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UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF LABOR F rances P e r k in s , Secretary CHILDREN’S BUREAU - - - Katharine F. Lenroot, Chief YOUNG WORKERS AND THEIR JOBS IN 1936 A Survey in Six States BY HELEN WOOD Bureau Publication No. 249 United States Government Printing Office Washington : 1940 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, Washington, D. C. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Pi ice 15 cents https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis CONTENTS Page Letter of transmittal___________________________________________________ Introduction___________________________________________________________ Summary of findings____________________________________________________ Scope and method________________ Age, race, and sex______________________________________________________ A ge!........................ Race______________________________________________________________ Sex.................. Family background___________________________________________________ Membership in a family group_____________________________________ Size of family and number of wage earners__________________________ Presence and employment status of father_____ _____________________ Employment status of adult wage earners________________ •_________ Relief recipiency of family_________________________________________ Education___________________________________________________________ Education up to the time of first leaving regular school_____________ Age at leaving school____________________________________________ School grade completed__________________________________________ School progress__________________________________________________ School attendance subsequent to first leaving school________________ Vocational education_______________________________________________ Work history___________________________________________________________ Length of time out of school before beginning first jo b ____________ Age at time of beginning first jo b __________________ Stability of employment since beginning of first jo b ________ Number of employers_____________ •_____________________________ Extent of unemployment_________________________________________ Industry_______________________________________________________________ Industries employing children under 16 years of age________________ Industries employing young persons 16 and 17 years of age_________ Occupation_____________________________________________________________ Professional and white-collar workers_____________________________ Service workers__________________________________________________ Skilled craftsmen________________________________________________ Semiskilled production workers___________________________________ Laborers________________________________________________________ Accident and health hazards_______________________:_____________________ Accident hazards__________________________________________________ Health hazards____________________________________________ Occupational-disease hazards________________________________ Physical strain______________________________________________ Hours of work__________________________________________________________ Usual daily working hours_________________________________________ Lunch periods and split shifts______________________________________ Early-morning and evening work___________________________________ Early-morning work_________________________________________ Evening work_______________________________________________ Number of working days per week__________________________________ Weekly working hours______________________________________ Weekly hours in manufacturing industries _____ Weekly hours in nonmanufacturing industries________________ Earnings_______________________________________________________________ Weekly earnings___________________________________________________ Money earnings________ Supplementary wages in kind____________________ Hourly earnings_____________________________________________ Conclusion_______________________________________ Appendix_______________________________________________________________ HI https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis v 1 3 6 8 8 10 10 11 11 11 13 14 15 17 17 17 19 21 23 24 27 27 28 30 30 31 33 33 35 37 39 40 40 41 42 43 43 44 45 45 48 48 49 51 51 52 53 54 57 59 60 61 61 62 64 69 74 IV CO N TE N TS ILLUSTRATIONS ( Page Number of children under 16 years of age in specified occupations.. Frontispiece Percentage of children who left full-time school before completing eighth grade, by area_____________________________________________________ 20 37 Percentage of children in specified occupations________________________ _ ~ Percentage of 16- and 17-year-old children in manufacturing and in non manufacturing industries who worked more than 40 hours a week by gg area.................. Percentage of children with cash earnings who reported specified weekly earnings.---------------------------53 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Letter of Transmittal U nited States D epartment of L abor, C hildren’ s B ureau , Washington, March 14, 1940. M adam : There is transmitted herewith Young Workers and Their Jobs, a survey made in 1936 of 2,019 employed minors under 18 years of age in six States. The Children’s Bureau is indebted to the young workers, to their parents, to representatives of community agencies, and to others for their cooperation and assistance in making available the information on which this report is based. The study was planned and carried on under the general direction of Beatrice McConnell, Director of the Industrial Division of the Children’s Bureau. The field work was conducted by Elizabeth S. Johnson, Evelyn Murray, Mary R. Shea, Josephine Streit, Rosalie Williams, and Helen Wood, under the super vision of Mary Skinner. The report was written by Helen Wood under the supervision of Elizabeth S. Johnson, Assistant Director in Charge of Research in the Industrial Division. Respectfully submitted. K atharine F. L enroot, Chief. Hon. F rances P erkins, Secretary of Labor. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis NUMBER O F CHILDREN UNDER 16 YEA RS O F A G E IN SPECIFIED OCCUPATIONS DELIVERY ANO MESSENGER-SERVICE WORKERS FACTORY ANO OTHER SEMISKILLED PRODUCTION WORKERS LABORERS FOOD AND MISCELLANEOUS SERVICE WORKERS CLERICAL WORKERS PROFESSIONAL AND KINDRED WORKERS EACH COMPLETE SYMBOL REPRESENTS IO WORKERS https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis YOUNG WORKERS AND THEIR JOBS IN 1936 Introduction The employment of young workers and the conditions under which their work is carried on have long been matters of both State and National concern. Where children labor for long hours at tasks beyond their strength or are subjected to other unfavorable conditions that deprive them of the opportunity for normal physical and mental development not only the individual but the race is affected. But the public concept of the social conditions necessary for the normal devel opment of children and indeed the concept of what is in fact normal development have varied with changes in public needs and ideals. The change from the eighteenth-century opinion that youthful toil is adequate training for life to the public demand that the years of childhood should be devoted to education rather than gainful employ ment has come about slowly. The translation of that demand into enforceable legal restrictions has developed still more slowly. By the latter part of the nineteenth century there had grown up a social consciousness, expressed in regulatory measures, of the need for safe guarding young children at least from the worst aspects of industrial exploitation; and during the first three decades of the present century great advances were made both in raising the minimum age at which children might be employed and in protecting young workers from over-long hours and from industrial hazards. In the early 1930’s the competitive conditions incident to the industrial depression accen tuated the problems of child employment and focused public concern upon the sweatshop child-labor conditions that were returning in cer tain industries. With the coming of the National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933 an almost spectacular change in child-labor conditions took place. There had been evidence over a long period of a rise in the commonly accepted standard with regard to the age at which it is socially desirable for children to leave school and go to work. The result was that, although the basic 16-year minimum age of the N. R. A. codes was higher than that fixed by the laws of most of the States, it was accepted by employers, employees, and the public. Until the act was declared unconstitutional in May 1935, these codes with their 16-year minimum-age standard practically eliminated the use of children under 16 in industry and trade. The immediate increase in child labor following the invalidation of the act in 1935, accompanied as it was by lowering of wages and lengthening of hours, pointed to a special need for information on the kinds of work open to young persons, the conditions of their work, and the relation of their employment to unemployment among adults. This survey of young workers and their jobs was undertaken in 1936 in order to make such information available. It deals with two groups of workers— those under 16 years of age and those 16 and 17 1 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 2 Y O U N G W ORK ERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN 1936 years of age. The picture which it gives of boys and girls of both age groups entering the ranks of wage earners without adequate educa tion, engaged for the most part in poorly paid jobs that nevertheless exact heavy physical toll, indicates the need for an increasing public awareness of the industrial and social problems which the employ ment of young workers involves. Much progress has been made. Twelve States now have a basic 16-year minimum age for employment. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 sets up this minimum age for employment in establish ments producing goods for shipment in interstate commerce, provides for safeguarding 16- and 17-year-old boys and girls from industrial hazards, and sets wage and hour standards for minor and adult workers alike. But there is urgent need both for further restrictive and pro tective legislation relative to child employment and for the develop ment of social procedures adequate to deal with the rela ted problems of compulsory school attendance, vocational preparation, and vocational guidance for young persons. As have previous industrial studies, this survey shows also that basic to the solution of the whole child-labor problem is an assurance of family resources sufficient to make dependence upon the child’s wage unnecessary. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Summary of Findings Scope oj the study.— This study of young workers and their jobs is based on interviews with 450 working children under 16 and 1,569 of 16 and 17 years. These boys and girls had all left regular day school and had been employed within the month previous to the interview in industrial, commercial, and service occupations (exclusive of agri culture, domestic service, and street trades). The children lived in representative urban communities in six States— Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Indiana, Missouri, Alabama, and Georgia.1 Family background.— The economic status of the family bore a close relation to the work of the children. Of the employed children under 16 years of age only 45 percent had a father who was employed and present in the family. In 31 percent of the cases the child’s father was either dead or absent from home and in the remaining 24 percent he was present but was either unemployed or unemployable. The 16- and 17-year-old workers came from broken homes or homes with an unemployed father somewhat less often than the younger children. Of these olaer boys and girls, 57 percent had an employed father in the family and only 25 percent had no father at home. Adult unemployment was found to be a major factor in the children’s employment. Of the children under 16 years of age, 36 percent came from families with at least one member 18 years of age or over who was totally unemployed. The corresponding figure for the older boys and girls was 30 percent. Age at leaving school.— The young workers under 16 had less school ing than those 16 and 17 years of age. All the working children who were under 16 at the time of interview had of course left school before they were 16, but not quite half the 16- and 17-year-old workers had done so. Yet in every one of the States visited some boys and girls in the older as well as the younger group had left school before they were 14 years old. The proportion of the children leaving school before reaching 14 was very small in the New England and Middle Western States, only 3 percent and 8 percent, respectively, for the children under 16 years of age. But in the Southern States, 31 percent of the white children and 60 percent of the Negroes in the younger group had left school before they were 14. Several Southern children, white as well as Negro, reported that their schooling had stopped when they were not more than 10 years old. School grade completed.