Child life and labour / by Margaret Alden.

  • Alden, Margaret (Margaret Pearse)
Date:
[1908]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Child life and labour / by Margaret Alden. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    166/200 (page 154)
    lightening the duty of the parents, have made that duty imperatively binding. Who will say that, at the beginning of the industrial revolution, the parent really recognised his duty towards his child, when he was willing, for a comparatively small sum of money, to consign him to the tender mercies of overseers and gang-masters ? In many cases the parent had not the most elementary sense of duty towards the child, and so it was left for the State to take the child-chattel out of the hands of its father and to protect it, calling upon the parent by certain definite, fixed penalities to play his part in its maintenance and upbringing. Any sweetness and light that there may be in the homes of the working classes is largely due to the action of the State in curtailing child labour. It is in this direction that still further advances must be made in order that larger opportunities of edu- cation and of training may fit the child of to-day to be the responsible parent of to-morrow. The age limit of child labour should be raised from twelve to fourteen or fifteen, and every effort should be made, by means of the elementary school, by compulsory continuation classes, to maintain a hold upon the boy or girl, with a view to the training of the good citizen. The work of compulsory medical inspection, which has now been inaugurated, may be the means, under wise administration, of revolutionising the attitude of the parent in relation to the health of the child. The inspection itself under the eyes of the parent, the visits of nurses and doctors to the home, pointing out the result of the medical ex- amination and indicating the defects and ailments which have to be remedied, will, in the great ma- jority of cases, be the first definite piece of instruc-