Rensselaer Journal, Volume 12, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 March 1903 — Child Slavery in the North. [ARTICLE]

Child Slavery in the North.

A great deal has been written of late about child labor in the South, and especially by our esteemed Northern contemporaries. It is unfortunately a fact that little children are employed Jn some of the Southern cotton mills who ought to be at school, and who are being deprived of their childhood. But In a recent number of McClure’s Magazine Mr. Francis H. Nichols directs attention to child labor in a Northern state, compared with, whom those of the South enjoy a life of ease and pleasure. These unhappy little toilers are In the anthracite region of Pennsylvania and number nearly 30,000, of whom 24,000 are boys who work for the mining companies, and the others girls who work in textile mills established in the mining region in order to utilize this cheap labor. Thus the population of the mining region is becoming more and more densely ignorant, bitterly hating their employers, but knowing nothing beyond coal mining, and for this reason absolutely at the mercy of pitiless corporations.—Baltimore Sun.