NOME INDUSTRIAL WORKER
TRI-WEEKLY
Published Tuesday. Thursday,
and Saturday.
By Nome Mine Workers’ Union, No. 240, International Union of Mine,
Mill and Smelter Workers.
Subscription Price
One Year .,. $20.00
Six Months .. 10.00
One Month . 2.00
“To secure to each laborer the whole product of his labor, or as
nearly as possible is a worthy object of any good government.”—Abra
ham Lincoln.
All changes in advertisements must reach this office before 9 A. M.
on day of publication to insure insersion in same issue.
Advertising rates made known on application.
Address all communications to Tri -Weekly Nome Industrial Worker.
Box 210, Nome, Alaska. Thone, Black 134.
Entered as second class matter March 1, 1911, at the post office at
Nome, Alaska, under the Act of March 3, 1879.
By Judge Lindsey
and George Creel
(Concluded)
• The intimate connection between
child labor and illiteracy is proved
,by the fact that the eleven great
child-labor states—-Louisiana, South
■Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Geor-!
<Jia, North Carolina, Virginia, Ten-j
nessee, Kentucky and West Virginia—:
are the eleven most ilite^ate. states!
tin tho Union.
It is not assumed, of course, that!
leducr.tion makes a good citizen and
lack of education the bad ore, ItJ
must be admitted, however, that
.the child wkoh as been toiling in
(field or factory during the proper
ischool years will scarcely be as fit
a citizen as the normal child who
has gone to school and had his
growth and play as well as his in
structions.
TOMORROW'S WORKERS
It is in. such fashion, then, that
the child-labor concer eats. Ilut
that is not all. Its desuits do not
stop witht he criminals and pros
titutes that it breeds and the sick
ness that its enters. The boys a id
Igiris, stunted in mind, bory, and
soul by premature toil, marry, mat,
without marriage, and bring children
into the world; and their children
tmr.rry and mate, and so on and so
ion, world without end.
Great surgeons tell us that the
■adolescent period is one of peculiar
dangers, and yet. it is during this
time of mysterious development that
we drive the fathers and mothers of
the future into occupations that rob
them of the right to bear healthy
children. Miscarriages, still-births,
rickety babies, sickly and feeble—
this is the birth record to be ex
pected, and it is whatweareget ting.
' Child-labor in America is still in
Us first generation, practically, but
'we can measure the xtent of the ca
lamity that we are inviting hy con
sideration of English statistics. For
two centuries Great Britian has per
mitted its children to be exploited
for private profit, but today, hor
rified at the results, no country is
striving more fiercely to repair its
blunders.
The Boer War opened England’s
eyes. In Manchester, that home of
the factory child, S.SOO out of 12,
000 recruits were rejected at ut
terly unfit, and of the 4.000 retain
ed, only a scant thousand were really
up to the requirements. A com
parison with the records of th eCri
mean War, iess than half a century
before, proved that the average
height had dropped three inches and
the average weight about thirty
pounds.
In 1845, to present some corrob
orative figures, the minimum height
of recruits for the British Army
was five feet, six inches; in 1885,
five feet, two inches, and 1901
the authorities had to establish a
•‘special” roll that permitted the
enlistment of men standing only
five feet tall.
It was in consequence of these
revelations that the English Gov
ernment began its great fight against
■child-labor—a fight that has given
the United States some figures that
ought to blaze like the hand writ
ing on the wall. It was found that
among the female MILL WORKERS
the death-rate of children under one
year war 160 per thousand, while
the death-rate among mothers NOT
factory-workers was only forty per
thousand.
Perhaps the most significant and
conclusive experiment, however, was
the study made between factory
children and home children.
Beginning at eight, the investiga
tors si cured the average height and
weight of the two sets of children
for each year up to sixteen. When
ihe final comparison was made, it
I was discovered that the boys who
! had worked in the factories were
j 3.37 inches shorter than the home
I children, and weighed 19.67 pounds
| less. i
i
Even did the work itself, done
j during the period of tender growth,
| fail to dwarf and retard, the hous
J mg conditions would inevitably pro
duce unfitness. We hear much talk
j about the slums in these good
j “charatable" days—for every indus-J
| trial center has slums now—-and I
the very late st thing in up-to-date
philanthrophy is "housing investi
gations” or “tenement commissions”.
These attempts are almost as
: rediculous as though some kindly
! disposed person should attempt to
j cure smallpox by putting talcum
■ powder on the sores.
[THE COST OK THE ('HIED WHO
TOILS
A low wage-schedule makes the
slums, and not until labor is re
warded by ;t just return will evil
j housing conditions disappear, for
| they are FORCED upon the wretch
ed. Let it be repeated at his point
| that A CHILD EMPLOYING IN
DUSTRY IS ALWAYS A LOW
WAGE INDUSTRY.
