856 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



There are a few well-to-do farmers in whose homes we find better 

 conditions, but the above description applies to negroes, to white 

 tenants, and to young farmers who are trying to build their homes. 

 Often the health of young girls is everlastingly ruined through work 

 in the fields. I have in mind a case: A girl eighteen years old married 

 a farm tenant. She did all the things I have described, and was the 

 mother of seven children during the eleven years of her married life. 

 Four of these children are dead; the three living are frail of body and 

 weak of mind. The mother is at this writing crazy as a loon. Do 

 you wonder! In neither branch of the family is there any insanity. 

 Simply killed by work and worry that's her story. 



278. CHILD LABOR IN THE BEET FIELDS 1 

 BY EDWARD N. CLOPPER 



The youngsters of the Colorado sugar-beet fields do not chase 

 butterflies or splash 'round in the old swimmin' hole;^ they are 

 "beeters"; and they are in the fields to labor. Colorado produced 

 more tons of beet-sugar in 1915 than any other state about a quarter 

 of a million tons and local school superintendents estimate that 

 5,000 boys and girls from six to fifteen years of age helped to put the 

 state in the lead. These children lose so much time from school in 

 the spring and especially in the autumn that for years the situation 

 has been one of the most serious problems facing educators in the 

 beet-raising sections. 



Most of the children are from seven to thirteen years of age; 

 superintendents state that from 80 to 90 per cent of the children 

 included in their estimates are under the age of fourteen years. Only 

 farely are the children found to outnumber the adult workers in a 

 single field. Viewed in the aggregate, about 7 per cent of field 

 workers are children under fourteen years of age. It is only because 

 the industry is extensive in Colorado that so large a number as 5,000 

 boys and girls are involved. Consequently if the labor of children 

 under fourteen years of age were eliminated the industry would not 

 suffer. 



The children are almost invariably members of the family living 

 on the land, although their residence there is usually only during the 



1 Adapted from The Survey, March 4, 1916, pp. 655-59. A somewhat fuller 

 treatment of the subject by the same author may be found in The Child Labor 

 Bulletin of February, 1916, pp. 176-206. 



