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Protect the Children: Child Labor in Utah, 1880-1920
Boys and girls working in Whittaker and Dallas cigar factory, 1905. Shipler photograph, USHS collections.
Protect the Children: Child Labor in Utah, 1880-1920
BY MARTHA S. BRADLEY
ON FEBRUARY 19, 1903, A SMALL TWELVE-YEAR-OLD BOY CLIMBED to the top of a ladder and stretched to dust the boxes that lined the top shelf of ZCMI's millinery department. He accidentally fell backward, struck his head, and soon sank into unconsciousness. After the company doctor briefly examined the boy the store manager took him by carriage home to his mother. The family's poverty was immediately obvious to Thomas Webber. They were short of provisions, fuel, and adequate bedding and clothing. During the next two days the boy continued to fail and finally died.
Mrs. Rosina Marti had depended upon her son's wages since her husband's death. She petitioned ZCMI for satisfaction for her loss to the sum of $2,000. She met with the Board of Directors in the institution's third-floor office with an interpreter and her attorney, Daniel B. Richards. Mrs. Marti expressed her gratitude for what the company had done to help but pointed out that because of her pitiful circumstances it was not enough. Her dead son had been the sole means of support for her and her other children. If ZCMI was not willing to pay $2,000, she said, she would accept $1,000.
As a result, "On motion of George Romney the $1,000 was awarded to Mrs. Marti to help her obtain a home and support until such time as she could, with the aid of her children, make a living; on condition of full release."1
This unnamed boy was part of an anonymous mass of young people who worked alongside adults in the most tedious, thankless jobs in the workplace. He in many ways typified the experience of the child worker— his labor was essential to his family's survival, he prematurely assumed the responsibilities of an adult, and his options were few. He most decidedly was not unique. During the last two decades of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the next, a dramatic increase in the number of child laborers accompanied the nation's industrialization. At the same time, an increasing number of reform minded Utahns looked toward the exploitation of the energies of the state's youngest citizens with dismay and saw child labor as a blemish on society.
Child labor was not a problem unique to Utah, but rather a problem with national dimensions. When Theodore Roosevelt called for the conservation of children in 1906 he voiced the progressive goal of putting an end to child labor:
Roosevelt recognized that legislation was not enough. He knew that the minds of the nation's employers had to be changed to eliminate this "blot" on American civilization.
Before the Civil War all legislative efforts to regulate child labor had failed. Existing labor laws were the work of educational reformers who saw the lack of education among working children as a contributing factor to the nation's crime and poverty rate. This class of legislation sought to enforce compulsory education laws rather than offering protection against the hazards and exploitation of child labor.
Between 1870 and 1900 some 8.5 percent to 18.25 percent of all the nation's children were employed. The percentage rates for boys were substantially higher. In 1870, 19 percent of all boys worked and in 1900, 26 percent of the nation's young men were employed. The number of child laborers was lower in the Rocky Mountain section of the United States than in any other part except the Pacific states. Again, in 1920, of the total 393,563 children in the Rocky Mountain region, 15,612 were employed—4 percent of all children in the states of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada None of the states in the Mountain region was heavily industrialized. More than half of those children at work were employed in agriculture on a full-time basis.3
Nationally, over a million children (1,060,858) ages ten to fifteen where reported in 1920 as employed in a wage-earning occupation. Of those, only one-fifth were employed in occupations affected by federal child labor laws and only one-third in occupations affected by state legislation. Child farm laborers at 61 percent were the largest group and were, therefore, subject to almost no direct legal regulation.
