Rensselaer Union, Volume 3, Number 22, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 February 1871 — Factory Children. [ARTICLE]

Factory Children.

The New York IVmre states that the experience gained in the six schools opened by the Children’s Aid Soclety in that city, has still further developed the fact of the great number of children of tender years in New York employed in factories, shops, trades and other regular occupations. A child put at hard work in this way, it says, is, as is well known, stunted in growth, or enfeebled in health. He fails also to get what is considered as indispensable in this country for the safety of the State, a common school education. Neither the benevolence of the manufacturer nor the conscience of the parent will prevent the steady employment of children of tender years in factories, provided sufficient wages be offered; consequently masses of little ones are growing up mere machines of labor. The Times has discovered that there are from 1,500 to 2,000 children, under fifteen years of age. employed in a single branch —the manufaHure of paper collars—while between fifteen and twenty yoare, number reaches 8,000. In tobacco factoriea in New York, Brooklyn, and the Neighborhood (the editor says), oar agents found children only four years Of age—sometimes half a dozen in a single room. Others were eight years of age, and ranged from that age up to fifteen years. ! Girls and boys of twelve and fourteen years of age earn from *4 to Mper week. One littte*girl attending a machine was an small that she had to stand upon a box eighteen inches high to enable her to reach her work. In one room they fbund fifty children; some little girls, only eight years of age, earning $8 per week. huother there were children of eight and old women of sixty, working the ’* unbinding cellar,” they found fifteen boys under fifteen years. In twine factories, ink factories, feather) pocket-book, and artificial flower maunmeture, and hundreds of other occupations, It is said) the same itato of (blip to vealed.