CHILD LABOR AND COMPULSORY EDUCATION-THE

SCHOOL ASPECT

GEORGE H. MARTIN, SECRETARY OF THE STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION, BOSTON, MASS.

In all ages and among all peoples men have talked much of their own rights and of children's duties; we are beginning to reverse the terms and assert children's rights and men's duties. The assertion of rights is in itself a sign of trouble. Trouble causes it, and trouble follows it. It means war, and there never can be local order or universal peace until every human being has all that belongs to him and no more. Meantime, society must occupy itself in finding out what does belong to its different members, and keep on fighting.

It is not creditable to either modern civilization or modern Christianity that, after seventy-five years of fighting the wholesale exploitation of child labor in mines and mills, we should still find the enemy in defiant possession of so many intrenched positions, and defending them so successfully. Tho the cry of the children has been sounding in our ears for two or three generations, it is still true that every discovery and invention which modifies any industry so as to make child labor profitable makes it inevitable. Society has not yet learned that

The child's sob in the silence curses deeper
Than the strong man in his wrath.

That the strong man does not now anywhere have it all his own way is reason for thankfulness and for hope.

The fundamental postulate of this subject of child labor and compulsory education shapes itself in my mind somewhat as follows: Every child comes into the world by no voluntary act of his own. In the world he finds himself subject to inexorable physical laws, whose penalties work automatically and pitilessly. He finds himself, too, subjected to a multitude of social obligations equally inexorable, and he finds society organized with great complexity to enforce these obligations. Born with capacities for enjoyment lower and higher, he finds that the road to the highest enjoyment is a straight and narrow way, to find and to pursue which demands the most active and highly trained intelligence.

When he comes into the world, this intelligence is only a germ-a possibility. Its development is wavering and uncertain. At best it is slow; it may be arrested at any stage; it may never begin. His intelligence is developed, first, thru his own experiences, and, second, thru the experiences of the race. In this process he needs help-instruction and guidance. His own experiences need to be interpreted to him, and the experience of the race made known to him.

Thus two inalienable rights of the child reveal themselves. He has a

claim upon the world for time, and a claim for instruction: time in which to multiply experiences and to co-ordinate them; time to look about him and discover what kind of a world he has been born into, what kinds of things are in it, and what they are for, what kinds of people are in it, and what they are for; time to find his way and to become way-wise; or, to change the figure, time to get his bearings and to learn the ropes. Besides this, he has a claim for time to learn what people before him have learned, so that he may come to his struggle for existence with his intelligence broadened and quickened by having come into touch with the vital social forces that have been active in the world thru all time.

He has a claim to instruction, and to guidance while he is being instructed, and to intelligent instruction and intelligent guidance. His claim includes, first, instruction as to himself, his own nature and powers and needs, and guidance in the use of his powers and in the satisfying of his needs. It includes, second, instruction as to the world about him and as to his relation to it, how to use it, and how to find his way in it. It includes, third, instruction and guidance in finding and using most expeditiously and profitably the knowledge which has been acquired and stored by the generations which have gone before.

Were these two rights, which to us seem so self-evident as to need no public declaration, everywhere recognized and conceded, there would be no need of this discussion. But because they are not everywhere recognized, and because the child is too ignorant to declare them and too feeble to maintain them, a third right appears. The child has a right to protection in his rights.

His rights are paramount because he has everything at stake. No other claims can take precedence of his. They may be maintained against the world.

Were he the child of a savage, he
Life about him is so simple, nature

When we have brought ourselves to assent to all these propositions, our real difficulties begin. We say the child has a right to time. To how much time? He has a right to instruction. To how much instruction and to what kind? He has a right to protection. From whom does he need protection, and by whom and how should it be afforded? He needs protection against himself. might be safely left to follow his own will. is so open, that by observation and imitation he might come easily and early to know all of life that he needs to know for his comfort and happiness. Unfortunately for him, into whatever social state he is born, no matter how complex the civilization, he comes into the world with the same equipment of primitive instincts as if he were a savage. But for civilized life, these are inadequate and destructive. His wayward, uncalculating impulses must be restrained until he can learn why as well as how to restrain himself. The child has a right to be governed. To leave him to himself is cruelty.

He may need protection against his parents--sometimes against their indifference and neglect, sometimes against their physical abuse. With this

phase we are not now concerned. He needs protection more often against their ignorance and selfishness. Their own views of life may be so narrow, and their power to reason so rudimentary, that they may, without knowing it, sacrifice their children to their own comfort or ease. It is at this point that we touch most fundamentally the subject of child labor.

Wherever we find children denied prematurely their right to time and instruction, we find as the primary cause the ignorance and the selfishness of the parents. In every investigation into child labor it is found that the motive of the parent is to relieve himself from labor. Cases are common-among certain nationalities they are almost universal-where the multiplication of children is for the avowed purpose of increasing the productive labor of the family, and thereby relieving the father more quickly from the necessity of labor. There is evidence that, as the proportion of the family income derived from the labor of children increases, the earnings of the father decrease. A young Italian girl who asked for an employment certificate gave as a reason that her father-was getting too old to work. He was forty-two.

Whatever may be true in the country and on farms, it is certain that in factory towns, where child labor is depended on for family support, racesuicide is not delayed by large families.

To this crime against childhood the parent is tempted by the greed of employers. They furnish the opportunity which in the North has drawn, as by magnetic attraction, the poor and ignorant peasants of Canada and Southern Europe, and in the South the equally poor and ignorant families from the farms and the mountains. Against this conspiracy between employer and parent the child is helpless. Only society, by means of laws carefully drawn and rigidly enforced, can secure him his rights. To such legislation and to such enforcement society is drawn by its own interest, and compelled by its highest obligation. Mercantile interests can look out for themselves, but the children must be protected by the state.