— Twenty-nine percent of the working chil dren under 16 years of age left school after completing the fifth or a lower grade. Only 37 percent of the children of this age group finished the eighth or a higher grade. Of the 16- and 17-year-old boys and girls, on the other hand, only 8 percent failed to complete a higher grade than the fifth, while 67 percent finished the eighth or a higher grade. i The 450 children under 16 in the study represented a larger proportion of all working children of their age in the communities visited than did the 1,569 workers 16 and 17 years of age. 3 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 4 YOU N G W O RKERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN 19 3 6 The proportion of children under 16 years of age who left school after completing the fifth or a lower grade was 4 percent in New England and 10 percent in the Middle West, 40 percent among the Southern white children and 74 percent among the Southern Negroes. Vocational education.— Vocational training played only a small part in the preparation of the young workers for their jobs. Although onefourth of the children under 16 and three-tenths of those 16 and 17 years of age had attended vocational classes, most of them had not remained in school long enough to complete a training program. Only 97 out of the 1,569 16- and 17-year-old boys and girls included in the study had completed such a program, and less than half (42) of these 97 young workers had jobs related to their training. Industry.— The children under 16 years of age were most often employed in wholesale and retail trade. Forty-six percent of these younger children worked for grocery stores or other establishments in trade and only 26 percent worked for manufacturing establishments. The remaining 28 percent of the children were scattered over a wide variety of service and miscellaneous nonmanufacturing industries. The 16- and 17-year-old boys and girls were much more often em ployed in manufacturing than were the younger children. Fifty-five percent of the young persons in the older age group worked for manu facturing industries, only 22 percent were employed in trade, and 23 percent in other nonmanufacturing industries. The cotton mills of the New England and Southern States, the shoe factories of New England, and the clothing factories of all three areas visited were the manufacturing concerns which employed the largest numbers of 16- and 17-year-old workers. Occupation.— The predominant occupations of the young workers in this study were delivery work and semiskilled production jobs— occu pations which were often both arduous and hazardous and which held little promise of future advancement. Of the children under 16 years of age, 33 percent were engaged in delivery service, 28 percent were semiskilled production workers, 16 percent were salespersons, and the remaining 23 percent were scattered over a wide variety of other occupations. The 16- and 17-year-old workers, on the other hand, were most often employed as semiskilled production workers. Fortyseven percent of the older boys and girls had jobs of this sort, com pared with 17 percent who had delivery jobs and still smaller propor tions who were in other occupations. Only a very few of the young workers in each age group were employed in professional or clerical pursuits or in skilled trades, even as learners or helpers. Working hours.— A workweek of more than 40 hours was the rule among the young workers in this study. Sixty-five percent of the children under 16 years of age and 53 percent of those 16 and 17 re ported a workweek of more than 40 hours for their most recent week of employment. Of the children in the younger group, 23 percent worked 60 or more hours and 5 percent 80 or more hours a week, while the corresponding figures for the 16- and 17-year-old workers were 13 and 2 percent, respectively. A workweek of 60 or more hours was reported by 40 percent of the Southern children under 16 years of age, compared with 16 percent of those from the Middle West and 8 percent of those from New England. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis S U M M A R Y OF FIN D IN G S 5 The boys and girls in nonmanufacturing industries worked much longer hours per week, on the whole, than did those employed in manufacturing. Nine percent of the factory workers under 16 years of age worked 60 or more hours a week, compared with 29 percent of the nonfactory workers. The store delivery boys, who had longer working hours than any other occupational group m the study, worked 60 or more hours a week in one out of every two cases. It was not un usual to find delivery boys working an average of 12 hours a day, 6 days a week, and in addition 4 or 5 hours on Sunday morning— a total or more than 75 hours a week. Weekly earnings.— The young workers’ weekly earnings were fre quently very low despite their long working hours. Half of the children under 16 years of age with cash earnings made less than $4.15 a week and only 1 out of 12 made as much as $10. Among the 16- and 17year-old workers wages tended to be somewhat higher, but the median earnings of these older boys and girls were nevertheless only $7.40 a week. Among the 16- and 17-year-old workers, who were the higher-paid group in all areas, median weekly earnings were $8.25 in New England and $8.05 in the Middle West, compared with $6.60 for the Southern white boys and girls and $3.40 for the Southern Negroes. Hourly earnings.— The children’s hourly earnings were usually very low. Half of those under 16 years of age averaged less than 9 cents an hour during their most recent week of employment and only 1 out of every 12 made as much as 25 cents. Among the 16- and 17-yearold boys and girls median hourly earnings were 18 cents, twice as high as among the younger children, and 33 percent made 25 cents or more an hour. The young factory workers tended to have somewhat higher hourly earnings than did the nonfactory workers. Median earnings were 22 cents an hour for the 16- and 17-year-old boys and girls employed in manufacturing but only 14 cents for the group in nonmanufacturing industries, where many of the young workers were paid a small, fixed weekly wage which bore little relation to their working time. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Scope and Method This study of young workers and their jobs deals with boys and girls under 18 years of age who had left school and gone to work in industrial and commercial occupations and in service occupations other than domestic work in private homes. Between May and November 1936 the young workers or responsible members of their families were inter viewed at their homes to obtain information with regard to the children’s family backgrounds, schooling, and employment. In ad dition, State and local school officials, persons issuing employment certificates, workers in employment offices and relief agencies, and representatives of other community services were also consulted re garding conditions relating to employed children and their families. In order to limit the picture to conditions of employment of young workers regularly engaged in occupations which offer similar problems and which as a rule are subject to similar types of legal regulation, school children working only outside school hours or in vacation and children who had left school but were holding only casual jobs or were working in agriculture, private domestic service, or street trades, were not covered. Only those children who had been at work within a month previous to the interview on a job which had lasted 7 days or longer were included in the study. Boys and girls of two age groups— under 16 years of age and 16 and 17 years of age— were interviewed in 6 States: Massachusetts, Indi ana, New Hampshire, Missouri, Alabama, and Georgia. These States were chosen as being representative of three sections of the country: New England, the Middle West, and the South. All these States had a basic legal minimum age of 14 for employment,1 thus offering opportunity, so far as legal restrictions are concerned, for employment of children of each of the age groups to be studied. Altogether the survey included 450 working children under 16 years of age, of whom 376 were working at the date of the interview, and 1,569 of 16 or 17 years, of whom 1,368 were working at the date of interview. In the 6 States^ covered by the study 52 communities were visited which ranged in size from small country villages with only one factory to important manufacturing centers such as St. Louis, Kansas City, Indianapolis, and Birmingham, the largest cities visited.2 Taken together, the communities visited are believed to have furnished a fairly complete cross section of the industrial life of the 6 States, with the exception of agricultural communities, mining towns, and lumber camps. The young workers in this study represented a sample of the work ing children in the various communities visited and in no case included 1 Between 1936, when the field work of this study was carried on, and the time when the report was written no important changes affecting the work of children in employments covered by the study had been made either in the mimmum-age provisions of the child-labor laws or in the school-attendance laws of the 6 States visited. However, since the writing of the report 1 of the 6 States, Massachusetts, has established a basic minimum age for employment. 2 Appendix table I, p. 74, shows the distribution of the communities visited by State and by population. 6 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis SCOPE AND M ETH O D 7 the entire number whose employment fell within the scope of the study. In each community the following sampling method was used. Names and addresses were first obtained for all the working children under 18 years of age who could be located from employment-certifi cate records, employment-office registrations, and similar sources. The Bureau’s representatives then visited these y o u n g workers and any others living in the same block who came within the scope of the study. When this method of locating the young workers did not prove adequate, children were interviewed in other working-class blocks in the community. It should be pointed out that the 1,569 workers of 16 and 17 years in the study represented a smaller proportion of the total number of workers of that age in the places visited than did the 450 children under 16 years of age. Since the number of 16- and 17-year-old boys and girls in the working population was high, a limit was set on the number to be interviewed in each State, even though this meant that some workers in the older group were arbitrarily omitted in blocks and localities where children under 16 were interviewed. This adjustment of the sampling procedure was made in order to afford a basis for statis tical analysis and comparison of the figures for the two age groups without greatly increasing the total number of young persons included in the study. It was regarded as important to consider the two groups separately because they present quite different social problems, children under 16 years having a recognized need for continued schooling and for protection against full-time employment while 16and 17-year-old workers need protection not against employment as such but rather against hazardous jobs and substandard conditions of wages and hours. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Age, Race, and Sex Though most of the young workers were between 14 and 18 years of age, a few were younger, their ages varying from 9 to 13 years. Both boys and girls and white and Negro children were included in the study. AGE The children in the group under 16 years of age had passed their fifteenth birthday in a large majority of the cases. In fact, of the 450 children who were under 16 at the date of interview, 328, or nearly three-fourths, were 15 years of age (table 1). A much smaller number, 82, were 14 years of age, while 40, or 9 percent, were under 14 years. The youngest workers interviewed were 3 children who were out of school and at work though they were only 9 years of age. T able 1.— Age o f child at date o f interview in each State included in the study Age of child at date of interview Total Massa chusetts New Hamp shire Indiana Missouri Alabama Georgia Children under 16 years of age Total_____________ Under 12 years____ 12 years....... .................. 13 years________ 14 years_______ 15 years_________ 450 141 11 4 99 35 160 9 10 21 82 328 22 119 11 4 85 25 84 Children 16 and 17 years of age Total___________ 16 years....... 17 years................. 