More than a million children be
tween the ages of seven and sixteen
are bending their shoulders to the
burden of toil, from hopeless day to
hopeless day helping to bear great
industries whose dividends the world
Bees in palaces and yachts—and calls
our country prosperous! Can we
afford to alow it longer?—child
hood sacrificed for money, life's
play-day, life's building day—trad d
for the gleam of gold? No indus
try depending upon child-labor can
justify tself to the nation.
. Where trod Atbial’s horse, grass
never grew again, and when the
little foot of a child once crosses
a factory threshold, decent wages
, become matter of reminiscence.
Many employers are fond of point
ing out that they pay children and
adults the same wages, trying, of
course, to convey the impression
(hat the uniformity of wage means
that the boy is getting a man’s
wage. this i3 not so, nor has it
ever been so. The child’s pay is
NOT lifted to the level of the man’s
but the ADULT WAGE IS FORCED
DOWN TO THE LEVEL OF THE
CHILD’S. The cotton-textile indus
try, for instance, owing to the em
ployment of c hildren, has reached i
a point where it is almost impossible j
for the head of a family to earn i
a lvlng wage for himsalf and his j
family. Mark these annual earnings;
from the cotton-mills, based, ol
course, upon the assumption that
the male adult works through the
fifty-two weeks without a break.
Doffers, $251; ring-spinners, $260;
scrubbers and sweepers, $225; speed
er-tenders, $385; spoolers, $252;
weavers, $400.
And the estimated annual amount
necessary for the bare upkeep of a
family of five runs between $700
and $800. The Lawrence strike
bear In mind, was against a wage
cut that brought the weekly pay
down to $5.50. Multiply this by
fifty-two, the number of weeks in
the year, and compare tho result—
$285—with that of $700 that ex
pert investigators have fixed as
necessary for the “bare subsis
[lance” of a family.
K All because CHILDREN got into
the mills, caught hold of the wage
schedule with their tiny hands, and
pulled it down to their own level.
What a revenge it is for the cruelty
that robs them of their youth!
Follow the working child where
tone will—into the mill, factory,
shop, canning-shed, or mines—and
ivariably it will be found that
CHILD PAY soon becomes ADULT
PAY, with the result that the whole
family must work twelve and four
teen hours a day in order to live.
The case of willow plums is in
terestng as well as illustrative, for
■even whie the main point is being
proved, the women of the upper
sunshine may get a glimpse of the
way in which their adornments are
manufactured.
Willowing a plume—making it
longer, deeper and finer by tying
on strands from other feathers—is
drudgery eptomized. To quote a
little Italian girl, “it maka da eyes
sick.”
When the rage first started, only
adults were in the field, and the
price iaid was fifteen cents an
inch. In a little while, however,'
some of the twelve and fourteen
year old children were taught the
trick of tying the knots, and the
price dropped to thirteen cents an
inch. More and more children, and,
younger and younger, went the
work at willowing. with the result
that the price fell from fifteen
cents an inch to time cents in three
seasons. One plume, containing 8,
lil3 knots, which took a woman
and two children almost a day and
a half to make, brought $2.10.
Figure this out, and it will be seen
that it means forty-one knots for
a cent, or about three cents an
hour for each of the workers.
This, however, is slightly better
than the usual rewards for “home I
work,” since the average earning I
per hour in this class of labor is
rarely over TWO cents an hour. )
There is much to be written about
the ‘economic loss” of child labor I
but that would involve long tab
ulated statistics. Suffice it to feay,
therefore, that if a child of flfteeu
has a prospect of working until
sixty—a good clean stretch of orty
five years—and child labor sends
its labor, sends its product to the
industrial scrap-heap in middle-life,
cutting down the active and pro
ductive years to fifteen, then we
have a right to argue an economic
I loss that runs up into the ^rlliojis,
There is also the question of
“social cost” to be considered, for
’not only does society LOSE through
j the destruction of the individual’s
I earning value, but it is also made
to pay a heavy and direct price for
the evils that flow out of tlie child
labor swamp. Look about you in
your own community and count up
the cost of orphan asylums, insane
asylums, poor farms, reformatories,
jadls, criminal courts and peniten
tiaries.
The thousands of children who
drudge day and night in the tene
ments of the Eastern cities average
two cents an hour, the Government
report states that the average earn
ings of children under twelve in the
Southern cotton-mills vary from two
and one half ccts an hour to about
eight cents; few newsboys under
twelve earn $200 a year; the wages
of youngsters in the glass-factories
and on the coal-breakers range from
$2.50 to $4 a week; the tiny toilers
who work such incrediable hours in
the canneries are fortunate when
they earn a quarter of a dollar a
day.
