E. OPPOSITION TO CHILD LABOR AND EFFORTS AT REGULATION

1. The suffering of children in Philadelphia factories

Mechanics' Free Press, Aug. 21, 1830.

In looking over one of your late numbers, I was rejoiced to find that some friend has noticed the sufferings of people employed in our manufactories; particularly in that of cotton. It is a well known fact, that the principal part of the helps in cotton factories consist of boys and girls, we may safely say from six to seventeen years of age, and are confined to steady employment during the longest days in the year, from daylight until dark, allowing, at the outside, one hour and a half per day. In consequence of this close confinement, it renders it entirely impossible for the parents of such children to obtain for them any education or knowledge, save that of working that machine, which they are compelled to work, and that too with a small sum, that is hardly sufficient to support nature, while they on the other hand are rolling in wealth, of[f] the vitals of these poor children every day. We noticed the observation of our Pawtucket friend in your number of June 19th, 1830, lamenting the grievances of the children employed in those factories. We think his observations very correct, with regard to their being brought up as ignorant as Arabs of the Desert; for we are confident that not more than one-sixth of the boys and girls employed in such factories are capable of reading or writing their own name. We have known many instances where parents who are capable of giving their children a trifling education one at a time, deprived of that opportunity by their employer's threats, that if they did take one child from their employ (a short time for school), such family must leave the employment -- and we have even known these threats put in execution. Now as our friend observes, we may establish schools and academies, and devise every means for the instruction of youth in vain, unless we also give time for application; we have heard it remarked to some employers, that it would be commendable to congress to shorten the hours of labour in factories; the reply was: it would be an infringement on the rights of the people. We know the average number of hands employed by one manufacturer to be, at the lowest estimate, fifty men, women and children. Now the query is: whether this individual, or this number employed by him, is the people.

. . . We think it is high time the public should begin to notice the evil that it begets. We see the evil that follows the system of long labor much better than we can express it; but we hope our weak endeavors may not prove ineffectual.

2. Child labor leads to delinquency

Joseph Tuckerman, An Essay on the Wages Paid to Females for their Labour (Philadelphia, 1830), pp. 21-35.

Tuckerman (1778-1840), a Unitarian clergyman, was minister to the poor in Boston, ca. 1825-1830.

. . . Even in a time of prosperity, the number of girls, as well as of boys, who are . . . constantly exposed to moral ruin, is alarmingly great. And if we add to these, who are living with their parents, the large number of boys, who, while they can only, and very imperfectly read and write, and have not begun to cipher, are taken from school to be placed in shops and offices, not as apprentices, but as errand boys, and who will therefore grow up in ignorance, and probably be alone the associates of vicious boys; and of girls who are put to service at twelve, and fourteen years of age, in families in which their education and their virtue are unregarded; -- the number of children of the poor, in a large city, demanding the most solemn interest in their dangers, and the most earnest efforts for their rescue, will be considerably enlarged. Some of the children to whom I refer, are truants from our schools. Some are kept at home by their parents, either to gather chips, or to beg, or to be market boys. And some are suffered by their parents to live where they will, and as they will, provided only that they occasion to them as little inconvenience as may be. What, then, in these various families, must be the effects on children, of a time of great and pressing want, when it shall scarcely be practicable, by any honest occupation, to obtain the means of subsistence? Can it be doubted, whether the number of young vagrants, in such a time, will be greatly increased? Or, is it doubted, whether they will be proportionally more dishonest, or more reckless in the sins to which they have become accustomed? This, to my mind, is one of the most affecting of the aspects of a time of great distress among the poor; and unless, at such a time, some strong means shall be used to prevent the evil, it will be found that a few months only of peculiar want and difficulty will be sufficient, to add a large percentage to the amount of future crime, and wretchedness.

There is a view of this subject, which, if it could be brought distinctly before the public, could hardly fail, I think, at once to make a deep and strong impression of the moral dangers of a large class of children in our cities, now but too little regarded by us; and to excite an active sympathy for the families to which they belong. I refer to the disclosures which might be obtained, of the causes of crime, by a careful examination and comparison of the cases of juvenile offences, which are brought before our Police Courts. Ask the magistrates of these courts, from whence come the children who are arraigned before them for pilfering, and whom they are every week sending to the Refuge, or to Prison? They will tell you, that three fourths of them are from families, which have looked to these children for a part of their means of support. And if they have looked into these cases, they will tell you also, that some of these children have been kept from school, that they might beg; and others, that by any service they might earn a dollar a week, to be appropriated for the payment of rent, or for the purchase of necessary food. Is it asked, from whence arises the dependence of these parents upon their children? I answer, often, without doubt, from the idleness and intemperance of the parents. But not always. There are cases, and very affecting cases, in which poor mothers, widows, who have three, four, or five "children, who must be sheltered, and fed, and clothed, and warmed; and for whom they cannot, by their best labours, provide a home, and the absolute necessaries of existence. These children, to a considerable extent, form a distinct class. They have other associations with life, and form other habits, than the children who are in a regular course of education at school. They have much time, every day, which they know not how to appropriate to any useful purpose; and they are every day at once surrounded by temptations to dishonesty, while passion, and appetite, and all the lower propensities of our nature are developing within them, and maturing under the influences, which are most suited to make them the governing principles in the mind. - I pity the man who can look upon all this evil, and say that these parents alone are accountable for it . . .

3. New England workers take a stand on child labor, 1832

Boston Evening Transcript, March 24, 1832.

The New England Association of Farmers, Mechanics and other Working-men was organized in Providence, Rhode Island, in December 1831 to promote the ten hour labor movement. The association resolved to appoint vigilance committees in each state represented "to collect and publish facts respecting the conditions of labouring men, women, and children." Although advocating the extension of educational privileges to working children, the association did not demand an abolition of child labor.

