There are 168,624 children employed in manufactures throughout the country, a gain of 39.5 per cent. Child labor has increased in twelve of the factory States, remained practically stationary in two (Michigan and New Hampshire), and decreased in five States. The reasons for a decrease, where it is observed, are not hard to find; in certain industries child labor has been demonstrated to be unprofitable. But wherever it has been found profitable it seems to have been increasingly utilized. The increase in Wisconsin is 193.5 per cent; in Washington, 103.8; in Illinois, 92; in New Jersey, 51.4; in Pennsylvania, 47.8; and in Massachusetts, 44.9. In States outside of the foregoing list the same tendency is shown. South Carolina increased its child laborers by 270.7 per cent; Alabama, by 143.8; North Carolina, 119.2; Georgia, 81.
Children number 17.5 per cent of all the factory wage-earners of South Carolina, and 14.6 per cent of all those of North Carolina. In five other Southern States (including Maryland) the percentages range from 4.3 to 7.6, while among Northern States Rhode Island children form 5.2 per cent of the factory wage-earners, and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin children 4.5 and 4 per cent, respectively. If Pennsylvania is comparatively low in percentage, it is because of the great mass of its adult workers; for in absolute numbers of child workers it heads the list of commonwealths. No less than 33,135 children are employed in its factories, a figure which puts to shame the puny showing of New York, with 13,199, and of Massachusetts, with 12,556.
In certain industries children form more than one-fourth of all the operatives for a particular locality. In the making of cotton goods in Alabama 29.2 per cent of the workers are children, and in South Carolina 26.8 per cent. The figures for this industry in North Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, and Maryland are nearly identical. In Pennsylvania, for the making of jute goods the figures are 26.2, and for silk and silk goods, 20.2. Slightly more than one-fourth of the hosiery and knit-goods workers of Georgia are children and slightly less than one-fourth of the tobacco workers (chewing, smoking, and snuff) of North Carolina. Massachusetts, with its factory law, can make but the humble showing of 6.4 per cent of children in its cotton-goods factories, and Rhode Island but 10.3 per cent. Glass-making is an industry which has made a most literal adaptation of Jesus’ invitation to little children; though, if the words of reputable eye-witnesses are to be accepted, it is not exactly a heaven into which they are welcomed. Of the operatives in Pennsylvania glass works, children number 14 per cent, and of those in New Jersey glass works, 15.7 per cent.