Truancy and non-attendance in the Chicago schools : a study of the social aspects of the compulsory education and child labor legislation of Illinois / by Edith Abbott and Sophonisba P. Breckinridge.

  • Abbott, Edith, 1876-1957.
Date:
[1917], ©1917
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Truancy and non-attendance in the Chicago schools : a study of the social aspects of the compulsory education and child labor legislation of Illinois / by Edith Abbott and Sophonisba P. Breckinridge. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The employment is for a very short time, and the pay received is very little. The child, demoralized by the taste of money-earning, spends days and weeks in seeking another place, not understanding that no employer wants her until the holiday season comes around again. ‘Thus, for a few days’ earnings she sacrifices a winter’s school life. The physical strain of the work throughout long hours, for which there has been no gradual preparation, exhausts her vitality; and, in this exhausted condition, overheated by running in the warm air of the store, she goes out into the cold night. When this has been done night after night, throughout the holiday season, the child may have sacrificed, in addition to her winter’s school life, her chance for normal development into healthy womanhood. In laundries, the only limit to the hours of work of children seems to be the limit of their usefulness. It has been found that their little fingers become expert at “marking,” and at this they are much em- ployed, although they are also found at mangles and other dangerous machines used in steam laundries. Marking is one of the occupations which superficial observers class as “light and easy,” but handling soiled clothing on its way to the washing machine is not fit work for any child. Apart from the unfitness, there is great danger of infec- tion; much greater in the case of young children exhausted by over- work in the heat and steam of the laundry than in the case of older persons. Marking is, unfortunately, one of the branches of laundry work which begins early in the day and holds far out into the night. The following complaint was received at this office on June 3, 1895: ““Goodhart’s laundry has a number of little girls who don’t look to be 12 years old. They worked last Saturday from 7:30 in the morn- ing until Sunday morning at 3 o’clock. Their mothers were wild about them.”’ As laundries do not come under the Factory Act, the inspectors could do nothing in this case—not even order the discharge of the children under 14 years of age. It was not, therefore, surprising that a second complaint was received concerning this plant, dated September 9, 1895, stating that “children under 11 years old are working there, and are made to work overtime until 9 o’clock every night.”” These conditions prevail in all laundries employing children. In every trade and occupation, including those where the work is not, in itself, injurious, it is observed that the places in which