Child labor was never a major problem in the state of Utah; nevertheless, it was still a concern. Less than 4 percent of Utah's children were reported as being employed in factories or on farms, although agricultural employment was always under-reported. Compared to the industrial eastern states that often had as many as 17 percent of their young citizens at work, the need for protective legislation was slight Utah was, however, in the forefront of states creating legislation that regulated employment in mines and smelters. The first legislature of the new state of Utah passed a bill that limited the hours of work in mines and prohibited the employment of boys under fourteen and girls and women of any age. After one Bingham businessman failed to obey the law, the United States Supreme Court upheld the Utah statute and described it as a valid exercise of the state's police power over dangerous work. The case, Holden v. Hardy, was considered a landmark of progressive jurisprudence.4
It is not surprising that employment in mining was outlawed for women and children at the turn of the century. Mining had been traditionally a male profession. Women and children were usually not found in mines. Even women from the very lowest classes— including immigrants—were not used for such work Not only were the miners predominately male, they were for the most part non-Mormons. The Mormon prejudice against the mining industry was initiated by Brigham Young who, before his death in 1877, had waged a personal war against the mining industry in Utah. He quite vocally exhibited his disgust for the lifestyle and type of individual that mining attracted. The church sought to impose its values on all of the community and found it virtually impossible to do so in the wide- open atmosphere of the mining camp. In addition to this societal prejudice that prevailed in the Mormon-dominated territory of Utah, more practical considerations of health and safety dictated prohibitive legislation as well. Working conditions in the mines were abominable. Health and safety standards were almost nonexistent Wages paid to miners were low and uncertain at best The 1896 prohibition on women and children in Utah's mines met these important issues and resolved them for future generations. Despite this important piece of restrictive legislation, by 1910, 3,231 children under age sixteen were recorded by the U.S. Census as employed in some way in Utah.
As previously mentioned, Utah was never prominent as a manufacturing state. In fact, during the territorial period the Latter-day Saints were discouraged by their ecclesiastical leaders from trading with the outside world—self sufficiency was the primary goal of all church economic planning. Therefore, most factories and industries that were developed served to satisfy local demands. The number of manufacturing establishments located in Utah rose dramatically between 1880 and 1900. In 1880 only 640 businesses with a total value of $2,656,657 employed 2,395 workers. The number of businesses decreased during the next ten years to 531 but the total value rose to $6,583,022. Almost twice as many workers (4,349) were employed by manufacturing firms in the 1890s. By 1900 these figures had doubled again. More than 1,400 businesses were recorded in the census report with a total value of $14,650,948. The 6,615 men, women, and children employed in industry profited by that growth.
Many industries in Utah involved the production of foodstuffs. Businesses like the American Can Company in Ogden or the Ogden Packing and Provision Company produced thousands of cans of green beans, pork and beans, fruit, and peas. Almost every town had a small manufacturing business that employed local citizens and satisfied local needs.
In addition to agriculture, the economy of Utah at the turn of the century was based on certain extractive industries that were related to the availability of natural resources in the area such as the mining of gold, silver, copper, lead, and coal; the beet-sugar industry; raising cattle and sheep; and the manufacture of salt. In addition to those basic industries, factories for the manufacture of metal products, canneries, breweries, creameries, and flour and grist mills were located in Utah's towns and cities. Although there were upwards of fourteen woolen and knitting mills in the state at the end of the century, the garment trades were not an important factor in Utah's economy. This accounts in large part for the low percentage of children who were employed in Utah. Again, few of the major industries of Utah in this early period lent themselves to child labor.
Statistics describing the number of children employed in agriculture present a false enumeration. A large proportion of children working on family farms worked without wages. After 1910 a more careful effort was made to assess more accurately the number of child farm workers. In that year alone a national increase of 35 percent was recorded.5
Most children in Utah worked on farms, most likely alongside their fathers and brothers. As mentioned, agricultural work was often heralded as a great boon to the development of responsible citizenship. Sen. Albert Beveridge of Indiana said in one speech to the Senate on the issue of child-labor , particularly labor in agriculture,
Apparently Beveridge and others like him believed in the redemptive value of good, hard work under the influence of kind and loving parents rather than work in the impersonal, unmonitored environment of the factory. It was commonly thought that "By performing certain light tasks, the country child inculcates a habit of industry which is invaluable to him in later life."7 Like the industrial school philosophy of work, or even the tradition of the Protestant work ethic, work, particularly farm labor, was often the reformer's cure-all for the problems of society. Even to critics of child labor, work on the farm seemed a valuable factor in the development of strong, morally healthy children.8 Perhaps most important to this concept was that children stayed under the influence of their parents on the farm rather than the disinterested supervision of strangers.
Many children began working on the family farm as early as six years of age, working in the fields, picking potatoes, bagging or sorting— simple, yet essential chores. One young cowboy herded cows and horses each spring from his sixth year until he was twelve. One child's attitude toward play typified the attitude of the importance of a serious and judicious use of one's time.
The fathers of Mormon polygamous families were often gone for long periods of time while attending to other family groups or serving on missions for the church. In one family the fifteen-year old son ran the jewelry store during his father's three-year stay in the state penitentiary on charges of cohabitation.
