I sat on the high stool by the side of a tiny girl whose fingers were working away so fast I could hardly follow her movements. The overseer was walking up and down the room, calling out instructions to the workers. To me it sounded a horrible, incoherent jumble, but the children seemed to understand it perfectly. The overseer held in his hand a paper, from which he was apparently reading out instructions. Not having a very thorough knowledge of the Persian language, it was impossible to follow, but as far as I could make out it was something as follows: To No. 1. Three blue threads, one white, two green; No. 2. Four yellow, one white; and so on, each child repeating after the "master" the instructions given. As it was all said in a high-pitched monotone, the result was confusing and deafening, but there the little weavers sit, day in, day out, week after week, in this damp, gloomy cellar, kept hard at it by the unrelenting overseer.
The children are taken on as "weavers" when very young, some even starting when five or six years old. Their hours of work are from sunrise to sunset in the summer, and until two or three hours after sunset in the winter, and they are paid at the enormous rate of about 2d. a day, sometimes starting with even less, whilst learning the work.
The consequence of this abominable sweating system is that to-day there are hundreds of little children in Kerman, from eight to nine years of age, confirmed cripples from rheumatism and other diseases. From sitting so long in one position, while still of tender years, amid such damp surroundings, their little feet and hands become knotted and deformed. They can no longer earn their daily bread, so perforce must help to swell the great multitude of beggars who throng the streets and bazaars of Kerman.
I once saw a little girl about seven years old sitting by the roadside just outside our house. On asking her why she was sitting there all alone, her reply was, "Mother sent me to my work (carpet-weaving), but my feet hurt me so, I can't walk." She was waiting there whilst a companion in work and sorrow ran to try and find some one who would carry her friend to the workroom.
When we think of the sufferings of these hundreds of poor innocent children, do not our hearts ache with sadness for them? Surely the "Cry of the Children" of Kerman will go up to God, and He will have mercy.