[Sidenote: The Shame of the Century]
Think of it, young people of Christian America! In the twentieth
century, in the country we like to think the most enlightened in the
world, after all our boasted advancements in civilization, child
slavery--more pitiful in some respects than African slavery ever
was--has its grip on the nation's childhood.
[Sidenote: An Appalling Record]
The record is amazing to one who has never thought about this subject.
Easily a hundred thousand children at work in New York, in all sorts of
employments unsuitable and injurious. Try to realize these totals, taken
from Mr. Hunter, of children under fifteen, compelled to work in
employments generally recognized as injurious: Over 7,000 in this
country in laundries; nearly 2,000 in bakeshops; 367 in saloons as
bartenders and other ways; over 138,000 at work as waiters and servants
in hotels and restaurants, with long hours and conditions morally bad;
42,000 employed as messengers, with work hours often unlimited and
temptations leading to immorality and vice; 20,000 in stores; 2,500 on
the railroads; over 24,000 in mines and quarries; over 5,000 in glass
factories; about 10,000 in sawmills and the wood-working industries;
over 7,500 in iron and steel mills; over 11,000 in cigar and tobacco
factories; and over 80,000 in the silk and cotton and other textile
mills.
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