Girls were kept busy at home knitting, spinning, weaving, and doing other domestic chores. Mary Ann Bosworth was ten years old when she was first employed, earning fifty cents a week for housework Another young girl, Eliza Horsepool, was twelve when she established independence from her polygamous family.
Child labor was a city problem in Utah. The diverse industries and mercantile establishments that hired young workers were usually located in trade centers. Stores, shoe manufacturers, printing and binding works, bottling and brewing companies, knitting works, the paper trades such as cigar and cigar box manufacturers, pickle, candy, and macaroni factories all employed children for substantially lower wages than were paid to adults. In addition, many children, particularly young boys, worked in the street trades as newsboys, messenger boys, office boys, and in service trades. These jobs were common to children in cities across the nation.
The report issued each year by the Bureau of Statistics painted an interesting picture of how extensive the child labor problem was in Utah's cities and what types of businesses employed children. During 1903, for example, of 7,365 employees of the state's mercantile institutions, 302 were under the age of sixteen years. This same proportion, one of every twenty-four, remained constant until 1905.
In response to business growth the number of child workers steadily increased. Out of a total 19,75 7 boys between the ages often and fifteen in i9I2, 2,095 or 11 percent were gainfully employed; 6.2 percent, 1,225, worked on farms and 870 in industry. Of 20,046 girls of the same age group 430 or 2 percent were employed. Only 0.1 percent of these girls worked in agriculture.
A surprising number of the boys provided the primary support for their families. Of 8,334 native born white boys between ten and fifteen years of age 808 or 10 percent were the breadwinners, 541 in agriculture and 267 in other businesses. The figure was higher for boys with one or both parents born outside of the United States. Out of a total 10,403 such boys 11 percent or 1,108 were the breadwinners of their families. Agriculture was the most common source of work for 6 percent of the total number of boys in Utah.
Fewer girls provided the primary support for their families. Of native-born white girls 1.5 percent (127) were responsible for the finances of their homes. Foreign parentage increased that figure to 2 percent (208).11 These children collected $1,136 in weekly wages out of the $97,617 total. A child brought home on the average $3.70 a week, whereas a male adult worker would earn almost five times as much. As wages increased over the years the proportion remained the same.
In 1895 ZCMI's cash boys earned a total $2,307. Besides cash boys there were errand boys, delivery boys, and extra hands hired for bargain sales as well as messenger boys. In 1896 that figure rose to $4,500 when girls were hired for similar jobs and as wrappers. 12
The attitude toward the number of hours a child should work each day was very liberal in Salt Lake City. Although an adult male might work as many as eighteen hours in a single day, and a woman seven, children usually worked only four and one-half hours. In Weber and Utah counties the difference was not as extreme, but adult males still worked more than four times the hours that children worked. These statistics indicate that the typical child laborer in Utah was helping his family to get by but was rarely the most important element in the family income. Children had only a small influence on total output and that may have made their services more expendable.
In 1906 out of 200 children employed in Salt Lake County in the mercantile industries, 184 worked in Salt Lake City. The largest number of children, 47, were involved in general merchandise. Another 34 worked at institutions that sold books, stationery, boots, shoes, clothing, furnishings, jewelry, millinery, and notions. Another large group of children were employed by businesses that furnished farm implements, hardware, lumber, and other building materials. 13
Many children worked for the same company when they were young that they would as adults. James Maurice Saville first worked at ZCMI in 1883 as a cash boy. In 1903 he was department manager of chinaware.14 Harold E. Young periodically worked as a cash boy after school and on Saturdays in the shoe or grocery department.15 George Reed worked in the drug department in the late 1880s when as a boy " it fell to his lot to make himself generally useful. After graduating from the menial duties that fall to the lot of the average boy. Reed became a salesman 'back of the counter.'" In the 1880s a boy slept on the premises to take emergency calls. Reed remembered that several times during his years as night attendant how "distracted fathers would awaken him from his slumber at all hours of the night that they might obtain paragoric for their baby with colic, or some other cause about as serious." Reed eventually became a registered pharmacist.16
This sleepy night watchman was no exception. Although men and women were the primary members of the workforce, most industries and businesses employed a few children for low wages and the most menial jobs. For instance, six aerated water manufacturing establishments reported that five children under sixteen were employed for fifty cents a day for nine hours of work Adult males averaged five times as much money. The twenty-nine different businesses in the report included a biscuit factory, two broom factories, five candy manufacturers, a carriage works, a clothing factory, a glovemaker and tannery, and salt, sugar, ice, and macaroni factories. The report did not specify which businesses used children.