1,569 247 231 293 244 282 272 687 882 124 123 85 146 125 168 106 138 126 156 121 151 The number of children under 16 in the study differed widely from ^ a*'e> Partly as a result of differing standards in the State child-labor and school-attendance laws and of the special efforts of the employment certificate issuing officers in some States to persuade the children to stay in school. It was in Indiana and New Hamp shire that the fewest children under 16 were found employed. No children under 15 years of age were interviewed in either State, and only a very few who were 15 years old— 4 in Indiana and 11 in New Hampshire. In Alabama the group of children under 16 years of age m the study was not much larger, but it included 3 children who were only 13 and apparently illegally employed, as well as 7 who were 14, and 25 who were 15 years old. Each of these 3 States has a legal minimum age of 14 years for all employment during school 8 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis AGE, RACE, AND SEX 9 hours and requires children under 16 to complete the eighth grade before they are permitted to leave school for work.1 Larger numbers of 14- and 15-year-old children were found to be employed in Massachusetts and Missouri than in the three States mentioned above. In Massachusetts 141 children under 16 were interviewed, and in Missouri, 99, but none of these children were under 14 years of age. The child-labor laws of these two States per mitted children 14 years of age or over to leave school for work when they had completed the sixth grade, whereas Indiana and Alabama required completion of the eighth grade for the issuance of an employ ment certificate, and in New Hampshire the school law required children to stay in school until they had completed that grade. However, the number of 14- and 15-year-old children going to work in Massachusetts and Missouri was undoubtedly restricted to some extent by the special efforts of the issuing officers in certain localities to persuade children to stay in school until they were at least 16 years of age. In Georgia the study included 160 working children under 16 years of age, the largest number in any State, 37 of these 160 children being under 14 years of age. Though some of these 37 workers were illegally employed, most of them were in occupations not covered by the Georgia child-labor law, which placed less restriction on the em ployment of children than that of any of the other States included m this survey. Its legal minimum age of 14 years applied only to work in mills, factories, laundries, and workshops; other types of employment were left with no minimum-age limitation other than the indirect effect of the school law, which required children under 14 years of age to attend school unless they had completed the seventh grade or were temporarily excused by the local board of education. Children were not required to attend school after they reached 14 years of age, and their employment was permitted regardless of their schoolgrade attainment. The young workers in the group 16 and 17 years of age included a somewhat larger number of 17-year-old than of 16-year-old boys and girls. At the date of interview 882 of them were 17 while 687 were 16 years of age. Since these 1,569 older boys and girls com prised intentionally limited groups of young workers from each of the 6 States in the study, the number interviewed did not vary greatly from State to State, ranging only from 231 in New Hamp shire to 293 in Indiana (table 1). Differences in the State schoolattendance laws and in the school-grade requirements for children going to work did not influence the number of 16- and 17-year-old boys and girls found employed, as in none of the States visited were children required to attend regular day school after reaching the age of 16 2 and none of them set a grade standard to be met by young persons 16 years of age or over before going to work. 1 In New Hampshire the child-labor law permitted the issuance of employment certificates to 14- and 16year-old children who pass a literacy test, without regard to school grade. The school law, on the other hand, required children under 16 years of age to attend school unless they were 14 and had completed the eighth grade or had been excused on the ground that their welfare would be best served by withdrawal from school. In practice this provision was not interpreted as permitting the issuance of employment certifi cates to children under 16 who had not yet completed the eighth grade, except in a very few cases. 2 in one of the States, Georgia, children were not required by law to attend school after reaching the age of 14. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 10 Y O U N G W ORKERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN 1936 RACE The Negro children included in the study were concentrated mainly in Georgia, although in each State visited Negro children were inter viewed on the same basis as white children. About half the children under 16 and one-fifth of those 16 and 17 years of age interviewed in Georgia, were Negroes. In Alabama, where the total population includes about the same proportion of Negroes as in Georgia, the proportion of Negro children in the study was considerably smaller— only 1 out of 4 in the younger and 1 out of 10 in the older age group. As would be expected in view of the relatively small Negro popula tion of the North and West, an even smaller proportion of young Negro workers was found in these sections (table 2). T a b l e 2.— Number o f Negro children in the study in proportion to total children interviewed Children under 16 years of age Children 16 and 17 years of age State Negro Negro Total Total................. ........................... Massachusetts.......................... New Hampshire__________ ______ Indiana........................ Missouri______________ Alabama................... ............. Georgia.______ ________ Total Number Percent 450 101 22.4 1,569 141 11 4 99 35 160 4 2.8 247 5 8 84 5.1 (») 52.5 244 282 272 Number Percent 103 6.6 9 27 55 37 9.6 20.2 1Percent not shown because number of children was less than 50. SEX A larger number of boys than of girls was found to be employed in the industries and occupations included in the study. Of the children under 16 years of age who were interviewed, 79 percent were boys. In the older age group boys were not nearly so preponderant, but they nevertheless constituted 55 percent of the 16- and 17-yearold workers interviewed. Girls were in the minority in this older group in four of the six States visited, those in the South and Middle West. They were, however, in the majority in Massachusetts and New Hampshire,3 where the industries in which the 16- and 17-yearold workers in this study had most often found jobs were the lowpriced-clothing factories, the boot-and-shoe factories, and other manufacturing industries which typically employ many women and girls. Appendix table II, p. 74, shows the number of boys and girls interviewed in each of the six States. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Family Background Children leave school and go to work from a variety of motives. They may, for example, be dissatisfied with school and anxious to achieve the importance of being a wage earner. But underlying such personal motives as these there is usually the family’s need for addi tional income. In deciding whether to approve a child’s wish to leave school a family is almost inevitably influenced by its economic situation. And when the decision which faces the family is whether or not to have a child leave school and enter wage earning against his desire, economic considerations are likely to be the determining factor. A knowledge of the family background of the young workers in this study should contribute, therefore, to the understanding of why children leave school for work and should throw light on the relation ship of aduli employment to child labor. For this reason information was obtained for each child first as to whether he lived as a member of a family group and then as to the size of his family, whether his father or any other wage earners were present and employed or un employed, and whether or not the family had been receiving relief. MEMBERSHIP IN A FAMILY GROUP Almost all the children in the study were found to be members of a family group, 99 percent of the young workers in both age groups living either with their parents or, less often, with other relatives or foster parents. The other 1 percent of the children (3 of the 450 children under 16 years of age and 21 of the 1,569 of 16 and 17) were living independently. Some of this latter group had left home as a matter of choice, for some such reason as incompatibility with their family, but others had been cast adrift by the dissolution of their family group. For example, one 15-year-old boy, whose mother was dead and whose brothers and sisters were scattered, had taken care of himself ever since his father had been sent to jail a year before. The young workers who were living with their families were usually part of a close-knit economic unit. Most of the children customarily turned over all or a large part of their earnings to the father or mother and in return received their living from the family. Probably some of these contributed more and some of them less than they received in return. But in any case, the young workers’ wages typically be came a part of the family income. The following discussion of the families of these working children is confined to the young workers who were living as members of a family group and does not refer to the few who were living inde pendently. SIZE OF FAMILY AND NUMBER OF WAGE EARNERS The families of the young workers in this study tended to be large. Slightly more than half of the children under 16 and also of those 16 and 17 years of age lived with a family group that had six or more 103599 °—40 2 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis ,, 12 Y O U N G W ORKERS AN D T H E IR JOBS I N 1936 members including the children interviewed (table 3). Nearly onefourth of the children in each age group belonged to families with eight or more members.1 T a b l e 3.— Number o f 'persons in families o f working children interviewed Children under 16 years of age Number of persons in family1 Number Children 16 and 17 years of age Percent Percent distribu Number distribu tion tion 1,569 450 Number reported______________ _______ _______ _____ _______ 446 100.0 1,548 100.0 2 ....................................................................... 3................................................................................................ 17 56 74 69 67 53 47 22 41 3.8 12.6 16.6 15.5 15.0 11.9 10.5 4.9 9.2 44 167 256 277 262 186 144 103 109 2.8 10.8 16.5 17.9 16.9 12.0 9.3 6.7 7.1 7 ..................................................................................... 8 ................................................................................. 9 ..................................................................................... 10 or more____ - _______- __ _— - — ------------ ----- ------ ------- 1 3 21 i Includes the working children who were interviewed. In view of the size of these families it is not surprising to find that most of them included a number of wage earners. Only 3 percent of the younger and 4 percent of the older boys and girls were the only wage earner in the family group, and nearly two-thirds of the young workers in each age group came from families in which there were two or more gainful workers, besides themselves, who were either employed or seeking work (table 4).2 T able 4. — Number of wage earners in fam ilies of working children interviewed Children under 16 years of age Number of wage earners in family1 Children 16 and 17 years of age Percent Percent Number distribu Number distribu tion tion 1,569 Total_______________ ________________________________ 450 Number reported__________________________________________ 446 100.0 1,546 100.0 1 ......................................................................................... 2 ........................................................................ 3 ........................................................................................... 4 ............ ...................... - .............................................. 5 or more_________________ - ___________________ ________ 15 150 137 83 61 3.4 33.6 30.7 18.6 13.7 64 497 519 309 157 4.1 32.1 33.6 20.0 10.2 1 3 2 21 *Includes the working children who were interviewed. i A family was defined for the purposes of this study as the persons living together in one household at the time of interview, exclusive of boarders and lodgers. The 1,995 children in the_ study who were members of a family group came from 1,880 families. Since the focus of the study is the individual working child, all the information obtained has been tabulated separately for each child regardless of whether another child included in the study came from the same family. aInformation regarding the employment status of members of the children’s families is given in the report as of the date of the interview. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis F A M IL Y BACKGROUND 13 Most of these other workers were adults— the father of the family whenever he was present and employable, any grown children who were employed or looking for work, and not infrequently the mother of the family or an uncle or aunt who was living with them. However, there was at least one wage earner under 18 years of age in addition to the child who was interviewed in a considerable proportion of the families— 31 percent for the children under 16 and 15 percent for those 16 and 17 years of age. PRESENCE AND EMPLOYM ENT STATUS OF FATHER The absence or unemployment of the child’s father, who normally would be the chief breadwinner for the family, was a frequent source of economic pressure which helped to send many of the children in this study to work. As has been indicated, most of the young workers, families contained one or more wage earners in addition to the working child himself, but frequently these other wage earners did not include the child’s father. In fact, of the children under 16 years of age, 31 percent had neither a father nor a stepfather in the family group, the father being either dead or absent. The proportion of the 16and 17-year-old workers who were in the same situation was 25 per cent.8 This proportion, though smaller than among the younger children, nevertheless represented a seriously large group of boys and girls who had no father or stepfather to whom they could turn for protection or financial support. What this situation meant in many children’s lives is illustrated by the case of Nan, a 15-year-old girl, who went to work because her widowed mother felt that the family must have her earnings. The mother and her six children, four of them younger and one older than Nan, had been living entirely on the small wages of the oldest sister, who was 20 years of age; so when Nan was offered a job as waitress at 17 cents an hour, her mother told her to take it, even though Nan was interested in her school work and was entering the eleventh grade. At that time no mothers’ aid was avail able in the State where this family lived, although provisions for such assistance has since been made for children under 16 years of age. Besides the many young workers whose fathers were dead or absent from the family, the study included a smaller number of children with fathers who were at home but unable to find work and a still smaller number with fathers who were unemployable. Twenty-one percent of the children under 16 years of age and 14 percent of those 16 and 17 had fathers living with the family group who were totally unem ployed.4 In addition, 2 percent of the younger and 4 percent of the older boys and girls had fathers who were disabled or, in a very few instances, retired. The remaining children, who were so fortunate as to be living with an employed father, included only 45 percent of the younger and 57 percent of the older boys and girls. Yet these figures include every boy and girl whose father had even a small amount of part-time work. The proportion of children with employed fathers was highest among the New England children and lowest among the Southern Negroes. Of the New England children under 16 years of age, 60 percent had an employed father in the family group, compared with 3 Appendix table III, p. 75, shows the presence and employment status of the children’s fathers, by locality and race. <Fathers on W. P. A. or other work-relief projects have been classed as unemployed. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 14 YO U N G W O RK ERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN 193 6 little more than 40 percent of the Middle Western children and of the Southern white children and with 26 percent of the Southern Negroes (table 5). The proportion of the 16- and 17-year-old workers with employed fathers showed a similar variation from area to area, but in each region visited a larger proportion of the older than of the younger boys and girls had fathers who were working either full or part time. It appears, therefore, that although family need due to the absence or unemployment of the father was a force actuating children of all ages in going to work, it was most important in the case of the children under 16. In many of the social groups from which the young workers came it was the accepted custom for children to leave school and go to work as soon as they reached 16. The employ ment of children before they were 16 appeared, however, to be less cus tomary and more often the result of some unfortunate family situ ation, such as the absence or unemployment of the father. T able 6.— Proportion o f working children with employed fathers, hy area and race Children under 16 years of age Children 16 and 17 years of age Area and race Total Employed father 1 present in family Number Total Percent Employed father1 present in family Number Percent Total....... ............................... ......... >447 201 45.0 *1,548 882 57.0 Two New England States.............. ........... Two Middle Western States____________ Two Southern States___________________ 151 102 194 91 42 68 60.3 41.2 35.1 474 527 547 309 303 270 65.2 57.5 49.4 White children_____________ ............. Negro children________ _____ _______ 102 92 44 24 43.1 26.1 466 81 249 21 53.4 25.9 1 Includes stepfathers but not foster fathers. >Excludes 3 children under 16 years of age and 21 children 16 and 17 years of age who were living inde pendently. EMPLOYM ENT STATUS OF ADULT WAGE EARNERS Not only the fathers but the other adult workers in these family groups were often unemployed. Nearly a fifth, 17 percent, of the child workers under 16 years of age were in families in which none of the wage earners 18 years of age or over had even a part-time job at the time of the study, and a slightly larger proportion (19 percent) were in families in which at least one adult member was unemployed, though one or more of the other adults in the family were working full or part time (table 6). A similar situation, though somewhat less marked, was found in the families of the 16- and 17-year-old workers. Thirty percent of these workers, as compared with 36 per cent of the younger children, belonged to family groups in which all or some of the wage earners 18 years of age or over were unemployed. These figures take no account of the amount of part-time work and therefore do not reveal the full extent of unemployment in the young workers’ families. In many cases older wage earners who were nom inally employed were actually working only a few hours a week and therefore could do little to relieve the economic pressure upon the working children. One 17-year-old girl, for example, had to turn over every penny she earned to help pay the rent and buy groceries though she came from a family in which there were two older wage https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 15 F A M IL Y BACKGROUND earners with nominal jobs. The father of the family was a carpenter’s helper who had very little work— only 8 hours during the week prior to the interview— and the girl’s older brother was also employed only part time. T a b l e 6 . — Employment status o f wage earners 18 years o f age or older in fam ilies of working children interviewed Children under 16 years of age Children 16 and 17 years of age Employment status of wage earners 18 years of age or older Percent distri bution Number 446 100.0 1,546 100.0 22 424 4.9 95.1 75 1,471 4.9 95.1 263 84 77 18.8 17.3 297 160 19 2 10.3 Number Total......................... ... Status reported............. ...... No wage earners 18 years of age or older___ Some wage earners 18 years of age or older All employed...________ Some employed and some unemployed All unemployed_____________ Status not reported............................ . Child living independently______ _______ Percent distri bution 450 1 3 21 The findings of this study serve to emphasize the relation of adult unemployment to child employment and the irony of taking children under 16 from school to go to work when the adult members of their own families are unable to obtain jobs. If the adults in the families of young workers in this study who were either totally or partially unemployed had had full-time jobs, the economic need which sent many of the children to work might have been removed. But the children’s employment itself tended to diminish the employment op portunities open to their elders by filling jobs which might otherwise have been open to the older workers. RELIEF RECIPIENCY OF FAMILY The povertv in many of the young workers’ homes is indicated not only by the frequent unemployment of the adult wage earners but also by the considerable number of families that were on direct relief or work-relief projects. The families of 35 percent of the children under 16 years of age were either receiving relief at the date of inter view, which took place between May and November 1936, or had received relief within the preceding year. The corresponding propor tion for the families of 16- and 17-year-old workers was 27 percent.6 In almost all cases the families that had been on relief had received assistance regularly for a period of 2 months or more, though a few had been given relief only occasionally or for a period of less than 2 months.6 In each of the three areas visited the proportions of children under 16 years of age whose families had received relief within the preced ing year was higher than the corresponding figure for the older age «These figures do not take into consideration the 3 children under 16 years of age and the 21 of 16 and 17 years who were living independently, none of whom had received any relief during the last year. 6 Appendix table IV, p. 76, shows the number of children whose families received relief for more and for less than 2 months, by locality and race. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 16 YO U N G W ORK ERS AN D T H E IR JOBS IN 19 36 group. This fact indicates once more that children under 16 are at work less often as a matter of custom and more often because of an economic emergency in the family than are those 16 and 17 years of age. It must not be thought, however, that the families on relief included all those in the study that were in extreme poverty. A number of the families interviewed, especially among the Negroes, appeared to be living at a starvation level and still were not receiving relief. For example, one Southern Negro family of three had been refused relief though a 16-year-old boy was the only person in the family who had a job. For 85 hours’ work a week as delivery boy for a grocery store this boy’s entire wage was $2 worth of groceries. According to the family’s story the father had died some months before. Soon after that the mother had been given a relief job doing heavy labor clean ing up vacant lots. But she soon had to quit this job because she was ill and the work was too heavy for her, and since then she had not been able to obtain any relief. The family of three did not have a single cent with which to pay rent or buy clothes. All that they had to live on was the $2 worth of groceries which the boy earned each week and some additional food given them by a friend. The mother remarked: “ Some days we have two meals, some days one.” https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Education One of the gravest consequences of child labor, whether due to the poverty of the family or to any other cause, comes from the fact that boys and girls who go to work at too early an age are cutting short their opportunity for further education and training. The earlier a child leaves school the greater are the chances that his future work experience will be limited to unskilled and poorly paid jobs and that his horizon of interest and understanding will be permanently restricted. To throw light on the educational background of the young workers included in this study, information was obtained on several points— their age at leaving school, their progress in school, and their voca tional training. EDUCATION UP TO THE TIME OF FIRST LEAVING REGULAR SCHOOL Age at leaving school. One measure of a child’s opportunity for an education is the age at which he leaves school for work. Public opinion in this country, embodied in compulsory-school-attendance and child-labor laws, has recognized for many years the primary need for school attendance of all children at least up to the age of 14, and in more recent years the trend is toward 16 years as the minimum age for leaving school. Yet of the children under 16 years of age in the study 22 percent left full time day school1 before they were 14 years of age, and all of them had, of course, left before they were 16, since no children were inter viewed who had not left full-time school for work. Of the 16- and 17-year-old workers, on the other hand, not quite one-half (48 per cent) had left school before they were 16 years of age.2 Although school attendance at least up to 14 years of age was required by law in every State visited,3 some children who had left school before they were 14 were found in each of the six States.4 The proportion of such children, however, was higher in the two Southern than in the New England and Midwestern States and was higher for the Negro than for the white children in the Southern States. Nearly half (45 percent) of the children under 16 who were interviewed in Georgia and Alabama, including 60 percent of the Negro and 31 per cent of the white children, had left school before they were 14 (table 7). In contrast, only 8 percent of the Middle Western and 3 per cent of the New England working children under 16 had dropped out •Full-time day school has been defined for the purposes of this study as day school in session 20 hours or more per week. 8If a child left school at the end of the spring term, his age at leaving school was taken as of the date when school closed in May or June. If he left during the academic year, his age was taken as of the day he left. The figures relate to the time of the child’s first leaving full-time school, defined as day school in session 20 hours or more per week, and do not take into account subsequent periods of attendance at continuation or other schools. 8The exemption of children under 14 years of age from school attendance on the ground of physical or mental incapacity or for certain other specified reasons was permitted by the laws of each of these States; but few, if any, of the children in this study had been granted such an exemption. 