Upon the Back of Babes Our Industries are Wrought
My fellow city dwellers, I write to alert you to a scene all too common in our city as of late: the sight of young children toiling in a tenement basement. From sunup to sundown they work at assembling products that you and I bring into our homes, unaware of the harsh measures under which they were acquired.
Picture, if you will, youths who still seem as though they should be at their motherÆs apron strings, their once pale faces colored brown by the dust of the factory floor. Machines pierce the ears of all who chance to open a door to this cavernous place of employ. I implore you, friends, open your imaginations to the plight of those so young they know not to ask the reason for their harsh endeavors. Why should babes as young as eight, even six years of age, labor the length of childhood days rather than while away hours playing in sunny streets, enjoying the pleasant sea-scent of our vibrant local harbor, learning at our upstanding schools?
It is a result of the dire straits of families newly arrived upon our shores, who own but the clothes upon their backs, their pockets empty but for the crumbs of a repast long since consumed, who must send their children to labor like beasts of the field. It is to such families and their very sustenance that our hearts should turn.
If you are moved by the toiling of young children in the dark places of our city, know that it is within your reach to help change their current state, to bring smiles to young faces once dour with a laborerÆs burden. To your churches! To your streets! Go and rouse your fellow neighbors to charitable pursuit. Give abundantly to the newest residents, the poor who arrive daily from distant shores.
Offer what you can to sustain their tenuous hold in this great land, and in the course of doing so, inquire as to the state of their children. Have the young ones seen the schoolhouse? Have they been out t...