Report of the Committee appointed by the New England Association of Farmers, Mechanics and other Working-men, to take into consideration the subject of the education of children in manufacturing districts.

The Committee ask leave to report: That from statements of facts made to your committee, from delegates to this body, the number of youth and children of both sexes, under sixteen years of age, employed in Manufactories, constitute about two fifths of the whole number of persons employed. From the returns from a number of manufactories, your committee have made up the following summary, which, with some few exceptions and slight variations, they are fully persuaded will serve as a fair specimen of the general state of things. The regular returns made, include establishments in Massachusetts, New-Hampshire and Rhode Island; which employ altogether something more that four thousand hands.[1a] Of these, about sixteen hundred are between the ages of seven and sixteen years. In the return from Hope Factory, R.I., it is stated that the practice is, to ring the first bell in the morning, at ten minutes after the break of day, the second bell ten minutes after the first, and in five minutes after which, or in twenty-five minutes after the break of day, all hands are to be at their labor. The time for shutting the gates at night, as the signal for labor to cease, is eight o'clock, by the Factory time, which is from twenty to twenty-five minutes behind the true time. And the only respite from labor during the day, is twenty-five minutes at breakfast, and the same number at dinner. From the village of Nashua, in the town of Dunstable, N.H. we learn that the time of labor is from the break of day in the morning, until eight o'clock in the evening; and that the Factory time is twenty-five minutes behind the true Solar time.

From these facts, your committee gather the following conclusions: 1. That on a general average the youth and children that are employed in Cotton Mills, are compelled to labor at least thirteen and a half, perhaps fourteen hours per day, Factory time; and 2. That in addition to this, there are about twenty, to twenty-five minutes added, by reason of that time being so much slower than the true Solar time; thus making a day of labor to consist of at least fourteen hours, winter and summer, and out of which is allowed, on an average, not to exceed one hour, for rest and refreshment. Your committee also learn that in general, no child can be taken from a Cotton Mill, to be placed at School, for a time, however short, without certain loss of employ; as with very few exceptions, no provision is made by manufacturers, to obtain supernumerary help of this description, in order that one class may enjoy the advantages of the school, while the other class is employed in the mill. Nor are parents, having a number of children in a mill, allowed to withdraw one or more, without withdrawing the whole; and for which reason, as such children are generally the offspring of parents, whose poverty has made them entirely dependent on the will of their employers, any are very seldom taken from the mills, to be placed at school.

From all the facts in the case, it is with regret, that your committee are absolutely forced to the conclusion, that the only opportunities allowed to children generally, employed in manufactories, to obtain an education, are on the Sabbath, and after half past eight o'clock, of the evening of other days. To these facts, however, your committee take pleasure in adding two or three others of a more honorable character. It is believed, that in the town of Lowell, no children are admitted to the labors of the mills, under twelve years of age; and that the various corporations provide and support a sufficient number of good schools, for the education of such as have not attained that age. In the Chickopee Factory Village, Springfield, Mass., and also in the town of New Market, N.H., we also learn that schools are provided, and the children actually employed in mills, allowed the privilege of attending school, during a portion, say about one quarter of the year. Your committee mention these facts as honorable exceptions to the general rule, with a desire to do justice to all concerned, and the hope that others may be inspired by their example to go much further still, in their efforts to remove the existing evils. A few more instances of the above character may exist; but if so, they have not come to the knowledge of your Committee, and they have every reason to believe them to be extremely rare.

Your committee cannot therefore, without the violation of a solemn trust, withhold their unanimous opinion, that the opportunities allowed to children and youth employed in manufactories, to obtain an education suitable to the character of American Freemen, and the wives and mothers of such, are altogether inadequate to the purpose: That the evils complained of are unjust and cruel; and are no less than the sacrifice of the dearest interest of thousands of the rising generation of our country, to the cupidity and avarice of their employers. And they can see no other result in prospect, as likely to eventuate from such practices, than generation on generation, reared up in profound ignorance, and the final prostration of their liberties at the shrine of a powerful aristocracy. Deeply deploring the existing evils, and deprecating the dreadful evils that may hereafter be practiced, your committee respectfully recommend the adoption of the following resolution:

Resolved, That a Committee of Vigilance be appointed in each State represented in this Convention, whose duty it shall be to collect and publish facts respecting the condition of laboring men, women and children, and abuses practiced on them by their employers; that it shall also be the duty of said committee, as soon as may be, to get up Memorials to the Legislatures of their respective States, praying for the regulation of the hours of labor, according to the standard adopted by this Association, and for some wholesome regulations with regard to the education of children and youth employed in Manufactories; and to make report of their doings at the meeting of this body, on the first Thursday of September next.

Voted, That in accordance with the foregoing resolution, the Delegates constituting this body, also constitute a committee of vigilance for the purposes therein specified; and forward the statements of facts they may obtain from time to time, for publication in the New England Artisan.

1a.  In this statement, Lowell and Pawtucket are not included, nor in fact any establishment but those named in the report. [Note in Committee Report.]

4. Child labor means neglect of education

Seth Luther, An Address to the Working Men of New England on the State of Education and on the Condition of the Producing Classes in Europe and America. . . (Boston, 1832), pp. 35-36.

Seth Luther (fl. 1817-1846), a self-educated New England carpenter, was elected secretary of the General Friends Convention in Boston in 1834. As a labor reformer and pamphleteer, he fought for a ten-hour work day and better conditions for women and children in the cotton mills.