"Business," said Talleyrand, cynically, "means other men's money." Too often it means other men's bodies and souls.

American conditions nowhere furnish a parallel to the revolting revelations made by the parliamentary commission reports during the last century. Such indecent cruelty would not now be tolerated anywhere; but the same spirit is back of the scanty schooling allowed, the low age limit tolerated, and the exemptions of favored industries.

The obligation of the state has come to be recognized in all European countries, and in most of the states of our own country. The exceptions are so few as to be conspicuous, and the absence of child-labor laws in any state gives to that state an unenviable distinction. The history of child-labor legislation shows a steadily rising standard of judgment as to the rights of the child a continuous quickening of the public conscience in regard to those rights, and an increasing rigor in the effort to protect them. For example: In Massachusetts, beginning at a time when a child of any age might be employed

in any industry any number of hours a day and all the time, we have seen an age limit fixed successively at ten, thirteen, and fourteen years. We have seen employment denied, first, in manufacturing and mechanical industries, and, later, in mercantile establishments. We have seen the hours of labor limited, first, to ten hours a day, and then to fifty-eight hours a week. We have seen the required schooling rise from twelve weeks to eighteen, to twenty-four, to thirty-two, until now there is an average of thirty-seven. It has taken seventy years to bring all this about.

The same evidence of a rising tide of righteous public sentiment exists in the legislation of nearly all the states, some of which now surpass Massachusetts in particular features of their laws. A summary of the whole field shows that every stage of this progress is still represented in some state. There are still low age limits, still weakening exemptions, still favored industries, still scant schooling, still inadequate means of enforcement. Legislation lags, and execution is feeble.

The time given to children to call their own, in which to equip themselves for the battle of life, in the most advanced communities has reached a maximum of fourteen years. This is low enough for any community, and, wherever there is a lower limit, all the social forces should combine to raise it. In my judgment it is also high enough, at least for the present. In fourteen years a child of even moderate ability, in a community which furnishes adequate school facilities, should have acquired a good elementary education, broad enough and thoro enough for him to build upon by voluntary effort such superstructure of more advanced culture as he is inclined to.

This may easily be shown by a brief analysis of the modern elementaryschool course. Such an analysis justifies as not extravagant Horace Mann's declaration: "The common school is the greatest invention of man." In the first place it secures the formation of certain habits which underlie all modern social relations: punctuality, attention, obedience, order, and industry. This function of the lower school has been so luminously treated by Dr. Harris that it needs only mention here. The wilful, wayward, intermittent impulses of the child which, unchecked and undirected, would leave him a savage in the midst of civilization, a prey to his own passions and to the passions of others, are turned into self-directing forces by which the child becomes able to find and make his way thru the mazes of life. The fixing of these habits involves some of the most profound psychologic changes which take place in human life.

Secondly, the elementary school equips the child with the universal instruments of social intercourse: reading, writing, drawing, and a knowledge of numbers. Having these, in the social statistics of all countries, a person is not classed as illiterate. The Scotchman was right when he declared before a parliamentary committee that if a man knew the twenty-six letters of the alphabet, he had the key to all knowledge.

Once the elementary school undertook to do no more than to furnish these

instruments, and, having them, a child might find his way alone. Now the school does much more. It opens doors for the child, and, before he has reached the age of fourteen, it has opened these doors wide enough, and held them open long enough, to have furnished knowledge, to have created interest, and to have developed tastes.

It opens a door into the world in which he lives. Thru his study of geography he gets a glimpse of men and things outside his immediate surroundings. He has his horizon enlarged, his data for judgments increased, his interests and sympathies widened, his own place in the world made more clear. By all these means he is made more fit to go alone.

Another door is opened into the world of the past. By his study of history he learns to interpret the present in terms of cost. He acquires standards of value of human effort in industry, in the arts, in social improvement. By what men have done he learns what men can do. And he acquires standards of conduct as he forms the habit of looking at the moral aspect of human relations. All this fits him to fill his place in society worthily.

The elementary school does more than to give him the tool called reading. It shows him how to use it. It opens a door into the world's literature, and gives him a tempting glimpse of its variety and attractiveness. A well-taught child in a well-ordered school should, by the time he has reached fourteen, have the inclination and ability to use the facilities for culture which a public library affords. Such a child needs no compulsory continuation school.

Besides all these things, thru the school supplementing the home or without it, the child is able to make some moral distinctions, and he has acquired some sense of moral obligation. He knows the difference between truth and falsehood, between mine and thine, between fair dealing and trickery. He knows honor from meanness, and has a keen sense of justice. All this is no mean equipment for the young knight as he goes out to make his way in the world.

If parents and schools have done their duty by him, another door has been opened the door into industrial life; for a child has a right to be taught to work with his hands, and to be made to work as a part of his preparation for self-support. This is not merely or chiefly that he may acquire manual skill, tho he will find that useful; but that he may learn the social use of labor, and begin to feel, before he can see, that labor is the tie that binds men together in the family and in the state.

The child has a right to be taught how to be useful, and to be increasingly useful as he grows in strength and intelligence. He has a right to know the pleasure of service and to feel the obligation of service. He has a right to have some place made for him in the industrial life of the family.

The attitude of society toward childhood in this respect seems radically wrong. A child is considered a gift of nature, like a piece of land, or a grove of trees, or a spring of water, or a running brook, or a deposit of mineral ore, which the owner may utilize or not, as he pleases.