SCHOOL CHILDREN AS WAGE-EARNERS.

THE reality of the desire of the people of Great Britain for national education is vouched for by the millions cheerfully spent on the establishment and maintenance of elementary schools. There is little objection to keep up and even increase this expenditure, whether derived from imperial taxes, from local rates, or from the voluntary contribution of those who desire to maintain schools in which definite religious dogma is taught. The sum paid out of the imperial taxes for maintenance only already amounts to nearly seven millions annually, and is steadily increasing, but no one proposes to reduce the amount. Even those representatives of the people who undertake the function of urging national economy always except the expenditure on education from their general denunciations of extravagance. It may be true that in some country districts education rates are grudgingly paid, and people would gladly go back if they could to the cheaper Voluntary School; but in towns, at any rate, the majority of people are in favour of large expenditure on education, and the School Boards throughout England and Wales spend nearly two millions and a half in the maintenance of Board Schools with the general approbation of the ratepayers. Indeed, much money is spent upon science and art teaching by School Boards out of the rates without any parliamentary authority, but with the general assent of those by whom the money is paid. The voluntary subscriptions of about 850,000l. annually show some tendency to fall off, but those by whom they are collected refer this to quite exceptional causes, and declare that it is not due to any diminished zeal for education.

But everybody knows that a great deal of the money thus spent is wasted. It is not only that the wrong subjects are taught; that reading, writing, and arithmetic are not at all ages the best means of developing the intelligence of children; that the same curriculum is not suitable to the children of artisans and rural labourers; that education is carried on in some schools by teachers ill qualified and too few; and that the structure of the buildings is not in accordance with the best modern requirements. But the schools, such as they are, teaching the subjects they do, with the staff and appliances at

their disposal, do not produce the results of which they are capable, in consequence of the failure of a proper supply of the raw material on which they are intended to operate. The public is very reluctant to acknowledge this. They do not attempt to deny that at least a million children in England and Wales are never reached at all by our education machinery; that of those whose names are on the books of the schools, about one-fifth is absent every time the schools are opened, and that this fifth consists very largely, day by day, of the same children; that scholars who attend the schools have knowledge crammed into them at too early an age, when their minds are immature and unfit to assimilate what is taught; that many are sent to school in a state of hunger and weariness which totally unfits them to profit by instruction; and that just at the age when children are fit to begin to study they are removed from school-the necessary result of which is that the greater part forget everything which has been taught to them at so great an expense. People cannot deny these facts, but they are determined to ignore them. They shut their eyes to the monstrous folly of their system. What would be thought of the intelligence of a manufacturer who provided, at great cost, the most approved modern machinery, and then fed it with raw material utterly unfit to produce the article intended? This is exactly what the English people, who boast of their eminently practical character, are about in their educational system.

The reason of this wilful blindness is that the claims of education have a most powerful and formidable rival in the claims of labour. Children while they are being educated have at the same time to take their part in carrying on the industries of the country. Child labour is demanded and justified on three distinct grounds :

First, it is said that the poverty of parents renders the wages which children can earn necessary for the maintenance of the family; Secondly, it is alleged that various processes of industry cannot be carried on without the help of children; and,

Thirdly, the convenience of the richer classes requires the assistance of school children in their amusements.

(1) Parents who employ their children for the purpose of earning wages are an insignificant minority of the working classes, and it is doubtful how much of the existing employment of children is due to necessity, and how much to a greedy desire on the part of unworthy parents to gain as much as they can, as early as they can, out of the labour of their children. There are undoubtedly many parents in extreme poverty who make immense sacrifices in order to keep their children at school, and who will endure, themselves, the greatest hardships rather than deprive them of the education which they think it is for their interest to receive; while there are many, much better off, who send their children to work the moment they are capable of earning the most trifling wages, and seem to consider the

interest of the children very little in comparison with the convenience of having their earnings to spend. There are undoubtedly, however, both in town and country many families, under the present economical conditions of society, who are continually in dire straits. Among the poor in the great cities, the labour of both parents, and still less that of a widow left with a large family to bring up, is generally insufficient to provide food, clothing and rent, without the earnings which the children are able to contribute; and in country districts where the labourer marries young, and usually begets a large family, there is always a period, just before the elder children are old enough to go to work, when the difficulty of providing sufficient food for their growing necessities becomes so acute, that the time when the first child begins to earn is hailed by the mother, who has usually the management of the income, as a relief from an almost intolerable strain. Economists declare that the ultimate effect of families being thus dependent upon child labour for their resources is to lower the wages of adults. But this result is produced only in the long run; and the parents are too ignorant of political economy, and too severely pressed by present need, to care for the remote effects which are produced by sending out their children to work.

