March 24, 1905.] 



SCIENCE. 



453 



new ideals of education, democracy and re- 

 ligion. 



I'his synthetic function divides itself into 

 three main departments of social effort, 

 namely: (1) Ameliorative work, (2) pre- 

 ventive work, (3) constructive work. 



In all great social activities the three de- 

 partments named work together and, there- 

 fore, the efficient organization of all chari- 

 table and reformatory forces is now indis- 

 pensable to social advance. The modern 

 warfare against disease is a perfect illus- 

 tration of the interaction of ameliorative, 

 preventive and constructive social work. 

 At least one third of all the persons who 

 require relief of a charitable nature do so 

 because of illness or physical disability. 



Child Labor in Southern Mills. A. J. Mc- 

 Kelway, Assistant Secretary of the Na- 

 tional Child Labor Committee. 

 The southern cotton mill industry is 

 centered in the Piedmont section of the 

 four cotton states that have mountains, 

 namely, North Carolina, South Carolina, 

 Georgia and Alabama. These are the 

 manufacturing states of the south. 



This industry grew up in a night, and 

 old historic communities, holding fast to 

 their laissez fairs doctrine, found them- 

 selves suddenly confronted with the prob- 

 lems for which they had no social experi- 

 ence and no legislative precedents. All 

 of our industries are infant industries. In 

 1880 there were 667,000 spindles in the 

 southern states. In 1900 there were 

 7,000,000. In 1900 there were 412 cotton 

 manufacturing establishments. In Janu- 

 ary, 1904, there were 900, so that this state- 

 ment of their number is antiquated as 

 soon as it is made. The number has been 

 more than doubled in the last four years. 

 South Carolina stands next to Massa- 

 chusetts in the number of spindles, and 

 North Carolina is ahead of either in the 

 number of cotton mills, the mills being 



smaller on the average than those of the 

 other two states mentioned. Considering 

 the shortness of the period of this revival 

 of manufacturing, the south as a whole has 

 acted with commendable promptness in 

 recognizing and seeking to remedy the evils 

 of child labor. The conditions of this 

 industry in the southern states to-day are 

 superior to those in either England or New 

 England and probably superior to those 

 that obtained when the industry was at its 

 best in New England and the operatives, 

 were the hardy children of the New Eng- 

 land soil. Despite the stories that have 

 been published in the magazines at so 

 much per column, it is a source of grati- 

 fication to know that people are buying 

 good clothes and good furniture and pic- 

 tures and books and stoves. The homes 

 of the people are three- and four-roomed 

 cottages, an infinite distance from the one- 

 roomed hut, and every cottage has an acre 

 plat of ground, for the garden, while the 

 pigs and the chickens and the cow have 

 quarters of their own. And there is all 

 of God's out-of-doors for breathing space. 

 There is no night work at the mill, spinning 

 and weaving departments being evenly 

 balanced so that what is spun one day is 

 woven the next. The hours are long, how- 

 ever, from 6 in the morning to 6 :30 at 

 night, with an intermission of forty min- 

 utes for dinner and a half holiday on 

 Saturday. And this brings up the fact 

 that there are too many young children in 

 that force of a thousand workers and that 

 eleven hoi;rs and fifty minutes a day is too 

 long for any child to work in a mill, be the 

 work ever so light. 



Work of the National Child Labor Com- 

 mittee. Samuel McCune Lindsay, 

 Secretary, New York City. 

 The permanent organization of the com- 

 mittee took place at the house of Robert W. 

 de Forest, New York City, November 28, 