. . . Our wish is to show that education is neglected, and that as a matter of course, because if 13 hours actual labour, is required each day, it is impossible to attend to education among children, or improvement among adults. With regard to hours of labour in cotton mills, there is a difference here as well as in England. In Manchester 12 hours only is the rule, while in some other towns in England many more are required. The mills generally in New England, run 13 hours the year round, that is, actual labour for all hands; to which add one hour for two meals, making 14 hours actual labourfor a man, or woman, or child, must labour hard to go a quarter, and sometimes half a mile, and eat his dinner or breakfast in 30 minutes and get back to the mill. At the Eagle mills, Griswold, Connecticut, 15 hours and 10 minutes actual labour in the mill are required; at another mill in the vicinity, 14 hours of actual labour are required. It needs no argument, to prove that education must be, and is almost entirely neglected. Facts speak in a voice not to be misunderstood, or misinterpreted. In 8 mills all on one stream, within a distance of two miles, we have 168 persons who can neither read nor write. This is in Rhode Island. A committee of working men in Providence, report "that in Pawtucket there are at least five hundred children, who scarcely know what a school is. These facts, say they, are adduced to show the blighting influence of the manufacturing system as at present conducted, on the progress of education; and to add to the darkness of the picture, if blacker shades are necessary to rouse the spirit of indignation, which should glow within our breasts at such disclosures, in all the mills which the enquiries of the committee have been able to reach, books, pamphlets, and newspapers are absolutely prohibited. This may serve as a tolerable example for every manufacturing village in Rhode Island." In 12 of the United States, there are 57,000 persons, male and female, employed in cotton and woollen mills, and other establishments connected with them; about two-fifths of this number, or 31,044 are under 16 years of age, and 6,000 are under the age of 12 years. Of this 31,044, there are in Rhode Island alone 3,472 under 16 years of age. The school fund is, in that State, raised in considerable part by lottery. Now we all know, that the poor are generally the persons who support this legalized gambling; for the rich as a general rule, seldom buy tickets. This fund then, said to be raised by the rich, for the education of the poor, is actually drawn from the pockets of the poor, to be expended by the rich, on their own children, while this large number of children (3,472) are entirely, and totally deprived of all benefit of the school fund, by what is called the American System. Actually robbed of what is emphatically their own, by being compelled to labour in these "principalities of the destitute" and these "palaces of the poor," for 13 hours per diem, the year round. What must be the result of this state of things? "We cannot regard even in anticipation, the contamination of moral and political degradation spreading its baleful influence throughout the community, through the medium of the uneducated part of the present generation, promulgated and enhanced in the future, by the increase of posterity, without starting with horror from the scene, as from the c1ankings of a TYRANT'S chain."

"If education and intelligence is the only sure FOUNDATION of public safety," and if we are convinced that there are causes in active operation sapping and mining that foundation, can any man say, "It is nothing to me?" "If the children of the poor ought to be instructed as well as the rich," ought we not to see that it is done? If it depends on education whether we "live in a peaceable, orderly community, free from excess, outrage and crime, can we say it is nothing to us?" Who knows but in the course of events his son or daughter, or sister or brother, will not be driven into a cotton mill by the hard hand of adverse fortune, and be made to suffer the evils we have described. If "without the assistance of the common people a free government cannot exist," and we find that the capability to govern depends on intelligence and learning; is it not a fearful reflection that so many thousands of children are deprived of education, and so many adults of every opportunity for mental improvement? Let us no longer be deceived. Let us not think we are free until working-men no longer trust their affairs in the hands of designing demagogues.

5. The pathos of child labor

"The Free Enquirer," in New Harmony Gazette, IV (July 14, 1832), 300-301.

I often think how once we used in summer fields to play,

And run about and breathe the air that made us glad and gay;

We used to gather buttercups and chase the butterfly;

I loved to feel the light breeze lift my hair as it went by!

Do you still play in those bright fields? and are the flowers still there?

There are no fields where I live now – no flowers any where!

But day by day I go and turn a dull and tedious wheel;

You cannot think how sad, and tired, and faint I often feel.

I hurry home to snatch the meal my mother can supply,

Then back I hasten to the task - that not to hate I try.

At night my mother kisses me, when she has combed my hair,

And laid me in my little bed, but - I'm not happy there:

I dream about the factory, the fines that on us wait

I start and ask my father if - I have not lain too late?

And once I heard him sob and say - "Oh better were a grave,

Than such a life as this for thee, thou little sin less slave!"

I wonder if I ever shall obtain a holiday?

Oh, if I do, I'll go to you and spend it all in play!

And then I'd bring some flowers home, if you will give me some,

And at my work I'll think of them and holidays to come!

6. Children work longer hours than convicts

New York, Assembly, "Report of the committee on trade and manufactures, on the memorial of sundry inhabitants in the counties of Oneida and Otsego," Doc. 205, Documents, 1835 (Albany, 1835), III, 1-5.

That the number of hours they [children] are required by the established customs and rules of these incorporations to labor each day, is altogether too great a proportion of their time,

That the persons employed in these manufactories, are required to labor from twelve to fourteen hours each day, being several hours more daily labor than is exacted even from the convicts in our State Prisons; these laborers have thus no opportunity for ordinary and necessary relaxation and recreation, or for mental improvement, and the children among them are necessarily brought up in comparative ignorance, and are unfitted to become valuable citizens.

Your committee, as well from the facts stated in the petition as from other information upon which they can rely, and their own observation, are satisfied that the long and continued confinement at labor in these manufactories, in a hot and somewhat impure atmosphere, is unfavorable to health, and injurious to the constitutions of those who are thus confined, and particularly to children.

Your committee can not conceive of any case where any portion of persons in this country could be placed where they would be more likely, from their peculiar situation, to be improperly operated upon in making their contracts than that of the poor and indigent females and children in these manufactories, who are literally driven there, in many instances, to gain a subsistence, by the death of parents and other misfortunes, and are, of all others that can be imagined, the least able to assert and maintain their rights. In many establishments, where none but stout, healthy men are employed, who are able and competent to understand and maintain their rights when invaded, the case is entirely different.

