Social Welfare History Project Programs Page 13

Children Hurt at Work: 1932

Article written by Gertrude Folks Zimand, Director Research and Publicity, National Child Labor Committee, appearing in The Survey. “One of the many tragic aspects of the industrial exploitation of children is the army of boys and girls who, at the outset of their industrial careers, fall victims to the machine. Each year, in the sixteen states which take the trouble to find out what is happening to their young workers, no less than a thousand children under eighteen years are permanently disabled and another hundred are killed.”

Shift in Child Labor (1933)

By Beatrice McConnell, Director Bureau of Women and Children, Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry. “Child labor cannot be ignored as a vital factor in the present economic crisis. Children are leaving school and going to work at a time when millions of adults are jobless and many of these children are acting as the sole support of their families because their fathers and older brothers and sisters are unemployed.”

Public Relief in the Sit-Down Strike: 1937

An Editorial in The Survey, March, 1937. “A sharp reminder that ’emergency’ is the middle name of public relief agencies came home to the Genesee County, Mich. Welfare Relief Commission last month with the ‘sit-down strike’ in Flint of the United Automobile Workers.”

But the Children Are Earning: 1935

Miss Bailey Says…
We have to park our principles sometimes in the face of the realities of family situations where the only cash is what children earn. What can a worker do, for instance, about:

A ten-year-old boy who peddles pencils downtown at night to get money for movies, roller-skates and hot dogs?

A family that bare-facedly lies about the ages of children too young to work but whose earnings are desperately needed?

A boy of seventeen, oldest of a turbulent flock who gets his first job, and a pretty good one, and leaves home to live on his own?

A docile girl of eighteen, oldest of six and only one working, who gives her father, for family purposes, every penny of her meager weekly wage??

Towne, Laura Matilda

In 1861, the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina fell to the Union army. Faced with defeat, the entire white population fled, leaving their homes, belongings, and ten thousand slaves. Towne arrived on the Sea Islands in April 1862, one of the first Northern women to go south to work during the Civil War. She participated in the Port Royal Experiment, the first large-scale government effort to help former slaves. The teachers who went south sought not only to teach the freedmen how to read and write, but hoped to help them develop socially and morally.

Hunter, Jane Edna

Jane Edna Hunter (1882-1971) – Social Worker, Advocate for Women and Founder of the Phillis Wheatley Association

Edwards, Thyra J. (1897 – 1953)

Thyra J. Edwards (1897 – 1953) – Social Worker, Child Welfare Advocate, Labor Organizer

Crushing Out Our Children’s Lives (1931)

Written by Helen Keller, an Article in Home Magazine, 1931. “I WONDER how many of you have Miss Abbott’s annual report of the Children’s Bureau. The part relating to child labor is distressing. Miss Abbott tells us that there was a steady increase in child labor during the three years preceding the present period of depression and unemployment. According to reports from sixty cities in thirty-three states, 220,000 full-time working certificates were issued to children between fourteen and eighteen years of age in 1929, as against 150,000 in 1928.”

Apology For Going To College (1905)

At times Helen Keller found her college experience frustrating and exhausting, but she gloried in the knowledge she gained. Perhaps even more satisfying to Keller were the new social roles claimed by college-educated women. In this excerpt, Keller discusses the benefits of attending college—an opportunity that had only recently become available to women.