OF CHILD LABOR HEARING BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON INTERSTATE COMMERCE SIXTY-FOURTH CONGRESS FIRST SESSION ON H. R. 8234 AN ACT TO PREVENT INTERSTATE COMMERCE IN FOR OTHER PURPOSES MARCH 17, 1916 Printed for the use of the Committee on Interstate Commerce PART 2 WASHINGTON GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 1916 INTERSTATE COMMERCE IN PRODUCTS OF CHILD LABOR. FRIDAY, MARCH 17, 1916. UNITED STATES SENATE, COMMITTEE ON INTERSTATE COMMERCE, Washington, D. C. The committee assembled at 10.30 o'clock a. m. Friday, March 17, 1916, for the purpose of resuming the consideration of the bill (H. R. 8234) to prevent interstate commerce in the products of child labor, and for other purposes. Present: Senators Newlands (chairman), Clapp, Cummins, Robinson, La Follette, Underwood, and Townsend. The CHAIRMAN. Miss Garrett, you may make your statement. STATEMENT OF MISS MARY S. GARRETT, FOUNDER OF THE HOME FOR THE TRAINING OF DEAF CHILDREN BEFORE THEY ARE OF SCHOOL AGE, MEMBER OF THE PENNSYLVANIA COURT AND PROBATION ASSOCIATION, AND OF THE PHILADELPHIA JUVENILE COURT AND PROBATION ASSOCIATION. Miss GARRETT. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, my first contention is asking for the postponement of the Keating-Owen bill for a year in order that the citizens and Representatives of each State should investigate their own conditions thoroughly and then take up the question whether Federal legislation is advisable or whether what they have learned will not enable them to take better care of their children than would be possible in uniform Federal laws. In an article in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, March, 1914, Judge William N. Gemmill, who presided for the second year over the Chicago court of domestic relations, after speaking of the beneficial effect of the child-labor law of Illinois, says: There is, however, a danger not well understood by the average citizen, growing out of the strict enforcement of this law. In Illinois no child under the age of 14 years can ever legally be employed at any gainful occupation, and children between the ages of 14 and 16 years can not be employed during the months when school is in session, unless a certificate is obtained from the school authorities permitting such employment. One of the results of the rather strict enforcement of this law has been to turn hundreds and thousands of bright young boys upon the streets, especially during the summer months when school is not in session. They meet in groups in alleys, play marbles, craps, and engage in other games of doubtful character. Here the good boy meets the vicious boy, and together they plan some escapade which usually results disastrously to both. 291 Are these results, following incomplete knowledge of the average citizen of these conditions, sufficient reason for the thorough study of them by the citizens of all our States with their varied climates, industries, and conditions? If children are not given the opportunity for proper occupation, either play or work, they will be doing something else, and the chances are that many, lacking the habits of industry or opportunity to work, will drift into the idleness which leads to crime. In volume 8, page 29, of the eight volumes comprising the set of books Parents and Their Problems, an official organ of the National Congress of Mothers, Mrs. Theodore Birney, founder of the National Congress of Mothers, says, in an article on the congress's origin, "One of the fundamental purposes of our work is character building from the cradle." We, the Home for the Training of Speech in Deaf Children Before They Are of School Age, Philadelphia, begin to teach children hand efficiency from the very start, not only that they may have the advantage of skillful hands during their lives, but we also require everything that they do with their little hands to be done the best they can at that stage of their development, which counts for honesty in work and in character. The medium for this training is the tying of their bibs; standing at the other side of their little beds while an older child stands at the other side and making them together day after day with faithful care, and other similar useful and helpful occupations. The nearer a child comes to us at the minimum age the more skillful its hands become in time. In the early days of the home a 3-year-old came to us. Her mother was dying of tuberculosis, her father was already dead, and three weeks after the child arrived the mother died. After this child completed her training I sent her to a family where I hoped she would be permitted to attend school with the hearing and be otherwise trained for a useful life, but it was not a success. Finally she returned to us and we trained her as a cook. She is now 21 years old and does the cooking for one cottage satisfactorily. She has five shares in the building association and also has several hundred dollars in the bank. A point I want to make is that, although she handles pots and pans, she still retains sufficient delicacy of touch to embroider exquisitely and to do crocheting and any sort of fine needlework. These latter things she does for her own amusement. The spirit of helpfulness should be planted in the characters of young children. It is one of the joys of our lives that nothing pleases our children more than the feeling that they are helping the grown people, and they love to do, as far as they can, what grown people do. They know no difference as far as their pleasure is concerned between work and play. Certainly that aids in making them unselfish. They would give up play any time for the unselfish pleasure of helping somebody. In volume 5 of Parents and Their Problems, Mrs. Annie R. Ramsay, who did such wonderful work with the children under probation in the detention rooms after the passage of the Pennsylvania juvenile court laws in 1903, writes: "The first axiom of the padagogue is that habit training must be mostly done before the child is 12 years old." Mr. George, of the George Junior Republic, has found that work and responsibility for some difficult tasks is almost a panacea for the reformation of the wayward children of rich and poor alike. Prof. M. V. O'Shea, of the department of education in the University of Wisconsin, is chairman of the department of education in the National Congress of Mothers, and he says: "This one thingproviding occupation for children during their vacation periods-is of such importance that it alone might well occupy the attention of the congress." One of the earliest parent-teacher associations established in Pennsylvania by the mothers' congress was at Middletown, of which Mrs. H. J. Wickey is the president. When I referred this question of vacation employments to our various associations, Mrs. Wickey turned it over to Mr. Wickey, superintendent of the Middletown School Board, who writes: "In our neighborhood we are very generally agreed that the child labor laws should provide that children under the age of 14 could be employed during vacations, Saturdays, and probably in the mornings and evenings before and after school hours. In towns it is almost impossible to bring a boy up to the age of 14 years without being contaminated with street vileness, and habits of laziness fastening themselves upon him. I have known many boys who have laid the financial foundation of an education, college, by working during vacation and other odd times before the age of 14 years. Besides there are many poor families who could send their children to school more regularly and even after the age of 14 if they were permitted to earn during vacation. I trust that the matter will be taken up very strenuously with the coming legislature." Eugene Davenport, dean of the department of agriculture, University of Illinois, writing on the "Educative value of work," in volume 3, page 261, of Parents and Their Problems, says: "Man departed first from the beasts in his ability to work; and the first point of difference between the savage and the civilized is in his willingness to do it. This fundamental lesson can be learned only by daily experience beginning in childhood, for if learned by force in later years, it leads only to a hard and resistant surrender to the inevitable, and not to that joyous exercise of the working powers which is the privilege only of the well-educated human being." William A. McKeever, professor of psychology, Manhattan Agricultural College, Kansas, says in an article, "Building a good life," page 64 of volume 4 of Parents and Their Problems: "The newer ideals of character building call for the early training of all children as if they were to enter permanently upon some bread-winning pursuit." Hon. Benjamin B. Lindsey, juvenile court judge, of Denver, Colo., who is chairman of the department of juvenile court and probation in the National Congress of Mothers, in volume 3, page 253, of "Parents and Their Problems," writes: "I want to say very candidly that there are a great number of children in this country from 14 years of age upward about whom I feel more alarmed at their failure to do or to know how to do any kind of useful work than of any possibility of their being overworked. In our zeal for the protection of our boys subjected to extreme or unnatural conditions, we must not lose sight of the dangers and difficulties of idleness. There |