7. A pro-slavery attack on child labor

William J. Grayson, The Hireling and the Slave, 2d ed. (Charleston, 1855), pp. 23-46; first published 1836.

William J. Grayson (1788-1863), a lawyer, was a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives and Senate. He wrote The Hireling and the Slave while serving as a Whig in the United States House of Representatives.

There, unconcerned, the philanthropic eye Beholds each phase of human misery;

Sees the worn child compelled in mines to slave

Through narrow seams of coal, a living grave,

Driven from the breezy hill, the sunny glade,

By ruthless hearts, the drudge of labour made,

Unknown the boyish sport, the hours of play,

Stript of the common boon, the light of day,

Harnessed like brutes, like brutes to tug and strain

And drag, on hands and knees, the loaded wain:

There crammed in huts, in reeking masses thrown,

All moral sense and decency unknown,

With no restraint, but what the felon knows,

With the sole joy, that beer or gin bestows,

To gross excess and brutalizing strife,

The drunken Hireling dedicates his life.

There women prostitute themselves for bread,

Childhood bestows no childish sports or toys,

Age, neither reverence nor repose enjoys,

Labour, with hunger, wages ceaseless strife,

And want and suffering only end with life;

In crowded huts, contagious ills prevail,

Dull typhus lurks and deadlier plagues assail,

Gaunt famine prowls around his pauper prey,

And daily sweeps his ghastly hosts away;

Unburied corpses taint the summer air,

And crime and outrage revel with despair.

Taught by the Master's efforts, by his care,

Fed, clothed, protected, many a patient year,

From trivial numbers now to millions grown,

With all the Whiteman's useful arts their own,

Industrious, docile, skilled in wood and field,

To guide the plough, the sturdy axe to wield,

The Negroes schooled by Slavery embrace

The highest portion of the Negro race;

And none the savage native will compare,

Of barbarous Guinea, with its offspring here.

If bound to daily labour while he lives,

His is the daily bread that labour gives;

Guarded from want, from beggary secure,

He never feels what Hireling crowds endure,

Nor knows, like them, in hopeless want to crave,

For wife and child, the comforts of the slave,

Or the sad thought that, when about to die,

He leaves them to the world's cold charity,

And sees them slowly seek the poor-house door --

The last vile hated refuge of the poor.

Governors, state legislators, and other public officials often called attention to the neglect of education among factory children. Prior to the Civil War, however, only the New England states and Pennsylvania adopted legislation making specified periods of school attendance compulsory for working children. For a summary of such laws see below, doc. 7.

1. Governor of Rhode Island urges legislature to meet educational needs of factory children, 1818

Address of Governor Nehemiah R. Knight of Rhode Island to the Gentlemen of the Senate and Gentlemen of the House of Representatives, Rhode Island, Acts and Resolves, 1818, Oct. Sess. (Providence, 1818), pp. 3-4.

While the General Government protects and encourages agriculture, commerce and manufactures, the Legislatures of the several States are the immediate guardians of the public morals and education; to them is more particularly entrusted the duty of providing for the cultivating and enlightening of the mind - a trust so essential in all good societies, and especially so, in a government where all power is vested in the people, and all the acts of the public functionaries weighed and tested by public opinion. It is true that many persons have done much by establishing Sunday schools in the neighborhood of some of the manufacturing villages of this State; but when we reflect how small a portion of time is appropriated to education by Sunday schools alone, we must be sensible, that the acquirements of the youth who labour in these factories must be extremely limited. And it is a lamentable truth, that too many of the rising generation, who are obliged to labour in those works of almost unceasing application and industry, are growing up without an opportunity of obtaining that education which is necessary for their personal welfare, as well as the welfare of the whole community.

I am well assured a plan can be devised and carried into effect, by the aid of the Legislature, and without any expense to the State, that shall educate them in a manner that will make them not only useful to their country, but also to themselves, and will enable them not only to exercise the privileges of freemen, but be capable of estimating these blessings.

2. Unsuccessful appeal for compulsory school attendance law, New York, 1833

New York, Assembly, "Annual Report of the Superintendent of Common Schools," Doc. 17, Documents, 1833 (Albany, 1833), I, 23-24.

A strong conviction that something ought to be done to provide the means of instruction for the inmates of the manufacturing establishments, which are building up in various sections of the State, induces the Superintendent again to call the attention of the Legislature to this subject. In many of these establishments children are employed at a very early age; and there is great reason to apprehend, that the necessities or the cupidity of parents and guardians, will, in too many cases, overcome their obligations to their children and to society, and induce them entirely to neglect their education, in order to secure the comparatively miserable stipend which they can earn in these manufactories. Our laws now require the children in the poor-houses to be instructed; and if they are bound out, the law requires a condition in each indenture, that the master will cause such child to be instructed to read and write, and if a male, will cause him to be instructed in the general rules of arithmetic. . .

The policy of all our laws is to secure a good common school education to every child in the State; and the condition of the children who are employed in the manufactories, as to their means of instruction, ought to be carefully inquired into and provided for. The diffusion of education among all classes of our population is deemed of such vital importance to the preservation of our free institutions, that if the obligations which rest upon every good citizen in this particular, are disregarded, the persons having the custody of such children, ought to be visited with such disabilities as will induce them, from interest if not from principle, to cause the children to be instructed, at least in reading, writing and arithmetic.

3. Why legislation is needed, Massachusetts, 1836

Massachusetts, House, "Committee Report on the Education of Working Children, 1836," Doc. 49, Documents, May 17, 1836 (Boston, 1836), pp. 5-14.

