Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 266, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 November 1919 — Everything Should Be Regarded From Viewpoint of Children’s Welfare [ARTICLE]

Everything Should Be Regarded From Viewpoint of Children’s Welfare

By MRS. FRANK R. LILLIE

Chicago

I cannot hide the fact that the Crane family is getting every year enormous sums of money from the labor of others without anj thing like commensurate returns to society for it. r I here is no good act or generous deed of any member of the Crane family that at all will or should invalidate this conviction. in jured bv modern industrial conditions, which have molded the lives of us all. - - ' ’ In mv opinion everything should be regarded from the point of view of our children’s welfare, for upomthem depends the entire future of the state. If a thing is good for them it is good, and if it is bad for them it is bad. But society doesn’t take this attitude. Instead of looking at the world from the child’s point of view we take the point of view of business. Education, politics, industrial conditions, housing—in all these matters business comes yfirst and our children come second. It is business which dictates, and after it has made the rules we try as well as we can to adapt the welfare of our children to them. But the day will arrive when, if a method or project is good for business but bad for the children it will be rejected. T’hat is one of the reasons why I favor the strike of the employees of the Crane company. They want a shorter workday. If they get it the father will be able to "spend more time at home with his children. The father’s influence upon his children is just as important a? that of the mother. If the father is prevented from spending a certain amount of time with his children there is! something definite lacking in their rearing. Senator Thomas of Colorado—lt may be possible to reach the goal of uniformity in the conditions of labor, but I question if tjiat can be dona otherwise than by ihaking the standard of the lowest and leveling down to it. If this be so, then strict uniformity in world labor conditions can be attained only at the expense of the American wage earner. His superior skijl; intelligence, productive capacity and opportunities can avail him but little. ’ .. ' 4