Glass Factories Violate Child Labor Laws in New Jersey

Child Labor in New Jersey.

Now New Jersey joins the black record of Southern states which squeeze the life blood out of young children in factories run by Northern capital. The shame is greater than that of the Southern cotton mills, because in New Jersey public sentiment is against this practice and the state has a law forbidding it. And yet the State Factory Inspector stood up before the Federation of Labor at Trenton yesterday and admitted that the law was broken by the glass factories in the southern end of the state and that he was powerless to prevent it. He at least ought to be ashamed to acknowledge his own incompetence and his statement justifies the appeal of the federation to the Governor to remove the inspector. He should be replaced by a man who will not consider the profits of the mill owners so much as common humanity. It is unnecessary to reargue the reasons on which the law is founded. Every one admits its justice and its need. Nothing but shameless greed brings about its violation. The stories of death and suffering as the result of its violation in these mills, as told in this federation meeting, are to rouse indignation in a stone. In fact the feeling roused by such abuses does not stop with the abuse itself but inspires hatred of employers as a class, which finds vent in many ways, without remedying the evil.

If sheer shame will not stop the employers, then the strong hand of the law should step in and make a penalty equal to the offense. England went through this whole campaign more than half a century ago. At that time Americans looked on in wonder and the idea that in the twentieth century any part of our own country would be fighting the battle for child life, for decency and the recognition of the rights of our common humanity, would have been received with indignant scorn. And yet here we are in the fight, driven to it not by ignorance but by greed which sins against the light.

In the English battle, the poem by Mrs. Browning, "The Cry of the Children," was one of the potent influences in awaking the sense of justice which drove the wretched system out of England. The revelations in the Southern cotton mills and the New Jersey glass factories make the republication of that poem, familiar to readers of 50, but passed from the knowledge of the younger generation, timely. It will be found on the ninth page. The effect of child labor upon civilization has nowhere been better stated than in the stanza which concludes:

Do you hear the children weeping and disproving,

Oh, my brothers, what ye preach?

For God's possible is taught by His world's loving —

And the children doubt of each.