.C. New York: Gracia Publishers, 1913 (Second Edition).

A review that is somewhat belated, being 95 years after publication:

This book was uncovered recently in a old building in Birmingham, Alabama, one of many subject to severe moisture damage and possibly the object of a mouse's interest since a quarter-sized chunk has been eaten out of the spine. The book is hardly in condition to be sold, although the lowest price I could find for it was $150.00.

Why is the book so interesting - because it supposedly involves a suppressed government investigation? This is hardly the only reason. President Roosevelt signed a joint resolution by Congress to research the condition of working women and children employed in the United States, and the Commission of Labor sought researchers who would carry out this task. Our author, Thomas Robinson Dawley, fascinated by the issue, took the challenge to travel throughout the South, including parts of Tennessee, South and North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi to see how people lived and to see what in particular was the effect of cotton mill employment on the lives of the white rural poor.

I really enjoy the wonderful detail provided in this book and the way in which it captures, not only in its 121 photographs but in words, the realities of daily life for rural people. Traveling by horse, under not always so comfortable conditions, facing difficult stream crossings, cold winter days, not always abundant food, Dawley managed to collect enough detail to give a living picture of life in the rural South. Staying in people's houses he had to a chance to see what people ate or didn't eat, what the children did or didn't do, how the houses were built, what clothes were worn, what health conditions were like, what work was done, how people paid for goods, what means of exchange were used.

Here is an example:

"I stopped for dinner with the postmaster at the mouth of Mine Fork. He lived in a roughly-built, but comfortable board house papered with old newspapers. He was a kindly man who kept a little store at the cross-roads. He owned forty acres of land, with a good barn, and necessary outhouses. His wife served us a dinner of salt pork in abundance, potatoes and "sour cabbage," with the usual corn-bread and biscuits." (p. 203)

On to the point of the book. Dawley argues shockingly for the view that children and women were by no means universally exploited, that, in fact, the local cotton mills in rural communities throughout the South provided white rural families with opportunities for self-development that were not associated with the hard-scrabble farming conditions where people grew corn on rocky hillsides, made moonshine and participated in murderous family feuds. Young children wanted to work and to contribute to the welfare of their families, Dawley demonstrates. A thirteen-year old worker could contribute substantially to the well-being of his family. Mill owners did not by any means typically force children to work beyond their capacity. Large families of women and children could improve their lives substantially this way. The welfare -- schools and health care -- sometimes associated with the local mills had a lot to do with the need to improve the conditions of people so they in turn could perform the tasks required of them. Among other things, the cotton mills successfully employed the group known then as "the feeble-minded," a group that a decade or two later were being institutionalized for their lack of productivity.

The following statement is made in the conclusion of the book, a statement implying misrepresentation of labor conditions in the South:

"While thousands of dollars were squandered by the Federal bureau of Labor, in its investigation of woman and child labor, to prove that the manufacturers are rascals; that they lie with respect to the ages of the children employed; that they hide them away when investigators are sent to report upon them and that they can get the same labor from adults; and finally that they compel them to work when they should be in school, and underfeed and underpay their employees generally--not a word of the revelations showing the misrepresentations of the agitators, reformers and other interests of the kind was allowed to go before the public in the reports." (481)

According to Dawley, the Child Labor Committees "condemn the business interests of the country, the men who make the wheels of industry go round and set the pace for real progress,..." (483), an example of which he finds in a Lanette, Alabama cotton mill manufacturer who had built a school costing $20,000.

Dawley explains that his research was repudiated and discredited, that he was removed from his position in the Bureau of Labor. In his last line of the book he explains his reason for writing up his research, namely, "because I had become convinced of the great wrong being done a class of very poor people, our own people, by the persistent agitation and misrepresentations of conditions effecting their welfare, and the ultimate aim to inhibit their further progress through the open doors of the industries that lead them to better things, even though in some instances their children are obliged to work." (490)

Reading this book led me to various thoughts about the child labor law, in particular, the thought that it throws the baby out with the bath water. The problem is with abuse in working conditions, not with employment as such. From the time children are quite young -- my experience suggests -- they can and want to work. Such work could materially contribute to their learning and to the well-being of their families, to their integration into the community, to their level of general skill. Today, child labor legislation and custom and culture have brought us to such a pass that children are not permitted to work when they want to, are then imprisoned in schools in order to "learn," which they clearly are not doing, while being frequently blamed for their lack of productivity. How many times have I heard people complain about the horrors of the teen years...years whose horrors sometimes don't seem to let up until the children are actually employed. While parents are vastly over-worked, why shouldn't children be permitted to contribute to the well being of their families, thereby helping everyone to acquire a measure of autonomy, each according to his or her needs and ability? It's a question worth asking.

Posted at Monday, September 22, 2008 04:48 PM
In Education & Children Category | Permalink