Printing firms in Salt Lake City accepted as apprentices only those young boys who had finished the work of the eighth grade. The apprentice could advance from one grade of work to the next according to his effort In one study of the printing trades done in 1906 several boys under age fifteen were found to be working. A few boys had permits from the Board of Education that allowed them to work while continuing their studies at school.
Boys were also hired for errands on a temporary basis. They had no hope of a future in the business but were simply earning money. Those shops that exploited this class of boys by perpetuating their ignorance and delaying their chance for training in another field were labeled by the local labor union "unfair" shops. The "fair" shops, on the other hand, had predictable and consistent programs of advancement for the apprentice as he progressed and learned skills.
In her 1906 study of working conditions in Salt Lake City, Hazel Youngberg described a practice of one paper box company. Boxes were sent home with employees during the Christmas rush, and one family's sweatshop included a child of four who worked through the evenings with her older brothers and sisters during the holiday season.
Young girls were employed by the Salt Lake Umbrella Works and a producer of fluff rugs. One boy at the rug factory who earned $2.50 a week claimed to have a work permit but actually did not His days were spent ripping up soiled and discarded carpets that were used in the rag rugs. The work was unsanitary, dusty, and tedious. Eventually the probation officer of the Salt Lake juvenile Court caught up with this boy, who was only ten years of age, and sent him back to school. The factory hired a boy of sixteen to fill his place.
Many children worked in the canneries and fruit processing plants. On a national basis, children accounted for 7 percent of all workers in canneries.17 Cannery work was seasonal and depended on the availability of fresh fruits and vegetables. Pickles, relishes, jams, jellies, ketchups, soups, and baked beans were also made. Processing this type of product helped to extend the work year. Extra workers, particularly children, hired for this type of work prevented regular employees from collecting overtime.
Most of the work of canning could be considered unskilled. Peeling and slicing vegetables and fruits, labeling and wrapping bottles, washing bottles, or boxing finished products could be done by just about anyone. Speed and a certain amount of dexterity were desirable, but little more. This type of factory work was not particularly dangerous, although standing all day was very tiring. Most of the cooking of the food, what one worker called the "responsible" part of the work, was done by men. Women and children did the preparatory work and such final processes as bottling, labeling, and wrapping. In general, sanitary conditions at the canneries were good; certainly the constant handling of food products made cleanliness good business.
Most of the jobs that children did in canneries were very simple. Children under sixteen packed bottles, folded circulars, swept the floors, scrubbed walls, and cleaned the bathrooms.18
The candy factories of Salt Lake City typically employed the largest number of children in the state:
In 1900, 62 percent of the nation's female candy workers were under twenty-five years old. Work in candy manufacturing could be done by women and girls with no trade experience or education. Candy making was primarily hand work and involved a great deal of machinery for cooking and molding the candy There were two distinctly busy seasons— the two months before Christmas and another shorter season before Easter. As was true of the canneries, many children were employed to help during the busy seasons.
Although the factories were typically clean, they were often hot and humid when the candy was cooking. When the candy, such as chocolates, cooled, the temperature was kept at around 60 to 68 degrees, or even lower. Girls worked as dippers, packers, wrappers, or labelers. In addition to those jobs that required a certain amount of manual dexterity girls were employed as general helpers to carry trays, clean or tend machines, and pack candy in boxes.
Factories that manufactured paper boxes, cigars, or cigar boxes also employed children in Salt Lake City. The production of paper boxes was a relatively new endeavor that was in direct response to the growing diversity of manufactured products that needed packaging to be sold. Shoes, hats, clothing of every type, foods, cigarettes, and a variety of other goods were boxed in packages that were just about as important as the products.
The work at box factories was messy because of the glue and paste used, but was not unsanitary; however, most of the work was done in proximity to dangerous machinery. Few of the jobs required special skills, and most work was easily done by women and children.