4 Most of these children, including some boys and girls from each of the States visited, had been out of school for at least part of a school term while they were still under 14 years of age, though a few had attended classes until the beginning of the summer vacation and had reached 14 years of age before school reopened in the fall. 17 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 18 YOU N G W O RKERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN 1936 of school while under 14 years of age. Five percent of the Southern children had left school when they were 10 years old or even younger, though all the children interviewed in New England or the Middle West had been attending school at that age.6 T a b l e 7.— Proportion o f working children who were under 14 years o f age at time o f first leaving regular school, by area Children under 16 years of age Children 16 and 17 years of age Who left school under 14 years of age Area and race Total Number Percent Who left school under 14 years of age Total Number Percent Total......................... ....................... •446 98 22.0 11,665 76 4.9 Two New England States......................... Two Middle Western States____________ Two Southern States....... .......................... 162 103 101 5 8 86 3.3 7.8 44.6 478 637 660 14 11 61 2.9 2.0 9.3 White children____ ________________ Negro children^____ _______________ 102 89 32 63 31.4 69.6 469 81 36 16 7.5 19.8 >Excludes four children in each age group for whom age at leaving school was not reported. The nonattendance at school of many children under 14 years of age in the two Southern States was apparently due in large measure to an inadequate provision for enforcement of the school-attendance laws. In a number of the Southern communities visited, including several cities with a population of more than 10,000, there was no attendance officer, with the result that little attempt was made to prevent chil dren under 14 from dropping out of school. Where the local school systems did have attendance departments, these appeared in most cases to be understaffed. For example, one city of over 65,000 inhab itants had one part-time attendance officer serving all the white schools and none for the Negro schools. The enforcement of school attendence appeared to be less adequate among the Negro children than among the white children in the South ern communities visited. There was seldom a special attendance officer for the Negro boys and girls, and in some places the school authorities stated that no attempt was made by any official to follow up Negro children who dropped out of school. To quote one school superintendent: “ We don’t pay any attention to the Negro children. They are nearly all out on Mondays getting washings and on Fridays taking them back. A few attend regularly. I know they are sup posed to go, but if they all came we wouldn’t have enough room and teachers.” The cost of books and other school supplies was undoubtedly one of the major reasons why so many Southern children had dropped out of school before they were 14. In Massachusetts and New Hampshire schoolbooks were provided free of charge to all public-school children through high school, while in Missouri books were in general provided without charge through grammar school. Although the publicschool systems of the Indiana communities visited did not furnish free schoolbooks even for the younger children, the relief authorities in these communities appeared to make a regular practice of buying books for needy children under 16 years of age. In Alabama and •Appendix table V, p. 77. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis EDUCATION 19 Georgia, on the other hand, it was found that the school systems very generally required pupils to pay for their schoolbooks and that the provision of free books for children whose families were poverty stricken was usually inadequate. Some school systems required children to buy their books outright while others imposed a set fee for supplies aftd rental of books, payable at the beginning of every school term. This fee was sometimes remitted, but only in the most extreme cases. The situation of a Negro family with seven children who were refused free schoolbooks indicates the sacrifices which poor families were expected to make in order to buy their children’s books. This family reported that the school authorities had refused to remit their book fees, although the father and mother together made only $10 or $11 a week. The fees for the seven children would have amounted to about $10 a semester, as much as the family of nine had to live on for a whole week when the children were not working. The family, not feeling able to pay the required fees, had taken all seven children out of school, although the oldest had gone only through the fourth grade and the youngest two had not completed even the first grade in school. School grade completed. The school-grade attainment of these young workers was obviously conditioned by the early ages at which they had left school. No child among those under 16 years of age had had opportunity, even had he entered school at 6 years, for as much as 10 full years of school attendance, and even of those 16 and 17 years of age, nearly half were in the same situation, having left school, as already pointed out, before they were 16. Of the younger group, only 37 percent had com pleted the eighth or a higher grade and rone had graduated from high school; among the older boys and girls, 67 percent had completed the eighth or a higher grade,6 including 10 percent who were high-school graduates. A large proportion had left school while still in very low grades; 29 percent of those under 16 and 8 percent of those 16 and 17 years of age had failed to progress farther than the fifth or a lower grade (table 8). The young workers who were interviewed in the New England and Middle Western States had, in general, gone much further in school than those interviewed in the South. Just 4 percent of the New England children under 16 years of age had completed the fifth or a lower grade before they left school. The corresponding proportion for the Middle Western children was somewhat larger, 10 percent, but in the South it was 40 percent for the white children and 74 percent for the Negro children. Furthermore, though every one of the New England and Middle Western children reporting had gone at least through the fourth grade in school, 18 percent of the white and 42 percent of the Negro children interviewed in Georgia and Alabama had completed no more than the third grade, and 7 percent of the Negro children had left school before they finished even the first grade.7 • In addition, 20 children under 16 years of age, or 5 percent of the 433 reporting, and 52 of 16 and 17 years, or 3 percent of the 1,510 reporting, had finished the seventh grade in an 11-year school system—the equivalent of a grammar-school education. In accordance with the practice of the United States Office of Education, 11-year school systems have been regarded as having no eighth grade and children who completed 8 to 11 years of work in such schools have been regarded as having completed the first to the fourth years of high school, respectively. Altogether, 152 of the 450 children under 16 years of age included in the study, and 301 of the 1,569 of 16 and 17, had attended schools having 11-year systems. 7 Appendix table VI, p. 78. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 20 YO U N G W O RK ERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN 1936 PERCENTAGE O F CHILDREN W H O LEFT FULL-TIME S C H O O L BEFORE COMPLETING EIGHTH G RA D E, BY A R E A PERCEN T CHILDREN UNDER 16 YEARS OF AGE TWO SOUTHERN STATES NEW ENGLAND St a t e s (D ETAIL BY RACE! MIDDLE SOUTHERN WESTERN STATES WHITE CHILDREN s ta te s NEGRO CHILDREN CHILDREN 16 AND 17 YEA RS OF AGE The curtailment of schooling in the Southern States was the joint result of family poverty, the charge for schoolbooks, and the inade quate enforcement of school attendance. The way in which these factors worked together to deprive children of schooling is illustrated T a b l e 8 .— School grade completed by working children before first leaving regular * school, by area School grade completed Area and race Total Fifth or lower Number Percent Sixth or seventh Number Percent Eighth or higher Number Percent Children under 16 years of age Total.................................... ■433 125 28.9 147 33.9 161 37.2 Two New England States.......... . Two Middle Western States........ Two Southern States............ 137 101 195 6 10 109 4.4 9.9 55.9 60 32 55 43.8 31.7 28.2 71 59 31 51.8 58.4 15.9 White children_____________ Negro children....................... 103 92 41 268 39.8 73.9 38 17 36.9 18.5 24 7 23.3 7.6 Children 16 and 17 years of age Total........................ 11,510 125 8.3 372 24.6 1,013 67.1 Two New England States__ Two Middle Western States.. .. Two Southern States_______ 440 525 545 8 12 105 1.8 2.3 19.3 87 77 208 19.8 14.7 38.1 345 436 232 78.4 83.0 42.6 White children .._____ Negro children_________ 469 76 71 34 15.1 44.8 187 21 39.9 27.6 211 21 45.0 27.6 1 Excludes 17 children under 16 years of age and 59 of 16 and 17 years for whom grade completed was not reported or who had attended an ungraded school for at least 1 year prior to leaving school. * Includes 6 children who had not completed even the first grade. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis EDUCATION 21 by the story of two little Negro girls who were out of school and at work although the younger one had not completed even the first grade in school and the older one had finished only the first grade. The children were 9 and 12 years old, respectively. They lived alone with their mother, who could find only very poorly paid and irregular work. She was anxious to keep the little girls in school, but during the previous winter she had had to take them out of school because she could not pay the $4 fee for their books. At that time her entire income was $2 a week, which she earned for her work as a cook, and out of this she had to pay $1 a week in rent. After several months at home the children obtained jobs in a packing shed, wrapping tomato plants for shipment at 5 cents an hour. The family had not received any relief during the year nor had the school authorities apparently made any attempt to keep the children in school. Although comparatively few of the children in the study left school in as low a grade as did these little Negro girls, the curtailment of the young workers’ education was often sufficient to have grave personal and social consequences. As we have seen, many of the children left school before completing the sixth grade. Yet boys and girls who leave school as early as this are barely literate and are therefore likely to be under a permanent handicap both in their employment and in their social adjustments, and as a result not only the children but the community as well are likely to suffer because of their inade quate preparation for citizenship. School progress. Relating a child’s grade attainment to his age at leaving school gives a more significant picture of school progress than can be obtained from the grade alone. According to the age-grade standards used by the United States Office of Education, a child is regarded as making normal progress in school if he completes the first grade at the age of 7 or 8 years and progresses regularly one grade a year from that time on. Thus, a child who leaves school at 14 years of age 8 is consid ered normal if the highest grade he has completed is the seventh or eighth, retarded if he has completed only the sixth or a lower grade, and advanced if he has completed the ninth or a higher grade. According to these conservative standards a very large proportion of the working children included in this study— 44 percent of those under 16 and 38 percent of those 16 and 17 years of age—were re tarded when they left full-time school. No strictly comparable figures have been collected for school children in general, but a comparison of these figures with the available age-grade figures for children in elementary schools throughout the country indicates a higher inci dence of retardation among these working children than among the general school population.9 8 For the purposes of this calculation the ages of children who leave school at the end of the school year in May or June are taken as of the following September 1, and the ages of those who leave school during the school year are taken as of the preceding September. No attempt has been made to calculate school progress for children in this study who were in an ungraded class for as much as 1 year prior to leaving school. 8 In “ An Age-Grade Study in 900 City School Systems” (Statistical Circular No. 8, May 1927, Depart ment of Interior, Bureau of Education, Washington), the average percentage of children over age for their grades in 12-year school systems is given as 20 percent for girls and 26 percent for boys. In “ An Age-Grade Study of 7,632 Elementary Pupils in 45 Consolidated Schools” (Pamphlet No. 8, June 1930, Department of Interior, Office of Education, Washington), the percentage of the children over age for their grade in the eighth grades of the elementary schools was 18 for consolidated schools and 13 for city schools. In a recent study of New York City school children the average percentage of children overage for their grades was found to be 21 for eighth-grade pupils of the elementary schools in the school year 1936-37. (Thirty-ninth Annual Report of the Superintendent of Schools of the City of New York, Board of Education, City of New York, 1938, table 68, p. 139.) https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 22 YO U N G W O RK ERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN 193 6 The proportion of the children who were retarded in school was found to be much the same in New England and the Middle West, ranging only from 27 to 29 percent for the two age groups interviewed in these areas. In the Southern States, on the other hand, 56 per cent of the white children under 16 years of age and 72 percent of the Negroes were retarded in their grade by at least 1 year, while the corresponding figures for the older group were slightly smaller (table 9). Twenty-one percent of the Southern Negroes under 16 years of age and 17 percent of those 16 and 17 were retarded by 4 years or more.10 T a b l e 9.