school while the white child goes into the factory. The negro child is not wanted in the factories; it could not be relied on; it would fall asleep over its work. You know, I dare say, that we are now overrun in New Orleans with Southern and Eastern Europeans—Italians, Roumanians, Lithuanians, Greeks. It is their children that are the chief sufferers.”

“In what forms of employment?”

“Why, in cotton mills, stocking mills, candy factories, department stores. We got an Act some time ago forbidding the employment in factories of boys under twelve and girls under fourteen. But the proof of age required was simply a certificate from the parents! And the result was to make it appear that most 91boys had been born at the age of twelve, and most girls at fourteen. We are now agitating for an Act greatly increasing the penalties for employing children under age and for issuing false certificates.”

91

“Just before coming here,” I said, “I went into a boot-blacking ‘parlour.’ It was a long, close gallery; and there I had seen a dozen little boys working all this sweltering Sunday under a ‘boss.’ Unless he had relays of boys (which seems unlikely) they must have been at it, to my certain knowledge, for eight hours, and I don’t suppose they will shut down for another two hours at least.”

“If you had inquired,” said Miss Graham, “you would probably have found that they were all Greeks. The negro boot-blacks of New Orleans used to be quite a class by themselves—Eugene Field has written a poem about them. But now they have been quite ousted by the Greeks; while the negroes, in turn, have ousted the Italian organ-grinders. Yes, the boot-black boys are a bad case; but still worse is the case of the telegraph-messengers. Just think of their working young boys from six in the evening to six in the morning—sending them at all hours of the night into the lowest streets of the lowest quarters of this wicked city—and paying them two cents a message.”

“At what age do they take them?”

“Why, at any age when they can trot and 92have intelligence enough to find an address that is given them. And, mark you, it isn’t always—perhaps not generally—extreme poverty that makes the parents thus sacrifice their children. Often the children’s earnings will go to pay the two or two-and-a-half dollars a month demanded for a piano on the instalment system. That instalment system is a great curse to the ignorant poor. I have known a little child sent out to labour 

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