The chairman of this committee, James Gordon Carter (1795-1849), was a leading figure in the common school revival in Massachusetts in the 1820's. In 1837 he was appointed the first member of the state Board of Education.

. . . It becomes the solemn and indispensable duty of the representatives of the people to provide seasonably and effectually, that those institutions, which have given to New England her peculiar character for general intelligence and virtue, be not changed with the changing employments of her people.

It cannot be denied, nor disguised, that the employments, and consequently the condition, of large classes of the population of New England, and especially of Massachusetts, are changed and are rapidly changing. . . The sons and daughters of New England are presented . . . with the alternative of becoming essentially a manufacturing people, or of bidding adieu to their native hills, the land, the home, and the graves of their forefathers, and following the rising glories of the west.

. . . It requires no spirit of prophecy to foresee and to know, that the collection of large masses of children, youth and middle aged persons, of both sexes, into compact villages, is not a circumstance favorable to virtue. Nor is it difficult to understand that a change in occupation, from those diversified employments which characterize a sparse and agricultural population, to the simple operations consequent upon that minute subdivision of labor, upon which the success of manufacturing industry depends, is not a circumstance favorable to intellectual development. By the former, the ingenuity and inventive powers are called into action, in the combination and adaptation of means to ends, and thereby they are developed and strengthened. By the latter employment, the invention having been made by some master spirit, the operative is reduced, in some degree, to the humble sphere of a part of the machinery.

Two principal causes. . . are in constant operation to frustrate and prevent that universal education which our institutions suppose and require within the sphere of large manufacturing establishments.

1. . . . Labor being dearer in this country, than it is in any other, with which we are brought in competition in manufacturing, operates as a constant inducement to manufacturers to employ female labor, and the labor of children to the exclusion of men's labor, because they can be had cheaper.

2. . . . The families usually collected in our large manufacturing establishments, are either those that have been unfortunate, or from some cause, unsuccessful in agriculture or other employments, and are there collected in despair of obtaining more than a comfortable support, or a bare subsistence; or they are families formed around the establishments, on the strength of the then present prospect of gaining a certain support, by those young people, who depend solely upon their daily wages, and have nothing to expect but what they can obtain from day to day, or week to week. Of course . . . there is a strong interest and an urgent motive to seek constant employment for their children, at a very early age, if the wages obtained, can aid them even but little in bearing the burden of their support.

These two causes or principles of interest . . . are operating silently perhaps, but steadily and powerfully to deprive young females particularly, and young children of both sexes, in a large and increasing class in the community, of those means and opportunities of mental and moral development and cultivation, which are essential to their becoming the intelligent mothers and educators of the next generation, and good citizens of the republic.

. . . In four large manufacturing towns, not, however, including the largest, from which we have no information upon that topic, containing, by the last census, a population of a little less than twenty thousand, there appears to be eighteen hundred and ninety-five children, between the ages of 4 and 16, who do not attend the common schools any portion of the year. And from this number there is but a very

slight deduction to be made for those who attend private schools. If full and accurate answers were given by all the towns in the Commonwealth, to the question designed to obtain this information, it is believed there would be developed a state of facts, which would at once arrest the attention of the Legislature, and not only justify, but loudly demand legislative action upon the subject. And this state of facts as appears by the returns, is peculiar in degree and almost in kind to the manufacturing towns.

4. The first compulsory school attendance law, Massachusetts, 1836

"An act to provide for the better instruction of youth employed in manufacturing establishment," 1836 -- ch. 245, Laws of Massachusetts, Jan. 1834-Apr. 1836 (Boston, 1836), pp. 950-951.

This law, sponsored by James Gordon Carter (see preceding document) , met little legislative opposition. Rhode Island and Connecticut adopted similar legislation in 1840 and 1842 respectively.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives, in General Court assembled and by the authority of the same, as follows:

Sec. 1. From and after the first day of April, in the year eighteen hundred and thirty seven, no child under the age of fifteen years shall be employed to labor in any manufacturing establishment, unless such child shall have attended some public or private day school, where instruction is given by a teacher qualified . . . at least three months of the twelve months next preceding any and every year, in which such child shall be so employed.

Sec. 2. The owner, agent or superintendent of any manufacturing establishment, who shall employ any child in such establishment contrary to the provisions of this act, shall forfeit the sum of fifty dollars for each offence, to be recovered by indictment, to the use of common schools in the towns respectively where said establishments may be situated.

5. Massachusetts education law evaded by the "cruel and mercenary owners of the children," 1839

Boston Daily Times, July 16, 1839.

In point of education the factory girl who goes young to the mill, and children who grow up in the towns where factories are located, must always be sufferers. The cupidity of parents induces them to place their offspring in one establishment as soon as possible. The law requires that they shall have at least three months schooling in each year, until they arrive at a certain age, and the corporations are liable to punishment if any child is employed by them the whole time. But this law is evaded by the cruel and mercenary owners of the children, who keep them nine months in one factory, and then take them directly to another, with a lie in their mouths, that the children have had three months schooling. Nine months in this factory, fits them to go back to their old situation, and when the mills are short of hands, the superintendents are not very anxious to ascertain the truth: nor do they care much for the welfare of the children or obedience to the law. Here again, is another source from which an ignorant, unhealthy, and permanently unhappy manufacturing population is raised, to swell the numbers of our degraded, enslaved citizens of the country.

6. Horace Mann on the implementation of the school attendance law, 1840

Massachusetts, Board of Education, "Third Annual Report of the Secretary, Jan. 1840, Board of Commissioners of Common Schools," Education and Labor, 1842 (Boston, 1842), pp. 9-13.