The sanitary and moral environments were not the only factors that affected the child at work An environment conducive to healthy, happy conditions of work was more difficult to regulate. The character of the work itself, the people working in the factory, and the importance of the job all in turn affected the day-to-day world of the growing child and helped to form the adult he or she would become. One factory that made overalls in Salt Lake City, for instance, had an internal regulation system that failed to provide the necessary safeguards for the child employee. One small girl was given the job of snipping the end threads from a pile of overalls. Her load was placed in a dark, narrow passageway where she bent over her work struggling to see while, quite efficiently, wielding her scissors to put the finishing touches on the product of the factory. One observer felt the enormity of the child's plight, saying:
Contradicting that image, according to Annie H. Bywater, manager of ZCMI's clothing factory, girls working at ZCMI were content, productive, and efficient "Here, happy Utah girls—with the aid of some of the most modern machinery and methods—are turning out close to 10,000 garments a month, girls and machinery [are] constantly being added to deep pace with the increasing demand for the product."21 In describing ZCMI's female workforce as "girls," Bywater may have meant both women and girls. But it is obvious in one photograph of ZCMI's shoe factory employees that out of 53 workers— 13 were men, 15 were boys, and 25 were girls between the ages of thirteen and sixteen.22 At least in the clothing and shoe factories of one of Utah's largest companies a significant amount of the work was done by children.
In 1906 there were approximately fifty messenger boys in Salt Lake City, about half under sixteen years of age. The boys received compensation for a percentage of the profit which made deception seem advantageous. Reformers considered the messenger service a
No attempt was made to determine the number of girls that were employed as domestics. During the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first of the twentieth it was all common practice for parents to "put out" their young daughters into the service of wealthy families. One such girl was interviewed in 1920 by the Relief Society Welfare Department of the LDS church. She had worked as a domestic since she was twelve years of age and by age sixteen was restless and wanted a change. In addition to her dissatisfaction, she had a goiter and needed immediate medical care she could not afford. She also thought that she was developing a mental disorder. Upon examination, she was diagnosed as suffering from what was then called "melancholia" and needed a change in environment When more careful investigation into her work conditions was conducted, it was found that she had been employed as a nursemaid and had not been allowed to associate with the family at all. She had no friends, no social contacts, and in fact seemed to have lost the incentive or the ability to make friends. Because of her limited education, her scanty knowledge of the world and how to interact with other young people, she was deprived of her right to a good and rich life. This was seen to be the the result not only of the poverty of her parents (which forced her to work) but also of the assumption that a child could be put to work at such an early age.24
Poverty was the largest single reason children went to work In addition, mainly parents assumed that a child should always contribute to the family pot and that their children were " economic assets on which they hope to declare dividends at the first opportunity."25 Children worked to increase the family income for a variety of different reasons. One study done by the U.S. Bureau of Labor established that only 30 percent of all children employed actually went to work out of necessity. Another 28 percent went to work because help was desired though not necessarily crucial to the family's wellbeing.26
Although 26.6 percent of the children worked because they were dissatisfied with school, only 10 percent of the children questioned actually preferred work over school or play. This was the only time that the attitude of the child himself appears to have been measured in an early governmental study.27
In one local instance, C. W. Snelgrove, who later became a prominent Utah businessman, grew tired of school in the third grade and quit for what he deemed a job too good to pass up— setting up pins in the local bowling alley. Before his eighteenth birthday Snelgrove had held a series of odd jobs, including cleaning out ditches and delivering groceries. 28
For her 1906 master's thesis for the University of Utah, Hazel Youngberg interviewed several children who had been forced to work by their parents. The first boy, a thirteen-year-old named Edward, worked in a printing office for four months before has was apprehended by a truant officer. The visit to his home revealed that Edward, his mother, her husband, and the other children were living on the boy's weekly salary of four dollars. The mother maintained that they would be "utterly destitute" if her son could not work The four dollars that the boy earned in a week was used to support both adults and three children.
One ten-year-old newsboy stole bottles and junk to support his father's alcohol habit His parents knew about his theft and did nothing to prevent it Another boy, this one age thirteen, who also had a "worthless" father, earned three dollars working in a barn. His family had been recently evicted from their home and was living in a nearby field.29
In one case of blatant neglect a stepfather refused to support his wife's twelve year-old dependent son. The boy got a work permit from the school board so that he could work at theaters selling fruit, candy, and popcorn.
Poverty was not the only factor in each situation. Unusual home arrangements caused by divorce, death, or desertion were also important elements that determined whether or not a child worked.
In the early years of the twentieth century three basic pieces of legislation were passed that sought to resolve these and other problems associated with child labor. As a group, these laws indicate the status of Utah on the child labor question. Each was protective and environmental in intent The first restricted the employment of children in mines, the second established the juvenile court system, and the third was the compulsory education law of 1905.
