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The Brooklyn Eagle Condemns Child Labor in Mines

In this 1902 editorial, the Brooklyn Eagle strongly criticizes parents who sent their children to work in mines, work that the newspaper saw as dangerous and unhealthy for children.

It is easy to say that the employers are to blame for the employment of children in and about the mines. They are, in part; yet since action was begun against violators of the factory law it has appeared that parents are the chief sinners. The ignorant Slavs, Huns and Italians who now people the region lie their offspring into employment, declaring that they are older than they seem to be. . . . A ragged urchin, led by his father into the presence of a justice that the father has helped to elect, will receive permission to work without any inquiry as to whether he knows his alphabet or can add two and two together. . . .The parents are the worst offenders, however. They are a greedy, unclean company. . . . For a few cents a day they sell these children into bondage, whereas, if they could see a little into the future they would realize that the trained child will earn more than the child who has never been to school. . . . The ignorance, perversion, brutality, the dense animalism that prevail in some of the mining districts, must be shaped by force of law to decency and the form of righteousness.

Source | "Child Labor in the North," Brooklyn Eagle 23 December 1902, 4, from Brooklyn Daily Eagle 1841-1902 Online, www.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/eagle/
Creator | Brooklyn Eagle
Item Type | Newspaper/Magazine
Cite This document | Brooklyn Eagle, “The Brooklyn Eagle Condemns Child Labor in Mines,” SHEC: Resources for Teachers, accessed March 29, 2024, https://shec.ashp.cuny.edu/items/show/2004.

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