p. 8 | A TERRIBLE THING

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Mar 26, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 13.

A TERRIBLE THING.

In the Marshall (Texas) News of a little while ago appeared a “Special Letter” on the “Babes of the Mills.” Its opening paragraph thus reads:—

Does it surprise the reader to be told that in the cotton mills of the country children of six and seven years are working 11¾ hours a day; that in order to perform their tasks with greater ease, for which they are paid as high as ten cents a day, they call upon younger brothers or sisters to help them, and that when weary and sleepy with their tasks, the din of the machinery, and the heavy atmosphere, they are revived by having cold water dashed into their faces?

At one place I heard of children, working on the night shift, turned out for some fault at 2 o’clock in the morning, allowed by a compassionate clerk to go to sleep on a bench in the office, as they were afraid to go home. Ladies told me of a common sight in the mill cottages; children lying face downward on the bed, sleeping from exhaustion, just as they had come in from the night shift, too utterly weary even to remove their clothes.

A picture is given of a little one throwing herself upon the bed when the day’s work is over, too tired to undress. In 1887 a law was passed by Alabama, limiting the children’s day in factories to eight hours; but through the influence of Massachusetts mill owners it was repealed in December, 1894. Some of these mills are now working children under twelve for eleven and three-fourths hours a day. And this mill population is said to be composed entirely of white people. As the writer puts it: “The illiterate negro sends his child to school; the illiterate white sends his to the cotton mill.”

All these things are the result of the conscienceless greed of men who many times pose as philanthropists in the use of money which, vampire-like, is sucked by the mill system from the blood of children. How it makes one long for the reign of Him who will render justice to all. What a mighty protest such a condition of things ought to raise. But they are hardly noticed by a people whose conscience is becoming hardened by greed of gold.