The census reports bear amiable testimony to the providence of the mill-owners. “Many of the mills,” says the South Carolina report, “have reading rooms and libraries for their employees, and nearly all contribute regularly to the support of the local schools.” “In the absence of legislation regulating child labor,” says the Georgia report, “all the cotton manufacturers in the State have signed an agreement to exclude from the mills children under ten years of age, and those under twelve who cannot show a certificate of four months’ attendance at school.” In the North Carolina report we find, “In the absence of legislation nearly all the mill-owners have agreed to discontinue the employment of children under twelve years of age.” A correspondent of the New York _World_ found a like benevolence among the glass employers in southern New Jersey. “I need the boys,” said one, “all I can do is to treat the boys as well as I can.” The mill-owners, one and all, demand that the State keep its hands off, and trust to their own benevolence for remedies. So far, in the South, despite a three years’ agitation, the matter is still left entirely in their control.
Criticism of the mill-owners has been made to the effect that despite their benevolent professions, the children are poorly paid and that they remain uneducated. Some of them work long hours for 10 cents a day, others for 12-1/2, 15, and 18 cents. A newspaper correspondent tells of a certain spinning room in a Southern mill wherein the average daily pay for all children is 23-8/10 cents. “I know of babies,” writes Mrs. Macfadyen, “working for 5 and 6 cents a day.” The schooling which a child working seventy-two hours a week can get may be roughly guessed at. Mrs. Macfadyen found 567 children under twelve years working in eight mills. Only 122 of these children could read or write. In a school in a mill-town of between 6000 and 8000 persons, the same investigator found an enrolment of 90 pupils divided into two classes. A visit to one of these classes disclosed 22 children, only 12 of whom were mill-workers’ children, and 10 had worked in the mills from one to three years.
Criticisms based on these data are, however, generally held to be sentimental and irrelevant. Glass-blowing or textile-weaving, like anthracite mining, is, in the sententious phrase of President George F. Baer, of the Philadelphia and Reading Railway Company, “a business, and not a religious, sentimental, or academic proposition.” It is conducted for the making of money, and not for the spiritual or hygienic welfare of the operatives. It would be well, say the employers, if things could be better. But for the present they are making all the contribution to that end that they feel can conveniently be made. Moreover, they contend--and they are supported generally by the local ministers, who have in charge the spiritual affairs of the populace; by the local editors, lawyers, and solid men of “business”--it is better that children should work in the mills and factories than “run about the streets.” As for education, the contributing employers point to the schools, as though to say, “Here are the opportunities; why do you not take advantage of them?” It is quite enough to provide a balky horse with water, without being morally obliged to make him drink.