(2) The theory that children's labour is absolutely essential to any of the processes of industry is now gradually being given up. It used, for instance, formerly to be alleged in debates on factory Bills that there were operations in the textile manufactures which children alone could perform, and that it was essential for the production of an efficient worker to begin labour at a very early age, because it was then only that the necessary dexterity with the fingers could be acquired. But now that the factories of our chief continental rivals, France, Germany and Switzerland, have been entirely denuded of all workers under the age of fourteen or fifteen, and when even in Great Britain, under the existing law, the half-time system is gradually dying out of itself, it is evident that this theory must be abandoned. It was also formerly said in the discussion of Mines Regulation Bills that there were certain thin seams of coal which could only be worked by small boys, but since the age in Great Britain has been raised to twelve-and in most continental countries, in accordance with the resolutions of the Berlin Conference, to fourteen-it is evident that this excuse for the employment of very young children in underground labour has been found unreal. But there is no doubt that if the labour of children is not indispensable it is extremely useful, and that a child attending upon an adult labourer can make the work of the latter very much more efficient. There are also some industries in which the child is not only useful to the adult, but in which the employment is actually beneficial to the child itself. This is especially the case with industries which are carried on in the open air, such as agriculture, horticulture and

occupations of that kind. There is, however, a tendency to exaggerate the advantages of this sort of employment and to talk as if out-door work was always of a kind which was instructive and improving to the intelligence of a child. Agricultural labour is described in the House of Commons as a kind of technical instruction. It is not always so. A great deal of the work to which rural children are set is monotonous, uninstructive, and very much more calculated to deaden than to develop their faculties.

(3) In the case of children employed as caddies on golf links, as beaters or stops at a shooting party, or to pick up balls at tennis, there is no objection to the employment itself. The work is light and healthy; it is regarded by the child rather as play, and the pay is very good. If such work is done out of school hours there is nothing to be said against it, but if it is done in school hours, it is injurious to the child and to the school from which it is taken; to the child, because it is removed from its proper work to the enjoyment of a delightful but demoralising holiday; to the school because it spoils the work of the class to which the child belongs. Every one who has had anything to do with teaching knows how impossible it is to carry on the work of a class unless the children who compose it are regular in their attendance, and the persistent irregularity of even a few children is a very serious drawback to the progress of the rest. Would the masters of any of the great public schools allow boys to be taken away out of their class for a day's pleasuring at the will of their parents or guardians?

The employment of school children as wage-earners has lately been the subject of an inquiry by the Education Department. A return was ordered in April 1898 by the House of Commons (for England and Wales) giving the number of children attending elementary schools who are known to be working for wages, or employed for profit, with their ages, standard, occupations, hours of work, and rate of pay. This return has lately been issued, and gives the cases of 144,026 children on the books of schools who are known to be employed for wages or profit; but it appears upon the face of the return itself that the number actually employed is very much greater, and that the return does not include anything like the whole of those who should appear in it. The information on which the return is based has been received from the correspondents of the 20,000 elementary schools in England and Wales. Every school receiving parliamentary grants is required to have a correspondent. In the case of Board Schools this correspondent is usually the Clerk of the School Board, and in the case of Voluntary Schools is a clergyman or other member of the Committee by whom the school is managed. The correspondent is under a statutory obligation to give such returns and supply such information as the Education Department may from time to time require. It is plain from the replies

sent in, that many of the correspondents misread the circular in which the information was asked for.

(1) Many have returned only the names of children in regular employment; the greater part of child labour is not regular but casual.

(2) In many cases they have omitted those who, though employed for profit, have not received wages; a great number of children work for profit obtained by their parents, and get no actual wages themselves.

(3) Some correspondents have taken upon themselves to make no return at all where, in their judgment, the employment of the children has been beneficial to their bodily health, however disadvantageous it may have been to their intellectual progress.

(4) In many cases where the employment has not been out of school hours, but in school hours, no return at all has been made. In a great number of cases, especially in agricultural districts, the child that goes to work is taken away from school altogether, and does not make his appearance there again until the employment comes to an end.

(5) Many of the correspondents admit the returns to be incomplete and inaccurate. In all, 33,865 girls are returned as against 110,161 boys. It is obvious that the former figures represent a very small portion of the girls actually at work.

It must therefore be admitted that for any accurate statistical purpose this return cannot be relied on. But it shows the existence of a great social evil; it depicts its nature, and it calls the attention of all those who wish to see the people properly educated to a most formidable obstacle to the attainment of that result.

The evidence of the return establishes, or at least renders highly probable, the following facts:

(1) School children are employed at very early ages. Of the 144,000, more than half are returned as being under eleven years of age, which is the age at which, according to the existing law, all children ought to be in regular attendance at school.

(2) The standards attained by the school children employed are very low; more than half are in or under Standard 4.

(3) The occupations are for the most part not in themselves desirable; they are not instructive, and are not calculated to develop an intelligent and skilful worker. Selling newspapers in the streets, which is generally but not exclusively the work of boys, occupies 15,182; while employment in shops or in running errands for shopkeepers, also usually done by boys, occupies 76,173 children. Most of the girls returned are said to be employed in minding babies and other housework, and there are 4,019 returned as employed in needlework and like occupations. Such girls are for the most part assisting their parents in tailoring, dressmaking, matchbox-making, and such like home-work.