EDUCATION IN THE SOUTH
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2. That no child under fourteen years of age who cannot read and write shall be employed or allowed to work in any cotton-mill or factory of any sort.
3. That no child under fourteen years of age shall be employed or allowed to work at night in any cotton-mill or factory of any sort.
To make fully effective such a law, some legislation looking to compelling these children to attend the schools while in session ought to be enacted.
Far be it from me to recommend aught that would needlessly retard the splendid industrial development of this state, but industrial development bought with the blood of children is too dear. Dwarfed minds, shriveled bodies, and impoverished souls are too great a price to pay for anything on earth."
Professor P. P. Claxton, chief of the Bureau of Investigation and Information of the Southern Education Board, makes this statement :
I know a mill town with a school population of more than nine hundred and an average daily attendance of less than one hundred and fifty at its eight months of public school. There is no other school in the town. In the middle of this town I have seen boys and girls not yet nine years old working at midnight
In reference to Columbus, Ga., Carleton B. Gibson, super- intendent of schools, says :
In this town of Columbus, which is a manufacturing town, we have i factory population of several thousand. Of these people who work in the mills there are perhaps one thousand children whom we have not yet been able to bring into our public schools in the absence of any compulsory- education law.
The following table shows the age at which the labor of chil- dren is prohibited in factories and the age for compulsory school attendance in ten of the southern states, wherever such laws exist :
Age at which Labor in Factories is Prohibited
Age of Compulsory School Attendance
Virginia
No law
No law
West Virginia
12 years
814 years
Tennessee
Id vears
No law
South Carolina
No law
No law
Georgia
No law
No law
Alabama
No law
No law
Florida . . .
No law
No law
Louisiana
14, Rirls, 12, boys
No law
Kentucky
No legislation on the subject
714 years
North Carolina
No legislation on the subject
No law
Report of Superintendent of Public Instruction, North Carolina, 1901.