Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 51, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 February 1912 — CHILD LABOR LAWS ARE AGAINST INDUSTRIAL SCHEME. [ARTICLE]

CHILD LABOR LAWS ARE AGAINST INDUSTRIAL SCHEME.

Maryland Mas Says Compulsory Educational Laws Are Opposed to Mrs. M, Springer’s Proposed Plan. " “BACK TO THE LAND.” Open letter to Mrs. Margaret Springer, 306 Canal street, Chicago: Dear Madam:ln the Chicago InterOeean of Feb. 16th I saw an account of what you propose in the way of a farm colony near Kniman, Jasper county, Indiana. Your Idea is right! If the millionaires of the country would do the same the solution of all our troubles would be found. It is very natural that the socialist agree with you. Socialists want nothing that has an element of manual labor in it. People whose ideal is two or four hours work for a day cannot sympathize with anything on your line. They prefer to work for child labor laws, compulsory educational laws and for the shortening of working hours everywhere. obstacle to any getting of poor people back to the land are these very child labor and compulstory education laws. They are responsible for the idlers and youthful criminals of the day. The poor people whom you get to the land must be entirely unhampered by social, religious or educational obstacles. They must go there to work, and otherwfflrlo’ do as they choose and be let alone. The cry everywhere is for the back-to-the-land movement. Yet even the people why cry it are oblivious of the things necessary for its realization, and utterly intercept it with other demands. Every poor man that goes to one of your 10-acre farms with his family should have the labor of every member of his family, yet here is Owen R. Lovejoy planning to let no child work on a farm until it is 14, 16 or 18 years of age. . For some twenty years I have been making this call of back-to-the-land. I have sent out thousands of circulars and newspaper articles. I have called on every rich rtufh in the land to help. I have even called on the states to abolish the public schools and put to the movement the cash that goes to them for a time at least.\l have been called the father of the movement in this country; but, as yet, neither private nor public help to the end has amounted to anything—as Mr. Stedman says, failure has marked such attempts as have been made. The whole country is drifting toward socialistic laziness and living off of the state. All this is the result of the public schools. Just the other day Mrs. Ella Flhgg Young confessed and deplored this. Your colony is about the right distance from Chicago, but it is in a state where compulsory education and child labor laws exist with a vengeance, and if they could not be repealed in the case of your colony, with application to work considered as application to books, vain will be all hope. Poor people must have children's help.’ ‘ Very respectfully,

FRANCIS BUCK LIVESEY,

West Friendship, Md.