The law has now been in operation sufficiently long, to make manifest the intentions of those to whom its provisions apply, and whether those humane provisions are likely to be observed or defeated. From the information obtained, I feel fully authorised to say, that, in the great majority of cases, the law is obeyed. But it is my painful duty also to say, that, in some places, it has been uniformly and systematically disregarded. The law is best observed in the largest manufacturing places. In several of the most extensive manufacturing villages and districts, all practicable measures are taken to prevent a single instance of violation. Some establishments have contributed most generously towards the schools; and, in one case (at Waltham), a corporation, besides paying its proportion of taxes for the support of the public schools in the town, has gratuitously erected three schoolhouses, - the last in 1837, a neat, handsome, modern, stone building, two stories in height, - and maintained schools therein, at a charge, in the whole, upon the corporate funds, of a principal sum of more than seven thousand dollars. It would be improper for me here to be more particular than to say, that these generous acts have been done by the "Boston Manufacturing Company"; though all will regret, that the identity of the individual members who have performed these praise-worthy deeds, should be lost in the generality of the corporate name.

Comparatively speaking, there seems to have been far greater disregard of the law, by private individuals and by small corporations, especially where the premises are rented from year to year, or from term to term, than by the owners or agents of large establishments. Private individuals, renting an establishment for one, or for a few years, - intending to realise from it what profits they can, and then to abandon it and remove from the neighborhood or town where it is situated, - may be supposed to feel less permanent interest in the condition of the people who are growing up around them, and they are less under the control of public opinion in the vicinity. But, without seeking an explanation of the cause, there cannot be a doubt as to the fact.

It is obvious, that the consent of two parties is necessary to the infraction of this law, and to the infliction of this highest species of injustice upon the children whom it was designed to protect. . . Yet, strange to say, there are many parents, not only of our immigrant, but of our native population, so lost to the sacred nature of the relation they sustain towards the children whom they have brought into all the solemn realities of existence, that they go from town to town, seeking opportunities to consign them to unbroken, bodily toil, although it involves the deprivation of all the means of intellectual and moral growth; - thus pandering to their own vicious appetites, by adopting the most efficient measures to make their offspring as vicious as themselves.

If, in a portion of the manufacturing districts in the State, a regular and systematic obedience is paid to the law, while, in other places, it is regularly and systematically disregarded, the inevitable consequences to the latter will be obvious, upon a moment's reflection. The neighborhood or town where the law is broken will soon become the receptacle of the poorest, most vicious, and abandoned parents, who are bringing up their children to be also as poor, vicious, and abandoned as themselves. The whole class of parents, who cannot obtain employment for their children at one place, but are welcomed at another, will circulate through the body politic, until, at last, they will settle down, as permanent residents in the latter; like the vicious humors of the natural body, which being thrown off by every healthy part, at last accumulate and settle upon a diseased spot. Every breach of this law, therefore, inflicts direct and positive injustice, not only upon the children employed, but upon all the industrious and honest communities in which they are employed; because its effect will be to fill those communities with paupers and criminals; - or, at least, with a class of persons, who, without being absolute, technical paupers, draw their subsistence, in a thousand indirect ways, from the neighborhood where they reside; and without being absolute criminals in the eye of the law, still commit a thousand injurious, predatory acts, more harassing and annoying to the peace and security of a village than many classes of positive crimes.

. . . The children are in their years of minority, and they have no control over their own time or their own actions. The bell is to them what the water-wheel and the main shaft are to the machinery which they superintend. The wheel revolves, and the machinery must go; the bell rings, and the children must assemble. In their hours of work, they are under the police of the establishment; at other times, they are under the police of the neighborhood. Hence this state of things may continue for years, and the peace of the neighborhood remain undisturbed, except perhaps, by a few nocturnal or sabbath-day depredations. The ordinary movements of society may go on without any shocks or collisions, - as, in the human system, a disease may work at the vitals and gain a fatal ascendancy there, before it manifests itself on the surface.

. . . But when the children pass from the condition of restraint to that of freedom,-- from years of enforced but impatient servitude to that independence. . . bound, from the political nothingness of a child to the political sovereignty of a man, -- then, for that people, who so cruelly neglected and injured them, there will assuredly come a day of retribution. It scarcely needs to be added, on the other hand, that if the wants of the spiritual nature of a child, in the successive stages of its growth, are duly supplied, then a regularity in manual employment is converted from a servitude into a useful habit of diligence, and the child grows up in a daily perception of the wonder-working power of industry, and in the daily realization of the trophies of victorious labor. A majority of the most useful men who have ever lived, were formed under the happy necessity of mingling bodily with mental exertion.

7. Summary of school attendance laws enacted before 1860 (see table below)

Adapted from U.S. Bureau of Labor, Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage-Earners in the United States, VI, 208 -209.

1. Massachusetts, 1842

"An act concerning the employment of children in manufacturing establishments," 1842 - ch. 60, Massachusetts Acts and Resolves, 1839-1842 (Boston, 1842), pp. 561-562.

From and after the passage of this act, no child under the age of twelve years shall be employed in laboring in any manufacturing establishment more than ten hours in anyone day.

The owner, agent or superintendent of any manufacturing establishment, who shall knowingly employ any such child under the age of twelve years in such establishment. . . shall forfeit the sum of fifty dollars for each offence, to be recovered in any court of this Commonwealth competent to try the same, to the use of the person prosecuting.

2. Connecticut, 1842

"An act in addition to an act entitled 'An act relating to Masters and Servants,' " 1842 - ch. 28, Connecticut Public and Private Acts, 1840-1842 (Hartford, 1842), p.42.

