Delaware Gazette And American Watchman

MISCELLANY.
From the Times and Free Press.
CHILDREN IN FACTORIES.
It is impossible that an intelligent community
our numerous and extensive factories are worked
almost wholly by children—little creatures, who
by the charter of nature, are entitled to an exemption from labour and care, and whose proper place
would be their native hills, as free and joyous as
the winds which play around them. Thousands
on thousands of these little slaves, are driven by
sunrise, with pale and saddened faces, and feeble
and reluctant limbs, to their toil, from which,
with a slight interval at noon, night alone releases
them. Day succeeds day, with the same heavy
task—and the same heavy heart to perform it.
Wearied, heart-sick, spiritless; without a joy to
enliven the present, or a hope to brighten the future; destitute, friendless, forsaken; sinking beneath the unequal burthen of toil, poverty and
oppression—they realize all the ills of age without
the firmness by which age is enabled to endure
them. The children of freemen, they are made
slaves at an age when the children of slaves are
free!
Beneath the sufferings of a factory life manhood itself will often faint. But the heart sickens
to think that little innocents, fresh and tender
from the bosom of maternal affection, who live but
in a joyous freedom from restraint, and whom,
under the simple institutions of our fathers, no fate
could depress, no poverty sadden, should be cooped
up by thousands in a diseased atmosphere to toil
and to tremble beneath the whip of the overseer
until blighted by oppression and suffering, they
sink into the grave.
An intelligent writer, speaking of children, very
justly remarks, that "the due framing of the man,
is a requisite that the child should grow up in a
certain carelessness of spirit. The natural mobility of a child requires, for the full development of
the mental as well as physical powers, to have
complete play. To train his infant limbs constant
action is requisite. Watch a child, and see how
unceasing is the motion requisite to keep him in
a state of comfort; confine him for a moment, and
he is uncomfortable and unhappy. In the early
days of his infancy, unable to move himself sufficiently, the nurse keeps him in a constant motion;
having acquired strength, he swings about his arms
kicks with his little legs, crawls, and throws himself into every possible contortion. The boy runs,
leaps, and keeps himself in one incessant turmoil.
It is not requisite to explain, or to attempt to explain these facts; to state why this motion is needed; suffice it that it is needed. But the action of
the child is never spontaneously a continuous
action of one sort. Put him to turn a wheel, and
you would ruin his health and stop his growth." Is
there a bosom so indurated by avarice as to contemplate the horrors of confinement, monotony
and toil, to such a nature, without pity and indignation. For the honour of humanity we hope
there is not.
In defence of a system, worse in all its features
than the slave trade, it is alleged that the poverty of the children makes this labour a relief; or,
in other words, that when misfortune falls upon
the weak and innocent, the way for a christian
and a philanthropist to relieve them, is to seize
on and to enslave them, drive them to toil which,
combined with the other hardships of their situation, murders them by hundreds—and for this,
generous benefactors! they give them clothes to
cover their nakedness, and food to preserve their
lives and to protract their misery. The argument
may convince them, but does not satisfy us; there
must be something wrong, where there is such
suffering and oppression in a free and civilized
country. Society owes to these hapless innocents
protection and subsistence; and, boastful of its
affluence, is as well prepared to discharge the
debt. If, therefore, charity, which in these days
is too prone to wander to foreign and ideal objects, should be deaf to the groans of the sufferer,
and dead to the call of humanity, duty, the ordinary duty which all civilized communities acknowledge to the wretched, should compel them
to rescue the innocent victim from the whip of
his task master.
It is, however a humiliating, but undoubted
fact, that to produce a public benefit, society must
be convinced, not that it is its duty, but its interest to effect a change. It is the interest of
the north that swells the tariff to oppression—it is
the interest of the south that urges nullification into treason. Were the voice of duty listened to
by either, the patriot would not weep over the
approaching dissolution of the union.
In the same spirit we should, perhaps, convince the community, that the benefits which accrue to society by enslaving and oppressing thousands of her children, are more than counterbalanced by its disadvantages. The task is not a
difficult one. The extension of ignorance, servility and crime, is too great not vitally to affect the
common weal. Our factories are now the schools
in which the tender and pliant nature of youth
goes through a probation which prepares both
heart and hand for the blackest and boldest deeds
of crime and infamy. Turned into a promiscuous assemblage of girls and boys, with no paternal care to watch and restrain, to teach the loveliness of virtue and the loathsomeness of vice, to
direct their ignorance and sustain their feebleness—who can doubt the result? They fall as
human nature, unguarded, ever will fall, into every
vice which unbridled passions, evil habits, and
dangerous associations, can prompt. Every temptation to evil surrounds them, without a voice to
warn or a hand to restrain; and it can be a matter of no astonishment that they become, at an
age when their bosoms should be unshadowed by
a single fault, as old in vice as they are young in
years. Falsehood, dishonesty, incontinence, blasphemy, and a total disregard for the decencies of
virtue, are engrafted upon their youthful natures,
—until humanity shudders at their early depravity,
and trembles for the community which contains them. At a more advanced age, the factory
rejects them, and they are thrown into the bosom
of society, fitted, both sexes, for any thing which
passion, interest or iniquity, should suggest. Ignorant to the lowest degree; besotted in habits of
vice; servile from long slavery—they are unprepared for any participation in the duties or privileges of a citizen. Without resource, save in
their boldness and iniquity, they naturally turn to
crime, and sink into habits which fill our alms-houses and penitentiaries. Such are the schools
in which America is anxious to form her children!
Whether we consult the dictates of humanity,
the interests of society, the character of our people, or the preservation of our institutions, we
are admonished to prostrate this union of the poor
and the prison house; where infancy and innocence are punished; where thousands of those
who will hereafter constitute the freemen of the
land, while they are enslaved, are tortured, while
they are oppressed, corrupted.