230 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



EDUCATION AND THE EMPLOYMENT OF CHILDREN. 



Br ELIZA F. ANDEEWS. 



FOR years the world has been on a moral crusade against tlie 

 employment of children in mines and factories, while the far 

 greater evils that result from the mothers going out as wage-earn- 

 ers have attracted comparatively little attention. Lahor, within 

 certain limits, is good for the child, giving it a wholesome moral 

 discipline, and training it for the business by which it is to earn 

 its livelihood ; but, when a married woman has to neglect her 

 natural duties for the responsibilities that properly belong to the 

 other sex, it is time for humanity to protest in the name of her 

 offspring. No one individual can fulfill satisfactorily the double 

 or, I should say, the triple function of bearing and rearing chil- 

 dren, and providing for their maintenance. I am a laboring 

 woman myself, and have met with some success as a bread- 

 winner ; and I know that the conditions of performing this 

 function satisfactorily are quite incompatible with those arduous 

 and important duties which make such heavy demands upon 

 every conscientious mother, especially among the poor. In the 

 homes of the very poor there are no hired servants to keep the 

 household machinery running smoothly while the mistress is 

 away. The wife of the laboring man is frequently cook, nurse, 

 house-maid, laundress, all in one ; and if she must go out as a 

 bread-winner besides, what is to prevent the domestic engine 

 from running off the track and getting itself hopelessly ditched .? 



Of the two evils, if both are evils, I am persuaded that it is 

 better that the child should go out to labor than the mother. Lib- 

 erty, uncurbed by the check-rein of parental restraint, is a more 

 than doubtful blessing, for the loss of which the child that takes 

 its mother's place in the shop or the mill is more than compen- 

 sated by the advantage of having her care at home. It is of far 

 greater importance to the physical and moral well-being of the 

 child that it should have a clean, well-ordered home to receive it 

 out of working-hours, than that its working-hours should be abol- 

 ished. The real hardship to the children of the poor lies not in 

 setting them early to learn the wholesome lesson of labor, but 

 in leaving them to grow up amid the discomforts and dangers 

 of a neglected home, while the mother is bestowing upon loom 

 and spindle the care that is the natural birthright of her little 

 ones. 



But here we are confronted with the question of education, and 

 it will be asked. How is the child ever to learn anything if put 

 to work so early ? Such considerations, however, need present 



