Alabama’s Campaign Against Child Labor

1. Alabama’s Campaign Against Child Labor From Pruitt, P. & Sallee, S.

2. 1900 • Many Alabama families had left farms in depressions of 1880s and 1890s to work in mills • Men,women and children all employable • 30% of 8,000+ mill workers were children

3. Labor Union Activity Nationally • Against child labor • Concerned that low child wages depressed wages for adult workers • Sought to build support for restricting child labor • Sent Englishwoman Irene Ashy to Alabama to gain support of middle class women

4. Early Alabama Alliance • Middle class club women • Edgar Gardner Murphy, Rector of Episcopal church in Montgomery • Ashby found 430 children < 12 who worked for 12+ hours daily • Testified to Alabama legislature using humanitarian arguments

5. Mill Owners Argued for Child Labor • Mills kept poor whites from poverty • Factory work good training for kids • Parents expected kids to work • Parents would move to Georgia if Alabama limited child labor • Economic and social disaster • Efforts at reform killed in 1901

6. Murphy Continued Fight • Worked with Alabama women’s groups and Montgomery Ministerial Assn • Noted that Massachusetts had outlawed child labor • Noted high profits at mills

7. First Restrictions Minor • 1903 children could work no more than 66 hours per week • 1907 maximum reduced to 60 hours • 1907 kids younger than 16 could not work at night • Inspector of mills designated, but regulations had little impact

8. 1911 • National Child Labor Committee had national convention in Birmingham • Result of activities of Birmingham’s Nellie Kimball Murdoch (early Alabama SW) • Theodore Roosevelt, Jane Addams and Florence Kelley were there • Exhibit of Lewis Hine’s Alabama pictures of child labor

9. Photos demonstrated that child labor problems were not just in mills and mines • Used in pamphlet aimed at 1915 legislature • Minimum age for work raised to 14; no night work for children under 16 • Also activities toward compulsory education (80 days through age 15)

10. Girl working at mill

11. Young Coal Miners

12. Mill Work

16. Continuing Organizing by Women • Murdoch started organizing county “advisory boards” on child welfare • Helped juvenile court with cases of abused and neglected children • Child Welfare in Alabama produced with help of UA professors

17. 1919 Reforms • Child labor restricted to 48 hours/week and no more than 8 hours/day • Compulsory education for all between 8-16 at 100 days/year • Needed 4th grade education to work • Created state Department of Child Welfare

18. Lorraine Bedsole Bush • Appointed first head of Alabama Child Welfare Department • “General oversight over the welfare work for minor children” • 3 female factory inspectors

19. CWD was the culmination of work of women progressives in Alabama • Focused on right to childhood, freedom from premature exploitation and education at least to literacy • Percentage of children employed in Alabama fell from 45.4% in 1900 to 24.1% in 1920