No proprietor or proprietors of any cotton or woolen manufacturing establishment in this State, or person or persons carrying on the business of manufacturing in any such establishment as lessees or in any other manner, or person or persons having charge of the affairs of any such establishment or business, shall employ, or suffer to be employed, or aid or assist in employing in such establishment, any child under fourteen years of age, a greater length of time than ten hours in anyone day. And every person who shall violate any of the provisions of this section of this act, shall forfeit and pay for each offence, a penalty of seven dollars.

3. Pennsylvania, 1848

"An act to limit the hours of labor, and to prevent the employment, in factories, of children under twelve years of age," 1848 ch. 227, Acts and Laws of Pennsylvania, 1848 (Philadelphia, 1848), pp. 278-279.

. . . The labor performed during a period of ten hours, on any secular day, of all cotton, woolen, silk, paper, bagging and flax factories, shall be considered a legal day's labor; and that hereafter, no minor or adult engaged in any such factories, shall be holden or required to work more than ten hours on any secular day, or sixty hours in any secular week, and that after the fourth day of July, of the present year, no man shall be admitted as a worker, under the age of twelve years, in any cotton, woolen, silk or flax factory, within this commonwealth; that any owner of or employer in any such factories aforesaid, shall employ any such minor, he shall be adjudged to pay a penalty of fifty dollars one-half thereof to the party so employed, and the other half to the commonwealth, to be recovered in like manner as fines of like amount are now recoverable by law: Provided, That nothing contained in any act shall be construed to prevent minors, above the age of fourteen years, from being employed more than ten hours in any day, if the same be done by special contract with their parents or guardians.

4. Horace Greeley supports a ten-hour law for children under twelve, ca. 1850

Greeley, Hints Toward Reform, pp. 30-33.

And while I hold that the State can not properly prescribe that no man shall in any case work more for another than ten hours in anyone day. . . it may yet, as the general Protector of the Weak against the Strong, do much, and ought to do much, to mitigate the evils of excessive hours of daily toil. The action I would recommend, and which in one State [New Hampshire] has already in part received the sanction of the Legislature, is substantially as follows:

1. An act forbidding absolutely the employment of children or minors, whether Apprentices or Hired, for more than ten hours per day. The State has a right to see, and ought to see, that the frames of the rising generations are not shattered nor their constitutions undermined by excessive labor. She should do this for her own sake as well as Humanity's. She has a vital interest in the strength and vigor of those who are to be her future fathers and mothers, her defenders in war, her cultivators and artisans in peace. She may safely make this limitation imperative, since for whatever service it may be necessary to employ labor for a longer term per day there will always be found an abundance of adults, if proper inducements are offered.

5. Ohio, 1852

Acts of a General Nature passed by the Fiftieth General Assembly of the State of Ohio, L (Columbus, 1852), 187.

§ 1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Ohio, That in all manufactories, workshops and other places used for mechanical or manufacturing purposes, in the state of Ohio, where children under the age of eighteen years, and women, are employed, the time of labor of the persons aforesaid, shall not exceed ten hours for each day; and any owner, stockholder, overseer, employer, clerk or foreman, who shall compel any woman or any child under eighteen years of age, to labor in any day exceeding ten hours, or shall permit any child under the age of fourteen, to labor in any factory, workshop, or other place used for mechanical or manufacturing purposes, for more than ten hours in anyone day, where such owner, stockholder, overseer, employer, clerk or foreman has control, such person so offending shall be liable to a prosecution, in the name of the state of Ohio, before any Justice of the Peace or Court of competent jurisdiction of the county, wherein the same shall occur, and upon conviction thereof, be fined in any sum not less than five, or more than fifty dollars.

§2. That in all engagements to labor in any mechanical or manufacturing business, a day's work, when the contract of labor is silent upon the subject, or where there is no express contract, shall consist of ten hours; and all agreements, contracts, or engagements in reference to such labor, shall be so construed.

§3. That whenever a fine shall be collected, in accordance with the first section of this act, the same shall be paid over to the trustees of the township wherein the trial may be had, and the same shall be by them disbursed for the benefit of common schools.

March 19, 1852.

6. Rhode Island, 1853

Rhode Island, Acts and Resolves, January Session, 1853 (Providence, 1853), pp. 245-246.

Unlike preceding acts in Rhode Island and other New England states, this law not only limited the hours of labor but also prohibited employment of children below the age of twelve.

AN ACT to limit the hours of labor and to regulate the employment of children in factories.

It is enacted by the General Assembly as follows:

SECTION 1. From and after the first day of July next, labor performed in any manufacturing establishment and all mechanical labor, during the period of ten hours, in anyone day, shall be considered a legal day's work, unless otherwise agreed by the parties, and no minor, under the age of twelve years shall be employed in or about any manufacturing establishment; provided, that the provisions of this section concerning the hours of labor, shall not apply to persons employed solely in packing goods in any warehouse or part of a factory not used for any manufacturing process or for any labor incident to a manufacturing process.

SEC. 2. If any owner of, or employer in, any manufacturing establishment, or his or her agent, shall knowingly and wilfully employ any minor under the age of twelve years as aforesaid, the person so offending, shall pay a penalty of twenty dollars for every such offence, one half thereof shall enure to the complainant and the other half thereof to and for the use of the district school in the district in which such manufacturing establishment is situated.

SEC. 3. Hereafter, no minor who has attained the age of twelve years and is under the age of fifteen years, shall be employed in any manufacturing establishment more than eleven hours in anyone day; any owner of, or employer in any manufacturing establishment as aforesaid,

7. Analysis of child-labor legislation prior to 1860 (see table below)

Adapted from U.S. Bureau of Labor, Report on Condition of Woman and Child WageEarners in the United States, VI, 207-208.

offending against the provisions of this section, shall be liable to a penalty of twenty dollars for every such offence, and one half thereof shall enure to the complainant, and one half thereof to and for the use of the district school in the district in which such manufacturing establishment is situated.

