JANE ADDAMS TELLS OF CHILD LABOR IN INDIA AND CHINA
Found English and American Men Employing 10-Year Old Children in Factories.
"I can't forgive the child labor I saw in India and China," Jane Addams said at the luncheon given to her by the Women's City Club at the Commodore Hotel, yesterday afternoon. "Not only were the children employed by Chinese and Japanese, but English and American men who knew better employed children in young as 10 years of age in their factories." I talked against it, but got the same arguments we had here in 1832.
"Everywhere in the East there is a forward movement of women and they are working intelligently, making what progress they can politically, though there is a long stride between the accomplishments of the women of Calcutta and the women of the Philippine Islands, who have more nearly the women's club as we know it in America."
Miss Addams spoke of the work of the missionaries in India and said that the one thing about them which won her was the fact that they always stood up for the girls. "They have a hard time, sometimes, making the people see the need of educating the girls, and sometimes they have won out only by refusing to teach the boys unless they could teach the girls, too."
After Miss Addams had been given a rising vote of thanks for her address, Mrs. Joseph R. Swan, acting president of the club, who presided, introduced S. K. Ratcliffe of London, who spent many years in Calcutta as the editor of a newspaper. He gave a number of amusing incidents of his life and work there. "The life of a newspaperman is well expressed in Kipling's "The Man Who Would Be King," he said.
Mr. Ratcliffe criticized Prof. Van Tyne for his book on India and said, "He has simply gone up in the air over something he knew nothing about."
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