The compulsory education law included a variety of devices that restricted employment, such as simple literacy tests or compulsory education during certain periods of the school year. Later legislation required completion of specified school grades.
Eventually, a similar grading system was used to assess developmental stages in health and physical growth prior to employment The earliest such regulation was generally ineffective because it left enforcement to the discretion of the employer. Often factory inspectors or physicians employed by the factory examined children to ensure their physical fitness. The most effective approach specified that each child who desired to enter a new position be examined by a public medical officer who would sign a certificate verifying his sound health and normal development.
The compulsory education law required that every child be sent by his legal guardian to school at least twenty weeks in each school year, ten weeks of which would be consecutive. In cities of the first and second class children were required to attend school at least thirty weeks of the year. The only exceptions to this rule were based on the ability of the parent to provide viable alternatives to public or private education.30
Compulsory education kept many children from working during the school year but did nothing to prevent seasonal or summer employment Another serious drawback to the dependence on education laws for regulating the employment of children was the difficulty of enforcement The Board of Education in Salt Lake City in a single year issued between 500 and 600 work permits. Most of them were temporary for periods averaging from four to six weeks. Thousands of children continued to work without permits.
By the end of the nineteenth century most of the basic elements of protective legislation were contained in state statutes. During the first decades of the twentieth century these provisions were defined more specifically and strengthened to translate principles into appropriate action. These included laws that more closely protected the rights of the individual child in determining his own future. They included provisions setting out (1) minimum age at which children could go to work or could choose a particular trade, (2) hour limits that reflected realistic assessments of the child's ability to endure without threatening his health or welfare, (3) educational guarantees that ensured that every child would have a chance at a good education, and (4) exclusions of children from certain occupations that would be either dangerous physically or that would subject them to immoral influences. Another important development was the growing systemization of official supervision over children who did work, especially industrial inspection, the employment certificate system, and compulsory school attendance.
The principles underlying this type of legislation reflected support in the community for the idea that every child had the right to a reasonable opportunity for both physical and mental development and, as one reformer described it, that "it is in harmony with the welfare of society that these rights should be protected."31 Because of the peculiar social and economic conditions in the Rocky Mountain region, it was acknowledged that child labor was a less complicated problem here than in the East However, when children were out of school for long periods of time, were allowed to roam the streets and other public places, and had no structure in their young lives the social consequences were similar.
The 1911 General Child Employment Act was the single most important piece of legislation that affected children after the Juvenile Court Act of 1907. Among other provisions regulating the work conditions and hours of children it prohibited the hiring of children under fourteen in occupations that might be considered dangerous to their health or morals. Children were excluded as well from night work On March 9, 1911, two separate bills were passed. One written by Carl A. Badger, a member of the committee on labor, provided for the investigation of the conditions of child labor in the state. The second. Senate bill 147, written by Rudolph Kuchler of Ogden, dealt with the broad scope of child labor issues. Surprisingly, for a bill that included such a wide variety of issues, it passed the Senate with a unanimous vote. Apparently the time was right, for support was mustered from every part of the community to limit the labor of children in Utah.
In 1911 laws were passed to protect children from the incidental influences of certain occupations. These included the production of alcoholic beverages and tobacco products or employment where these products were sold. Children could not work around dangerous processes, such as the preparation of paint, colors, or white lead or the manufacture of dynamite, nitroglycerin compounds, or fuses.32 It was a misdemeanor offense to neglect to provide chairs, stools, or other furniture for the rest periods of female employees.33
Boys younger than twelve and girls younger than sixteen could not, after 1911, sell newspapers, magazines, periodicals, or other merchandise in cities of the first and second class, nor could young boys shine shoes on the streets.34 After 1912 children under fourteen could not work in mills, factories, quarries, or workshops with more than ten employees. Work on the farm, with the exception of domestic service and fruit or vegetable packing, was limited to no more than fifty-four hours in any one week.35
The effort was also made to limit the work week to fifty-four hours for women and children. One labor act passed in 1912 prohibited the employment of children under sixteen years during school hours. Children who did work did so by presenting a certificate issued by the school board. The certificate allowed a child to work no more than nine hours a day and did not permit night work
The labor bureau of the state government monitored violations of these laws. The commissioner was responsible for investigating and reporting all violations of the law as well as making recommendations about how the best interests of employees could be safeguarded. One method that proved to be very helpful was the permit system mentioned above. In order to be hired by a factory or any type of institution a child had first to obtain a work permit from his school superintendent This permit verified the age of the child, stating that he was developmentally normal and in good physical condition.
