Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 165, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 July 1912 — CHILDREN SOLD AS SLAVES [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

CHILDREN SOLD AS SLAVES

Annual Fair Is Held at Frledrtchahafen to Loan Boya and Girla to Farmer*. v* . ■■' Friedrlchshafen. —A strange custom prevails In the Tyrolese Alps. Landloss parents sell their children for the summer season to tbe largest landowner, the sales being effected at an annual fair held at Frledrichshafen, on the Lake of Constance, at Easter time. Thiß year 125 boys and 30 girls, between the ages qf eleven and sixteen years, were offered. Purchasers were net lacking, about 600 peasant farmers from Baden, Wurttemberg, and Bayaria bad come to get child-slaves to work on their farms. The purchasers

behaved exactly as at the cattle market, scrutinizing the hoys and girls, sometimes feeling their biceps, and then making an offer to the person in charge of the party. Owing to the demand this year being so much greater than the supply, the prices ruled high, {60 -being given for a sturdy lad of sixteen, big enough to wield the hayfork or a scythe effectively, while {SO was given for one of the older girls who looked as if she could do a long day’s weeding in the sun. One the other hand, {l2 waß considered enough for little, underfed miteß of eleven, who ought to have been at school. The money, of course, goes to the children’s parents, landless men in the remoter valleys of Tyrol, woodsmen and the like, who, one would be glad to believe, are driven by sheer destitution to send their children to work for strangers in a foreign country. The child slaves are sent home at the end of October —all, that Is, but some who succumb to overwork, ill-treat-ment, and home-sickness. That the children are not always well treated is well known, but a black-list is kept, and an offender has a poor chance of making a purchase thereafter. The whole business of the childmarket, which Is of great antiquity, is now arranged by a clerical society, the activity of which Is violently attacked by part of the local press, which demandß its suppression.

Ancient Castle In the Tyrol.