— School progress of working children at time of first leaving regular school, by area Children under 16 years of age Area and race Total Children 16 and 17 years of age Retarded in school Total Number Percent Retarded in school Number Percent Total............................................... >431 191 44.3 > 1,509 572 37.9 Two New England States................ Two Middle Western States.................. Two Southern States.. 137 101 193 40 28 123 29.2 27.7 63.8 440 525 544 124 141 307 28. 2 28 fl 56.4 White children................ ............ Negro children________ ______ 103 90 58 65 56.3 72.2 469 75 257 50 54 8 66.7 1Excludes 19 children under 16 and 60 children 16 and 17 years of age who attended ungraded classes or for whom school progress was not reported. The young workers’ frequent retardation was the outcome of a number of different causes. The retarded children doubtless in cluded some boys and girls who had progressed from grade to grade at a normal rate during their years in school but who had not entered school until they were past the usual age, 6 or 7 years. It seems certain, however, that a much larger number of the children were re tarded because they had failed in one or more years of school work, owing to irregular attendance, lack of interest in school work, malnu trition, or other causes. As has been shown, retardation was most common among the Southern Negroes, who were economically the poorest group in the study and therefore the ones most likely to be undernourished and too inadequately clothed to go to school in bad weather. Moreover, as has been pointed out, there was a tendency to neglect the enforcement of school attendance among these Negro children, with the result that any tendency toward nonattendance which developed among them was likely to receive little check. The actual school achievement of the children in this study, in terms of information and mental training acquired, was probably even less satisfactory in many cases than the age-grade figures show. It is the practice of many school authorities to promote children roughly in accordance with their age, even if they do not altogether measure up to the usual standards for promotion. This is done in the belief that individual boys and girls should not be put in classes with much younger and smaller children, where they would be social misfits and 10 Appendix table VII, p. 79. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 23 EDUCATION would be likely to develop destructive and lasting feelings of inferiority. SCHOOL ATTENDANCE SUBSEQUENT TO FIRST LEAVING SCHOOL The discussion of the young workers’ schooling has so far dealt only with their education up to the time when they first left full-time day school.11 After that tune a minority of the children had some additional schooling, which was usually so limited in amount as to add little to their educational equipment. Only 1 percent of the children under 16 and 2 percent of those 16 and 17 years of age returned to a regular day school for as long as 2 weeks during periods of unemploy ment. In addition, 33 percent of the younger and 9 percent of the older boys and girls had some subsequent education in a continuation or other part-time school for employed children (table 10). But these schools were in session only a few hours a week and often the children attended them only for short periods of time.12 T a b l e 10.— School attendance of working children subsequent to first leaving regular school Children under 16 years of age Subsequent school attendance1 Children 16 and 17 years of age Percent Percent Number distribu Number distribu tion tion Total_____________ ________ _____ — ------ ------------------- 460 100.0 1,669 100.0 No subsequent school attendance------------- --------- ----------------Subsequent school attendance-------------- ------- -------------- -------- 296 166 66.6 34.4 1,384 186 88.2 11.8 Regular day school2------ ---------------------------------------------Part-time school3______________________________________ 6 149 1.3 33.1 34 149 2.2 9. 5 Continuation....................................... ............................. Night or other......................... — .............- ..................... 106 44 23.3 9.8 46 103 2.9 6.6 2 .1 Type of school not reported------ ------------------------------------- 1 2 children under 16 years of age and 14 children 16 and 17 years of age either had had subsequent education both in full-time and in part-time school or had attended more than one type of part-time school. In these few cases the type of school included was the one in which the child had had the largest amount of subsequent education measured in semester hours. 2 School in session 20 or more hours a week. * School in session less than 20 hours a week. All of the children who had attended continuation school lived in Massachusetts and Missouri, the only States in the study which had continuation-school systems. In these two States working children were required by law to attend continuation school for at least 4 hours a week until they were 16 years of age. This requirement largely ex plains the greater frequency of subsequent education among the younger than among the older group of young workers, since many of the boys and girls in the older group had not left school until after they were 16 and therefore above the age for continuation-school attendance.15, 11 Defined as day school in session 20 hours or more a week. 12 Children have been classed as having had subsequent education if they attended any school course for as long as 2 weeks after they first left full-time day school, even if the course met only a few hours a week. is xn Missouri young workers between 16 and 18 years of age could be required to attend continuation school if they had not completed elementary school, but few of the boys and girls in the study were affected by this provision. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 24 YO U N G W O RK ERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN 193 6 Most of the children interviewed who had attended night school were in Atlanta, Ga. This was due not so much to a greater frequency of night-school attendance there as to the method of sampling used in that city. At the time when the Children’s Bureau representatives were in Atlanta, the first community visited, the night schools were in session, and many working children were located through their attendance at these schools. But in the communities visited later it proved impossible to use this method of locating young workers, since the night schools were no longer in session. The types of schools in which the working children received their subsequent education indicate that the boys and girls seldom returned to school unless they were compelled by law to do so. There were part-time schools for workers in many of the communities visited. Yet if Georgia is excluded from consideration because of the dispro portionately large number of night-school pupils interviewed there, it is found that in the other five States only 3 percent of the children in each age group had attended any part-time school other than a con tinuation school. Moreover, as has been shown, the number of children who had gone back to regular 5-day school during periods of unem ployment was altogether insignificant, and sometimes these few children dropped out of school again after a few weeks or months. It is clear that the curtailment of schooling among the working children, due to their early departure from school, was offset only to a slight extent by subsequent education. Low as was the grade in which many of the children in this study left school, it nevertheless represented in almost all cases the summit of the children’s school career up to the time of the interview. VOCATIONAL EDUCATION The extent to which vocational preparation enters into the educa tional equipment of children going to work is a matter of obvious importance in their working l i v e s A considerable number of the young workers in this study participated in some prevocational or vocational courses in school. However, only a minority, especially of the group under 16 years of age, had attended classes that were vocational in the sense of preparing for a specific occupation, and the number who had completed a definite program of vocational training was smaller still. Of the children under 16 years of age in the study, 1 out of 4 had attended vocational classes, while the corresponding proportion of the 16- and 17-year-old workers was not much larger, 3 out of 10. These figures include every child who had attended a vocational class affording training for a specific occupation for as long as 2 weeks, either before or after he first left school, even if the class met only 1 or 2 hours a week. Only 1 child in the younger age group had managed to complete a course of training for a specific field of work. Of the older boys and girls, 97 had completed such a course, but these 97 young persons represented only 21 percent of the total number with some vocational training. The large majority of the young workers in each age group had in most cases left school before they had time to complete a course of training and had therefore had their vocational education cut short as the direct result of the early age at which they left school for work. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis EDUCATION 25 Since the primary purpose of vocational education is to prepare children for employment, the extent to which the young workers in this study were able to utilize their vocational training after they went to work is a question of obvious importance. To provide some answer to this question the occupational fields in which the young workers had taken specific vocational training have been compared with the occu pations at which they were employed on their last jobs. Each child’s training was considered to be related to his job if it was of a type aimed to provide vocational knowledge or facility that was of use in his particular occupation or that would presumably help him to obtain a promotion for which he was directly in line. Thus, boys who had taken courses in automobile mechanics were regarded as having had training related to their jobs if they were working either as a mechanic or as a helper in a garage but not if they were working on other types of machinery; and children who had had commercial courses were con sidered to be employed in their field of training if they were working as office boys, who are presumably in line for promotion to more skilled clerical jobs, but not if they were employed as sales clerks. The young workers in this study had seldom been able to obtain work in their field of training. Only 19 percent of the young persons 16 and 17 years of age who had attended vocational classes had received training in a field directly related to the job they held at the date of interview or to the last job held by those who were unemployed. The proportion was still smaller (8 percent) for the younger group of children. The infrequency with which the young workers were able to find jobs directly related to their training resolves itself into two quite separate problems. M any of the children had left school before their training was sufficient to be of any real use on a job. The fact that the children under 16 had on the average received a smaller amount of training than those in the older group probably accounts for the younger workers’ greater difficulty in obtaining jobs related to their training. Yet the problem of inadequate training undoubtedly applied also to the older boys and girls. Of the 365 16- and 17-year-old workers who had had some training directed toward a specific occu pation but who had failed to complete any definite course, only 13 percent were employed on jobs related to their training, compared with 43 percent of the 97 boys and girls who had completed such a vocational course. The problem of the children who had completed a vocational course and then were unable to find work in their field of training was quite different but no less serious. As has been indicated, 57 percent of the 16- and 17-year-old workers who had completed a prescribed training program were in this unfortunate situation. To cite typical examples, a girl who had finished a 3-year Smith-Hughes course m dressmaking was packing spaghetti in a factory, and a boy with equally extensive trainmg in automobile mechanics was working as a porter in a store. Another boy, who had completed a 4-year commercial course in high school, including 110 hours of commercial training, was delivering messages for a telegraph company. Girls who had finished 4-year commercial courses in high school were employed in such jobs as that of power-machine operator or packer in a men’s clothing factory. The young workers’ vocational education doubtless gave them some general mental and manual training which would stand them in good https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 26 YOU N G W ORKERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN 1 9 36 stead in any job, whether or not it was in their particular field of train ing. And if, like many children, they had taken a vocational course mainly because they had lost interest in academic work, the practical nature of the vocational classes may have served to hold their interest and thus to keep them in school. But when the children had elected to take a vocational course because of a sincere desire for training in a skilled trade and then could not find a related job, their work adjust ment was almost certainly rendered more rather than less difficult by their vocational education. A child who has worked hard in school in the belief that he is fitting himself for a skilled job is in danger of undergoing a serious disillusionment when he finds that there is no such job open to him in the community. From the point of view of the young person it makes no difference whether his predicament has been occasioned by his personal unsuit ability for the particular occupation or by the fact that he was given training in an already overcrowded field. But the inability of young persons to find jobs in their field of training can usually be traced to one or both of these situations. There is evident need both for more comprehensive guidance services to help children select their courses wisely and for a much closer integration of programs of vocational preparation with the employment opportunities of the given locality. In addition, there is need for the expansion of school curricula to include general programs of study with a practical emphasis and point of view, so that vocational courses will no longer be the only alterna tive to academic work open to pupils who have lost interest in the academic curriculum. