Apbh 20, 1906.] 



SCIENCE. 



613 



The Child-labor Problem: A Study in 

 Degeneracy: A. J. McKelway, Assistant 

 Secretary, National Child Labor Com- 

 mittee, Atlanta, Ga. 



The conditions of the child-labor prob- 

 lem in England at the beginning of the 

 nineteenth century and in some of our 

 American states at the beginning of the 

 twentieth are so much alike, that the fore- 

 seeing of the same result is inevitable. Cer- 

 tainly there is no more pressing subject for 

 consideration for patriot or philanthropist 

 than the welfare of the coming race. As 

 President Roosevelt said to our committee 

 only last month, political questions like the 

 tariff or the currency are insignificant, in 

 comparison with a social problem like this. 

 The life is more than meat and the body 

 than raiment. Certainly there could befall 

 a people no greater catastrophe than race 

 degeneracy. It is sufficient to say here 

 that this catastrophe is not only threaten- 

 ing, but already impending. 



In the manufacturing states of the north 

 and east the legislative problem has been 

 largely solved and there remains only the 

 problem of the adequate enforcement of the 

 law. The industry which was chiefly 

 cursed by child labor in England is the 

 characteristic and commanding industry of 

 the south, the manufacture of cotton; and 

 the northern problem differs from the 

 southern in being chiefly a foreign problem. 

 It is the children of the French Canadian 

 and the Portuguese and the Greek that 

 demand protection in New England, the 

 children of the Italian and the Slav in 

 Pennsylvania. No child of American 

 parentage has yet been found at work in 

 the sweatshops of New York City. In the 

 south it is especially an American problem, 

 for it is concerned with the depreciation 

 of the purest American stock on the con- 

 tinent. And this gives us another point 

 of comparison between England and the 



south, namely, the similarity of the racial 

 stock. 



The same race degeneracy which pro- 

 gressed for a hundred years in England to 

 its dire culmination is beginning already 

 in the south. There has already been de- 

 veloped in our manufacturing communities 

 a 'factory type' easily recognizable, the 

 children distinguished by their pallor and 

 a certain sallowness of complexion. Early 

 employment tends to independence of pa- 

 rental restraint. The breadwinner becomes 

 a man too, and early marriages are the 

 rule. The wife and mother continues her 

 work in the mill, since the wages of the 

 husband are not enough for the support of 

 the family. What must be the children 

 born of such unions and their children? 

 Diseases of the throat and lungs are com- 

 mon and also diseases peculiar to women, 

 brought on by employment long continued 

 at the critical period of a young girl's life. 



We must save these children, for their 

 country. We must protect them from the 

 consequences of untimely toil, the sapping 

 of physical vitality, the marring of the 

 mind and the spoiling of the spirit that 

 come with the denial of the rights of child- 

 hood. 



Why Advancing Civilization in America 

 Increases Crime: Some Methods of Re- 

 lief: Judge N. B. Feagin, Birmingham, 

 Ala. 



To train the citizen to live aright, to 

 observe the moral and physical law, so that 

 mankind may attain the highest possible 

 perfection in physical, mental and moral 

 manhood, is the duty of organized society. 

 The Duke of Argyle in the middle of the 

 nineteenth century said that the home, the 

 church and the state were England's great- 

 est civilizing factors. The state, through 

 wise laws, justly interpreted and properly 

 administered, can assure the citizen the 

 protection of life, liberty and property, 