Always and ever is there the same
terrible disproportion between the
toil and the reward.
It is from such as these—the .
million children who barter youth,
strength, health, and efficiency for a
pittance—that the paupers and the
criminals are drawn to fill the count
less institutions that hang like mill
stones about the taxpayer's neck.
They earn their pennies at the ex
pense of body, mind and morals,
and in their feebled and purpose
less maturity oecome public charges
at an expense of hundreds. What
stupidity! Child labor lowers wages,
breeds poverty, makes slums, scat
ters disease, fosters vice and law
lessness, loses millions to society and
costs society many millions again,
stunts development, poisons the '
health of the race, and degrades
and debases citizenship. Was ever i
such a birthright sold for so beg- \
garly a mess of pottage? Our de- j
raoeracy is still an experiment. Civ- j
ilizations greater than ours have i
perished from the face of the earth j
Races, like individuals, have their j
sicknesses and their death. If we i
are deaf to the humanities—if the j
words of the Galilean have lost i
meaning and effect—surely every in- !
stinct of self-preservation should j
compel the manumission of the one i
million little slaves who are so |
helpless to save themselves, yi t so j
powerful to hurt us all.
Oh God! if w ecould but soo the j
tired peaked little faces in the smoke |
of the factory chimneys. Do they j
accurc? Then cpcct-es with re j
p.rachful oyes should fl it upon
the hm;kc-clouds of New England
end the South. Reading the chim
ney-tops, you spell prosperity—and
forget that thousands of girls are
|'spent before maturity, aged in
j strength before the. (lawn of woman
hood.' Some day, somehow, we
must pay for sins like, these.
get the news right read
THE WORKER.
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I Miners and Merchants Bank!
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Nome, Alaska
Capital $100,000.00
Workingmen’s Accounts Solicited.
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Milo’s Cafe
OPEN DAY AND NIGHT
NEXT DOOR TO PACIFIC COLD
STORAGE COMPANY
«********+*+**.*-*<•*-*+******+****** ***-*******•*********** *
DO YOU WANT TO ECONOMIZE?
Buy a Lang Range, or Coles Heater and save
1-3 your coal bill
CARLETON HARDWARE CO.
lid Frost It.
Pfcoa* Mala 11.
This space reserved by
C* W. Lewis
-Formerly Delbar’s store*
The place where you can
reasonably buy anything
from a needle to an
anchor
Charles L. Ross
Milling, Lumber, Contractor
HAVING TAKEN OVER THE FREIGHTING & TRANSFER
BUSINESS OF W. STEIGELMAIER AND OF LEO KENT,
FREIGHT ORDERS AND TRANSFER CONTRACTS WILL RE
CEIVE PROMPT ATTENTION.
3RD AND B STREET. PHONE BLACK 162.
Nome Bakery!
Victory
BREAD I
Conforming to orders of Food Administrator; on sale at all tin
WE RECOMMEND OCR SPECIAL HEALTH BREAD FOBS
FAMILY USE
W c guarantee the best cup of coffee in town
We serve Hot Cake, Ham and Eggs etc. frov* 7 1. M. to 1 P. M.Jj
Lunches from 12 Noon to 7 I*. M. Eveny Day.
We are in business to satisfy our Customers.
Jl'UL & NELSON, Propritors.i
***** ***** *********-Mr-»<***y >*+****+-l<-t‘****++***+****-Mc-»t
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it 'A
if When a fellow feels particularly fine he usually uses the ■*
expression: Oh! I feel like “a two-year-old!" J
Y’know a two-year-old is chuck full of pep. he can rear J
and jump and can make the energy of Ajax look lijce a pink
tea dude suseumbing to a cigarette. ^
Akr.ala has all the pep that makes you throw out your *
chest and say: Gee Whiz—but I feel like atwo -year-old.
★
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WE CARRY ALSO
COCO COLA, GINGER ALA. ROOT BEER,
BAGLEYS APPLE CIDER, UNFERMENTED,
IOUS AND REFRESHING.
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The Nome Bottling Co.
ir
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Buy Shoes
9. A. M. TO 6 P. M.
Help maintain fail working
hours for everybody
P. A. PETERSOlTsHOETor
K!»i*!fi/i!f;**}f if,*!#;*!#;*»**»!»;**** W******^**'!
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I f*0^e
Bakery
&Coffee
House
MMaPMBBWBiraBWMBKia
aa***WYtt** ■SIMWSWftiJftMfl
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2 Loa\ es 25c.