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Work History The day on which a child first drops out of school usually marks a turning point in his life. Although children frequently work outside of school hours or during vacations, these jobs presumably occupy a secondary place in their daily routine, the major part of their time and attention being taken up by their school work. Once they leave school, either to enter employment immediately or to look for work, jobs assume a new importance to them. A steady job means to such children at least the satisfaction of contributing to their own support, but if they experience frequent or protracted periods of unemploy ment, with few opportunities for healthful activities to hold their interest, they are likely to develop habits that may prove to be permanent handicaps in their life adjustments. Because of the significance to a child of regularity or irregularity of employment, information was obtained on the work histories of the children in this study from the time they first left full-time school to the date of interview. This information covered the length of time they were out of school before finding a job, their age at beginning their first job, and the regularity of their employment after going to work. LENGTH OF TIM E OUT OF SCHOOL BEFORE BEGINNING FIRST JOB The children in this study had in many cases been out of school for a long time before they began their first regular job, defined as the first job on which they worked as many as 7 days. One-tenth of the children under 16 years of age and three-tenths of those 16 and 17 had been out of school for 6 months or more before they found a regular job (table l l ) . 1 T a b l e 11.— Interval between leaving school and first regular jo b Children under 16 years of age Interval between leaving school and first regular job Number Percent distri bution Less than 4 days......... - ......... - ------------ --------------------------4 days, less than 1 m onth............... .........- --------- ------------1 month, less than 3 months................................................... 3 months, less than 6 months-------------------------- ---------------6 months, less than 1 year— ------- ------- ------------------------1 year, less than 2 years.----------------------- ----------------------2 years or m ore...--------- ------------------------------------------------ Number Percent distri bution 1,569 450 Interval reported-------------- ------------------- ------ - --------------------- Children 16 and 17 years of age 441 100.0 1,528 100.0 239 47 66 47 20 18 4 54.2 10.7 14.9 10.7 4.5 4.1 .9 408 204 261 195 198 179 83 26.7 13.3 17.1 12.8 13.0 11.7 5.4 9 41 i a few of the children returned to school for some weeks or months before they first went to work, butall such periods of return to school have been deducted in computing the time out of school before beginning first job. — 3 27 163599° https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 28 YOUNG WORKERS AND THEIR JOBS IN 19 3 6 When the children were out of school for a considerable time before beginning their first job they were not always unemployed during the entire period in the sense of being able and willing to work. Some few of them had periods of illness during which work was out of the question, while others had to stay at home to help keep house. For example, one little Southern boy had left school just after he was 13, because his mother was to have a baby in about a month and was so ill that she needed his help with the housework. After the baby was born Johnnie spent another month at home, looking after his mother and the younger children and doing all the cooking and other house work. Then his family sent him to work instead of back to school. While housework is a poor substitute for schooling in a child's life, the situation of the children who were out of school without any planned activity seems to have been even more unfortunate than the situation of those who had regular home duties. Children were interviewed who had dropped out of school because they “ did not like to study” or for some similar reason and who had waited as long as 2% years before finding a regular job. During this time they may have had some irregular employment delivering newspapers, caddy ing, or doing odd jobs, or they may have held one or more jobs which lasted less than 7 days. But this casual employment can seldom if ever have provided the regular, directed activity which adolescents need. For most of the children the interim between school and work was so much wasted time, during which they acquired neither further education nor the practical experience and habit of work which a job might give them. The long and destructive period of idleness experienced by many children in this study showed the need for improved school-attendance laws as well as better enforcement of such legislation as is now in effect. In Georgia school attendance was not required beyond 14 years of age, although in the other five States visited the upper age for compulsory school attendance was 16. In New Hampshire and Alabama children 14 years of age or over could leave school without restriction as soon as they had finished grammar school, while in Georgia and Missouri children of any age could be excused upon completion of the seventh grade and the “ common school” course, respectively. Only two of the six States, Massachusetts and Indiana, had passed laws requiring all children under 16 years of age, regardless of their school grade, to attend school unless they were legally employed and no one of the States had extended this requirement up to 18 years, though the enactment and enforcement of this type of legislation is one of the most effective ways of protecting children against demoralizing periods of unemployment. AGE AT TIME OF BEGINNING FIRST JOB All the working children included in this study who were under 16 years of age when interviewed had of course obtained their first jobs at 14 or 15 years of age or even younger, 18 percent having gone to work when still under 14 years of age (table 12). Of the group 16 and 17 years of age, however, only 22 percent had begun a regular job before reaching the age of 16, and only 2 percent had begun before they were 14 years of age. There were several reasons why so large a proportion of these older workers had waited until 16 to begin regular work. One reason was that they often came from social https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 29 W O R K H ISTO RY groups in which it was not customary to send children to work before they were 16. Another important influence was the requirement found in the child-labor laws of all the States visited that children under 16 years of age must obtain employment certificates before going to work. In all these States except Georgia this requirement applied to practically all the types of work covered by the study; in Georgia it applied to factory work. The educational and other standards with which a child was required to comply before obtaining a certificate kept many 14- and 15-year-old children from entering employment, and the mere existence of the certificate requirement deterred some employers from hiring children under 16 and helped to develop a feeling among working-class families that 16 was the lowest age at which it was proper for children to begin work. The importance of this factor is reflected in the fact that in the five States where the certificate system was general in its application the proportion of the 16- and 17-year-old youths who had begun work before they were 16 was between 12 and 25 percent, while in Georgia, where children of 14 years could enter many occupations without obtaining certificates and were in any case released from compulsory school attendance, 39 percent of the white and 62 percent of the Negro boys and girls in this older group had begun work before they were.16 years of age. T a b l e 12.— A g e o f child at tim e o f begin n in g first regular jo b , b y State Age at beginning first regular job State Total Under 14 years Number Percent 14 or 15 years Number Percent 16 or 17 years Number Percent Children under 16 years of age Total______ ___________ 1447 82 18.3 365 81.7 Massachusetts_______________ New Hampshire_____________ Indiana_____________________ Missouri____________________ Alabama.......... ................ ......... Georgia....... ............................... 141 11 4 00 35 157 4 2.8 07.2 (*) 3 8 67 3.0 (2) 42.7 137 11 4 06 27 00 97.0 (*) 57. 3 White children___________ Negro children_____ ______ 74 83 20 47 27.0 56.6 54 36 73.0 43.4 (i) Children 16 and 17 years of age Total................................ I 1,564 24 1.5 327 20.0 1,213 77.6 Massachusetts._____ _________ New Hampshire................. ...... Indiana_____________________ Missouri___________________ Alabama___________________ Georgia................. ..................... 247 231 203 243 282 268 1 .4 1 1 5 16 .3 .4 1.8 6.0 37 28 38 58 65 101 15.0 12.1 13.0 23.0 23.0 37.7 200 202 254 184 212 151 84.6 «7 9 se! 7 75.7 75.2 56.3 215 53 5 11 2.3 20.8 70 22 36.8 41.5 131 20 60.0 37.7 White children______ Negro children......... 1 Excludes 3 children under 16, and 6 children of 16 or 17 years who did not report age at beginning first regular job. * Percent not shown because number of children was less than 50. The 16-year minimum age for employment which was embodied in almost all N. R. A. codes between 1933 and 1935 also had helped to develop acceptance of the 16-year standard, which to some extent https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 30 YOUNG WORKERS AND TH EIR JOBS IN 193 6 survived the invalidation of the National Industrial Recovery Act. In Georgia it had continued to be the policy of many factories not to hire anyone under 16, and the workers frequently did not know that this employment policy was no longer a matter of law. For this reason the boys and girls in that State who wanted to work in a cotton mill or shoe factory often did not try to get a job until after they were 16, although it was generally thought that children might go to work at 14 or even younger in nonmanufacturing industries m Georgia and also in certain manufacturing industries such as the production of veneer. One typical 17-year-old girl, who was employed in a Georgia shoe factory, told the Children’s Bureau representative that she had left school'when she was 15 and then helped her mother with the housework for about a year. She did not start looking for work until her sixteenth birthday because she thought she “ was too young before that.” STABILITY OF EMPLOYM ENT SINCE BEGINNING OF FIRST JOB The beginning of the children’s first regular job marked the start of their working lives. From that time on the children were for the most part either at work or looking for work. There were of course some scattered periods during which they were ill or for some reason were not in the labor market, but for most of the children these intervals were neither lengthy nor numerous. Yet despite the apparently sincere and continuous desire for work displayed by most of the children, their employment showed considerable instability, as was indicated by the number of different employers for whom they had worked and the proportion of time during which they were unemployed. NUMBER OF EMPLOYERS The number of employers for whom the children had worked depended to a large extent upon the length of time since they began their first job. Most of the children who had been wage earners for less than 3 months had had only one employer, but the turn-over in the children’s jobs nevertheless began within this short period in several cases. Of the children under 16 years of age who were inter viewed within 3 months after the beginning of their first job, 5 per cent had already had two or more employers. The corresponding figure for the older boys and girls was 7 percent. When the children had had a working life of any considerable length, the turn-over in their jobs became marked. Forty-seven per cent of the children under 16 and 57 percent of those 16 and 17 years of age who had been wage earners for a year or more had had two or more employers. About one-tenth of the children in each group who had started to work as much as a year before had had four or more employers.2 If the children had moved from job to job in order to obtain higher wages or better chances of advancement, the turn-over in their jobs might have been advantageous to them. But their movements can seldom be explained on this basis. Frequently the children had taken jobs which they knew to be only temporary in the absence of any better opening, and even more often they were in fields of work which are characterized by unstable employment. The many delivery and >Appendix table VIII, p. 80. