The most significant fact to be noted concerning the relation between child labor and immigration is the large proportion of children employed in factories in States where there is practically no immigrant population. Children of native-born American parents are drawn into the mills as a substitute for immigrant labor. This conclusion is derived from Table 93, showing the dependence of factories upon child labor in six leading manufacturing States, according to the recent census. TABLE 93. PER CENT OF CHILDREN UNDER 16 EMPLOYED IN FACTORIES, IN THE In the four leading manufacturing States of the North with a large immigrant population, child labor holds a subordinate place in the industrial organization, while in North and South Carolina one in every eight or nine factory operatives is under the age of 16. The lowest per cent of child workers is in New York, which is overrun by immigrants, old and new. selected industries, where the average number computed "as an abstract unit (like the foot-pound)" was 475,473, whereas the total “computed on the basis of time in operation would have exceeded 650,000," the variation being as high as 36 per cent.-XII. Census. Manufactures, Part I., pp. cvi., cx., and cxi. XIII. Census Bulletin. Manufactures, p. 19. Preliminary population statistics issued to the press by the Director of the Census. 1 The latest available statistics of the distribution of children employed in manufactures by nativity relate to the year 1900. The figures are given in Table 94. TABLE 94. DISTRIBUTION, BY PARENT NATIVITY AND COLOR, OF THE NUMBER OF CHILDREN OF BOTH SEXES, 10 TO 15 YEARS OF AGE, ENGAGED IN MANUFACTURES AND MECHANICAL PURSUITS, BY GEOGRAPHICAL DIVISIONS, 1900.1 Race and Nativity Con- North North In the country at large, the percentage ratio of children of each nativity employed in manufactures corresponded to the percentage of all breadwinners of the same nativity, engaged in manufacturing and mechanical pursuits. In other words, on the whole the foreign-born sent to the factories no more than their quota of children. There is a marked difference, however, in the ratio of children of native parents for each section of the country: in the South the Occupations, XII. Census, Table LVIII., p. clix. 2 The per cent distribution, by parent nativity and color, of persons of all ages engaged in manufactures in the United States was as follows: white of native parentage, 39.8 per cent; white of foreign parentage, 56.0 per cent; colored, 4.2 per cent.-Ibid., Table XXXVI., p. cxiii. overwhelming majority of factory workers under 16 years of age are children of native parents. Another important fact is the age distribution of children employed in factories. The Immigration Commission in its study of households of cotton-mill operatives in the North Atlantic States found but one child under 14 years of age at work in a total of 795 children between 6 and 13 years, and that a French-Canadian. There are as yet no comparable data more recent than the census figures for 1900. latter are presented in Table 95. TABLE 95. The COTTON-MILL OPERATIVES UNDER 14 YEARS OF AGE IN THE PRINCIPAL MANUFACTURING STATES, 1900.2 While, as has been shown above, the absolute number of children employed in factories is greater in the North than in the South, the children under 14 in the cotton mills of the South far outnumber those of the same age in the great manufacturing States of the North. This is, no doubt, due to the child-labor laws of the Northern States. No one in the Northern States to-day defends the employment of children under 14 in factories. In the Southern States, however, the economic needs of the growing manufacturing industries have produced eloquent advocates of * Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 10, Table 46, p. 419. Occupations at the XII. Census, Table LXV., pp. clxix.-clxxxv. child labor in positions of influence. Foreign-born wageearners are a negligible factor in the Southern labor market. The growth of manufacturing industries in the South is restricted by the natural increase of the native population. In order to extend their operations, the manufacturers of the South must resort to the employment of children, as did their predecessors in New England a century ago before immigration came to supply the needs of American industry. This situation is by no means confined to the South. Absence of foreign immigration has created a demand for the labor of native American children in the canneries and shoe factories of rural and semi-urban Missouri. The rural districts of Missouri lost, from 1900 to 1910, 3.5 per cent of their population. The total population of the State increased only 6 per cent. The foreign-born in 1910, as well as in 1900, constituted 7 per cent of the total population of the State at large, and only 3.3 per cent of the State outside of St. Louis and Kansas City. The additions to the foreign-born population through immigration since the census of 1900 averaged only 1310 persons annually, but the increase was concentrated in St. Louis and Kansas City, whereas the remainder of the State lost in ten years 8659 of its foreign-born population. The statistics of the State Labor Bureau show an increase of the number of working children in the smaller cities, the towns and rural sections, "which can be traced to the large number of shoe factories and canneries which sprang up, outside of St. Louis, Kansas City, and St. Joseph, during 1908." The foreignborn labor supply in those sections is negligible. The Commissioner of Labor offers the following explanation for the increase in the employment of children: "The cotton mills are set forth. as the savior of the people, religiously, educationally, and, according to Dr. Stiles, physically.” -Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Supplement, March, 1910. A. J. McKelway: The Mill or the Farm, p. 54. 2XIII. Census Bulletin. Population: United States, pp. 3, 37, 44. Also preliminary statements issued by the Director of the Census. The increase in working women and children in 1908 over 1907, shown by these statistics, does not mean that conditions are such that those who ought to remain at home and take care of domestic affairs must go out into the world and toil, but in reality is due to an increase in the number of establishments in which the light, delicate touch of a gentle hand is needed, instead of strength, endurance, and mechanical labor.... It is necessary to state here that while the canning industry of Missouri is still in its infancy, the year 1908 was probably the best the State has ever had in this line, and that is why more employees were needed. . . . The increase in child labor was not due to the stringency, the increased cost of living, or to the poorer condition of the masses, but, instead, to an increased demand for these workers from the new canneries and shoe factories. Both these lines have a class of very light work, suitable only for boys and girls, which does not pay enough weekly for older persons. This assertion is not made in defence of child labor, but merely to explain why it exists in canneries and shoe factories.' The explanation sounds very similar to that offered in the Southern States. It accounts, as far as it goes, for the employment of children in canneries: an agricultural community is the natural location for the canning industry, outside labor is scarce in rural districts and the canning season is short. No local advantage for the shoe factories, however, exists in rural Missouri. The centre of the shoe manufacturing industry is Massachusetts, which in 1905 contributed 45 per cent of the total output of the United States. The seat of the shoe-manufacturing industry of Missouri is St. Louis, whose output increased from 74 per cent of the total for the State in 1899 to 81 per cent in 1904.4 I 1 Reports of the Missouri Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1909, pp. 320–321. 2 "The cotton mills were the most powerful opponents [of the Louisiana child-labor law], ably seconded by the canning industries. To hear the representatives of both these industries, one, not knowing any better, would have been convinced that the most healthful, remunerative, educational place in the entire world in which to develop children was in a cotton mill or an oyster cannery. One fairly tingled to spend the rest of life shucking oysters or peeling shrimp." Supplement, Annals of the Am. Acad. of Political and Social Science, March, 1909. Jean M. Gordon: The Forward Step in Louisiana, p. 163. 3 Census Report, Manufactures. 1905, Part I., p. ccxxx. ♦ Ibid., pp. ccxxx. and ccxxxi. (computed). |