SEC. 4. From and after the first day of July next, if any parent or guardian shall permit or consent to the employment of his or her child or ward under the age of twelve years, in any such manufacturing establishment, or of his or her child or ward, over the age of twelve years and under the age of fifteen, for a longer time than eleven hours in anyone day, the person so offending shall forfeit and pay the sum of twenty dollars for every such offence, to be appropriated as provided in the second section of this act.

Violation of child labor laws in Massachusetts, 1866

Massachusetts, House, "Report of the Special Commission on the Hours of Labor and the Condition and Prospects of the Industrial Classes," Doc. 98, Documents, 1866 (Boston, 1866), pp. 3-11.

VIOLATION OF THE LAW.

A saddening amount of testimony, by letter and at the hearings, has been brought before the Commission, concerning the frequent and gross violation of this law. We by no means suppose this violation to be universal. We have had cheering testimony from Lowell, in particular, of the faithful observance of the law in that city, and the high regard in which it is held. There may be other places from which we have not heard, where the statute is strictly obeyed. We present such testimony as we have received.

Erastus Maltby, Esq., of Taunton writes: "I do not think the law of the State, in regard to the working of children in factories, and attending school, is fully and faithfully obeyed in this city."

Henry Jennings, Esq., of New Bedford, writes: "There is a considerable number of cases of children kept away from school. They are employed in almost all kinds of labor. Some girls have been employed as young as seven. One man who has I believe, three sons, aged respectively, eight, ten and twelve, told a gentleman of our city who asked him if it did not go hard with so young a child to rise so early in the morning, 'that it was a very hard thing for the little fellow at the beginning, but that he had got more used to it now, and stood it pretty well.' "

A letter from Sudbury states that at the factory in Assabet, partly in that town, eleven hours are required, and that children are at work there who should be at school.

Charles Durfee, Esq., of Pall River, writes: "Quite a number of children and youth are employed in the common operations of manufacturing. To a limited extent they are kept from school by their parents."

Another letter from Pall River, stated the case more strongly. It says "there are 652 children, of both sexes, from eight to fourteen, working in the mills, most of them unable to read or write, all kept from school. A great number of the adults are unable to write their name."

Similar testimony came before the Commission at the hearings. Robert Bowers of Lawrence stated, "there is a great number of children from twelve to fifteen years, who work at night. The majority of those who do night work are under eighteen years of age. The statute prohibiting the employment of children under twelve years of age, is constantly violated in the Lawrence mills."

The following is the

Testimony of T. J. Kidd, of Fall River.

Question. Did you know that there was a statute against the employment of such children?

Answer. There has been some talk about it. Only among a few working men.

Q. You have a school committee. Have you ever made any representations to them?

A. Don't suppose a word was ever said to them about it.

Q. Was there ever anyone who tried to cause the children to be sent to school?

A. Not since the old man Robeson died.

Q. Why do not the parents send them to school?

A. Small help is scarce; a great deal of the machinery has been stopped for want of small help, so the overseers have been going round to draw the small children from the schools into the mills; the same as a draft in the army.

Q. Do I understand that agents go about to take children out of the schools, and put them into the mills?

A. They go round to the parents and canvass them. This produces nothing but misery and crime. I have looked into it more the last year than before. The boys and girls are all mixed together, from seven years up to thirteen, and are entirely demoralized. One demoralizes another. They get so that they don't care for their employers or their parents. The next thing they say is, "I won't work." I can go round the streets of Pall River in the night, and pick up boys who are staying away from home, and who won't work because they are so demoralized. It all comes from their not having schooling. You can attribute it to no other cause.

I don't know as I have any more to say, except that I have two little boys, one eleven and the other about eight and a half. I am no scholar myself, because I have always been working in the mill, and I am sorry for it. I don't want my children to be brought up in the same way. I wish to get them to work a little less hours, so that I can send them to night school. I want, if it is possible, to get a law so that they can go to school, and know how to read and write their names.

Q. Do they work in the mill?

A. I have been forced to send them in. My earnings would not keep the door open. I had to send them in to help me earn a living. They are getting pretty big, and they want a deal of clothing, and I could not get it out of my earnings. I wish to get shorter hours. I am willing to lose the extra hours for the good of my children.

Q. Do the children work by the day?

A. By the day.

Q. How old are the children?

A. Seven and eight.

Q. Have you a child of seven working in the mill?

A. Yes, I have.

Q. You have only two children working in the mill?

A. Only two.

Q. What wages do these children get?

A. $2.30 per week, the smallest one.

Q. Does the other get the same?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. How long has the youngest worked in a mill?

A. About five or six months.

Q. Had he been kept in school up to that time?

A. Yes, sir, but he didn't learn much – not so much as I'd like to have him.

Q. Does he get any schooling now?

A. When he gets done in the mill, he is ready to go to bed? He has to be in the mill ten minutes before we start up, to wind spindles. Then he starts about his own work, and keeps on till dinner time. Then he goes home, starts again at one, and works till seven. When he's done, he is tired enough to go to bed. Some days he has to clean and help scour during the dinner hour. We used to scour all dinner hour, but we stopped that some little time ago. It takes us till about half past twelve; some days, all the time. Some days he has to clean spindles. Saturday he's in all day.

Q. Is there any limit on the part of the employers as to the age when they take children?

A. They'll take them at any age when they can get them, if they are old enough to stand.

Q. How young are the youngest?

A. I guess the youngest is about seven. There are some that's younger, but very little.

Q. Do you know that your children are working contrary to law?

A. I didn't know there was any law.

Q. Did you know that if I should go to Fall River and prosecute their employer, he could be compelled to pay a fine for employing your children?

A. No, sir, being no scholar.