Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 38, Number 36, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 January 1906 — WAGES SMALL FOR BIG FAMILIES [ARTICLE]

WAGES SMALL FOR BIG FAMILIES

Child-Labor Secretary Dlacnasea Presidents Theory. President Roosevelt’s declaration in favor of big families was discussed before the New Rochelle People’s forum in New York Sunday. The Rev. Owen R. Lovejoy, secretary of the National Child Labor committee, declared that except in special cases the President was mistaken in promulgating such ideas among the American people. Many men, he said, were working to-day at thtf bench and in the factory'ffor less wages than their fathers received for the same •mount of work and it was costing*them more to. live. Such men, he said, if they were of conscientious type, would hesitate at the responsibility of bringing children into the world to struggle and toil for a bare living without prospects of advancement. Mr. Lovejoy estimated the number of children employed at manufacture and mining in the United States at 2,000,600, which, he said, is far too many, as they are crowding men and women out -of work and lowering wages. He said that the National Child Labor committee, in conjunction with tbe National Consumers’ League, would go to Washington thia winter to try to have Congress pass a bill to establish an additional child-labor bureau, which would raise the condition of working children to that of France and Germany.