By 1920 Utah had a much more definitive and specialized body of legislation to regulate the working conditions, hours, and wages of children than it did at the end of the nineteenth century. It reflected general community support for the ideals of child protection and the effort to improve the lives of the children of the poor. It met many of the standards set by the National Child Labor Committee in 1907.
Child labor was not simply a problem that could be solved by taking children out of the factory. It began in broken families, in families plagued by poverty, and where ethnicity sometimes created barriers. It fostered delinquency and the abuse of children and prevented children from forming a solid basis in intellectual and moral principles essential to the formation of character and good citizenship.
W. D. P. Bliss wrote in 1898 in the Encyclopedia of Social Reform that "there is scarcely one subject in the whole range of social reform, more important than that of child labor."36 If that was in fact true, social reform met with marked success in Utah. Although Utah never had a problem of sizeable proportions with child labor, hundreds of children did work on a regular basis to help support their families. The legislation passed between 1896 and 1920 exhibited a conscious effort to define the work children might do and set certain standards for the environment in which the children worked. These acts did not prohibit child labor altogether—and in this Utah was at the same point as the rest of the nation—but they did attempt to prevent the exploitation of this class of citizens unable to speak for themselves.
NOTES
Dr Bradley teaches history at Brigham Young University, Provo.
1 Minute Book F, March 19, 1903, Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institution, Salt Lake City, Utah.
2 Theodore Roosevelt, The Conservation of Childhood, National Child Labor Committee, Pamphlet No 163 (New York, 1911), pp 2, 4-5, 8, cited in Robert Bremner, Children and Youth in America (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971).
3 "Prevalence of Child Labor by Region, 1920," testimony of Grace Abbott at U.S Senate hearings before a subcommittee of the Committee on Labor Reform, Child Labor Amendment, 67th Cong., 1st sess (1923), pp 31-32, cited in Bremner, Children and. Youth in America, 2:607.
4 Holden v. Hardy, 159 US 366.
5 U.S., Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1910 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1910).
6 Hazel Youngberg, "Our Child Labor Problems" (Master's thesis, Brigham Young University, 1907), p. 7.
7 George Mangold, Problems of Child Welfare (New York Macmillan Co., 1918), p 271.
8 Relief Society Magazine, 8:185.
9 George Lambert, "Journal of George Cannon Lambert," quoted in Kate B. Carter, ed., Heart Throbs of the West, 12 vols (Salt Lake City: Daughters of the Utah Pioneers, 1939-50), 9:269-384.
10 Eliza Burdette Horsepool, Historical Records Survey, Biographical Sketches, Utah Collection, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
11 U.S., Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United Staets, 1912 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1912).
12 Minute Book F, April 7, 1895, ZCMI.
13 U.S., Bureau of Labor Statistics.
14 ZCMI Advocate, 8:56.
15 ZCMI Advocate, 8:75.
16 ZCMI Advocate, 8:106.
17 U.S., Bureau of the Census, Special Reports of the Census Office, Manufactures, 1905, part 3 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1905), p. 400.
18 U.S., Bureau of the Census, Report on Condition of Women and Child Wage-Earners in the United States, 71st Cong., 2d sess. Doc 645 (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1913).
19 Youngberg, "Our Child Labor Problems," p 8.
20 Ibid., p 9.
21 ZCMI Advocate, 5: 164.
22 photograph in ZCMI files.
23 Youngberg, "Our Child Labor Problems," p. 11.
24 Relief Society Magazine, 12:301.
25 Mangold, Problems of Child Welfare, p 11.
26 Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1912.
27 U.S., Bureau of the Census, Report on Condition of Women and Child Wage-Earners in the United States, p 46.
28 Judy Richins, "C W Snelgrove," 1987, manuscript in possession of the author.
29 Youngberg, "Our Child Labor Problems," p 9.
30 State of Utah, Code of Laws (1907), 643.
31 Relief Society, Magazine, 8:185.
32 State of Utah, Code of Laws (1911), 144.
33 State of Utah, Code of Laws (1907), s1339.
34 State of Utah, Code of Laws (1911), s1339.
35 State of Utah, Code of Laws (1907), s1339.
36 W. D. P. Bliss, Encyclopedia of Social Reform {New York, 1898), quoted in Bremner, Children and Youth in America, 2:601.