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis WORK HISTORY 31 errand boys for stores included in this study were constantly moving from job to job because their working conditions were often very unsatisfactory and because variations in business frequently cause the different stores to hire or to lay off workers. In addition, there were many other children in the study who moved from job to job because of lay-offs during the regular slack periods in seasonal indus tries. One 17-year-old girl, for example, who had begun her first job slightly less than a year before the date of interview, had already had four different employers. She had first worked for a drug-manu facturing company but had soon been laid off because work was slack. Then she got a job in an overalls factory, only to be laid off again after 2 weeks because the slack season was beginning in that industry. After a month of unemployment she found work in a trousers factory but left there in little more than a week to take a job in a cotton mill. This last move was voluntary and was made in an effort to obtain a more stable and better-paid position. But her earlier moves were the direct result of seasonal unemployment and of her desire to get another job as quickly as possible, regardless of whether she would have to start once more to learn a new occupation. EXTENT OF UNEMPLOYMENT The considerable amount of unemployment which the children had suffered since they first went to work was a further indication of the instability of their jobs. Even when the young workers had begun their first job less than 3 months before they were interviewed they had in some cases already experienced a period of unemployment. The exact proportion that had been unemployed within this short period was 14 percent for the children under 16 and 12 percent for those 16 and 17 years of age (table 13). While these proportions may not seem large in themselves, they are significant because of the short time during which the children had been exposed to the risk of unem ployment. When the young workers had been wage earners for any considerable period, the proportion that had been unemployed became much greater. Thirty-eight percent of the younger children who had been wage earners for a year or more had had some unemployment and the proportion was higher still (57 percent) among the older boys and girls. Although periods of unemployment for these young persons were in some cases brief, they not infrequently covered a large proportion of their working lives. Of the 16- and 17-year-old boys and girls who had been wage earners for a year or more, it is estimated that 29 percent had been unemployed for at least one-fourth of the time since they first went to work and that 3 percent had spent threefourths or more of the time out of work.3 When we remember how long many of the children in this study were out of sch ool before they first went to work, their frequent unemploym ent after that time becomes even more significant. Obviously the total extent of unemployment among the young workers between the time when they first left school and the time of interview was very con siderable— so considerable as to indicate a pressing need for legislation 3 In making these estimates of unemployment the periods during which a child returned to school were deducted, and a lay-off of less than 2 weeks’ duration, at the end of which a child returned to the same job, was classed as employed time. On the other hand, lay-offs of more than 2 weeks, periods of illness, and time spent in casual jobs, i. e., those casual in nature or lasting less than 7 days, were classed as unemployed time. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 32 YOU NG W ORKERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN 1936 requiring children to attend school unless they are at work, at least until they are 16 and preferably until they are 18 years of age. T able 13. P r o p o r tio n o f tim e u n e m p lo ye d sin ce begin n in g first regular j o b length o f tim e sin ce begin n in g first jo b by Length of time since beginning first job '1otal first regular job Less than 3 months 3 months, less than 1 year 1 year or more Not re Num Percent Num Percent Num Percent Num Percent port distri distri distri distri ber ed ber ber ber bution bution bution bution Children under 16 years of age T o ta l...______. . . . . . . 450 Time unemployed reported. 446 100.0 174 100.0 208 100.0 63 100.0 1 None________________ Less than 26 percent__ 25 percent, less than 50_ 50 percent, less than 75.. 75 percent or more_____ 325 68 34 14 5 72.9 15.3 7.6 3.1 1.1 149 14 7 4 85.6 8.1 4.0 2.3 136 42 20 7 3 65.4 20.2 9.6 3.4 1.4 39 12 7 3 2 61.9 19.0 11.1 4.8 3.2 1 Time unemployed not reported- 4 174 209 65 1 2 2 1 Children 16 and 17 years of age Total_______________ 1,569 Time unemployed reported. 1,555 100.0 470 100.0 660 100.0 423 100.0 2 1,020 249 160 99 27 65.6 16.0 10.3 6.4 1.7 412 15 25 14 4 87.7 3.2 5.3 3.0 .8 425 116 60 48 11 64.4 17.6 9.1 7.3 1.6 181 118 75 37 12 42.8 27.9 17.7 8.8 2.8 2 None________________ Less than 25 percent__ 25 percent, less than SO SOpercent, less than 75. 75 percent or more____ Time unemployed not reported... https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 14 470 663 3 433 10 3 1 Industry The industries in which the boys and girls under 18 years of age included in this study finally found employment, despite the difficulties and delays in finding work which were reflected in their periods of unemployment, indicate in general the fields of work open to children of these ages in 1936. Except for agriculture, domestic service in private homes, and street trades, which were not covered in the survey, they represent a cross section of the child-employing industries of the communities visited.1 The following discussion is limited to the industries in which the children were employed on their most recent jobs— that is, the jobs in which those who were at work at the date of the interview were employed at that time and the jobs in which those who were tempor arily out of work 2 had been employed last. INDUSTRIES EMPLOYING CHILDREN UNDER 16 YEARS OF AGE Only about a fourth (26 percent) of the working children under 16 years of age had jobs in manufacturing industries; nearly one-half (46 percent) were employed in trade, that is, by retail stores or less often by wholesale establishments or warehouses; and about a fourth (28 percent) were in a variety of service and other industries outside the manufacturing and mercantile groups 3 (table 14).4 F a b l e 14. Industries in which children under 16 years o f aye were employed, by area Total 2 New England States 2 Middle West ern States Num •Percent distri ber bution Num ber Percent distri bution Num ber 2 Southern States Industry Num ber Percent distri bution 460 100.0 152 100.0 103 100.0 195 100.0 119 331 26.4 73.6 32 120 21.1 78.9 18 85 17 fi 82.5 126 35.4 64.6 Transportation and publie utilities______ Trade________ 32 209 7.1 46.5 3 68 2.0 44.7 21 43 20.4 41.7 g 98 4.1 50.2 Wholesale and warehousing______ Retail________ 30 179 6.7 39.8 5 63 3.3 41.4 6 37 5.8 35.9 19 79 40.5 60 30 13.3 6.7 30 19 19.7 12.5 15 6 14.6 5.8 15 5 77 2.6 Total________________ Manufacturing_________ Nonmanufacturing___ Service____ ____ O ther..____ _________ Percent distri bution ‘ It should be remembered also that children who had worked only during school vacation or outside school hours or who had casual work only were excluded from the study. 1 See p . 6. The children included in this study were limited to those who had worked within the month previous to the date of the interview at a job lasting 7 days or longer. 8 In this report the classification of the U. S. Census of Manufactures is used for the manufacturing in dustries, whde for nonmanufacturmg industries the classification developed by the Bureau of Labor Sta tistics of the u . ».departm ent of Labor for compilation of unemployment-compensation statistics is used. See appendix table IX , p. 80, for more detailed presentation of industries employing children under 16 years of age, by area. ^ 33 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 34 YOU N G W ORK ERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN 193 6 The children interviewed in the South had factory jobs somewhat more often than those interviewed in New England and the Middle West, although in the South also children who worked in factories were in the minority in the younger age group (table 14). The factory workers under 16 years of age were employed in a wide variety of industries. Most of them were employed in very small numbers by scattered individual factories where occasional exceptions were made to the 16-year minimum hiring age which prevailed in almost all of the manufacturing industries of New England and the Middle West and in cotton-textile and certain other important industries of the South. As was indicated in discussing the children’s age at be ginning work, there were, however, some Southern manufacturing in dustries which had not yet adopted the customary 16-year standard. These industries, which were found to employ considerable numbers of children under 16 and some children under 14 years of age, included the manufacture of veneer, the manufacture of candlewick bedspreads, and the shelling and grading of pecans. Two 9-year-old Negro boys who were out of school and at work, one carrying boards and doing other unskilled work in a veneer factory and the other shelling pecans in industrial homework, were among the three youngest children in the study. In each of the three areas visited trade was the industry which em ployed the largest group of children under 16, the exact proportion ranging from 42 percent in the Middle Western States to 50 percent in the South. A few of the children who were employed in trade, including several under 14 years of age, worked for wholesale stores or warehouses. In fact, the little Negro girl, who was the third of the three 9-year-old children in the study, worked in a Southern warehouse wrapping tomato plants for shipment. Most of the chil dren who had jobs in trade were, however, working for retail stores, which found it convenient to use children as delivery boys or, less often, as general helpers or assistant sales clerks. The children were more often employed by grocery or other food stores, usually of the neighborhood type, than by all other types of trade establishments added together, though a fair number worked for drug stores or ice and fuel companies. Very few children in this younger age group worked for 5-and-10-cent stores or other apparel or general-merchan dise stores, which employ few delivery boys and which need sales persons with some degree of maturity and judgment. The children in nonmanufacturing industries other than trade were employed in a wide variety of industries. Seven percent worked for transportation and public-utility companies, mainly telegraph companies. A somewhat larger group (13 percent) were employed in service industries, a category which includes not only laundries, restaurants, beauty parlors, and other personal-service industries, but also theaters, garages, all types of repair shops, and other nonpersonal service industries. The remaining 7 percent of the children were in miscellaneous employments, including construction, fishing, and all other industries not classified elsewhere. The fact that only a small proportion of the children were employed in service industries is of special interest, in view of the great expansion during the past few years in this group of industries, particularly beauty culture, dry cleaning, and automobile servicing. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 35 IN D U ST R Y INDUSTRIES EMPLOYING YOUNG PERSONS 16 AND 17 YEARS OF AGE The 16- and 17-year-old workers in this study were more often employed in manufacturing than in any other type of industry, contrary to the situation among the younger children. Fifty-five percent of the boys and girls in the older group had jobs with manu facturing establishments, while 22 percent were employed in trade and 23 percent in other nonmanufacturing industries (table 15) .6 These proportions varied considerably, however, from locality to locality. In New England 73 percent of the young workers inter viewed had manufacturing jobs, compared with 43 percent of the Middle Western boys and girls, 55 percent of the Southern white workers, and 32 percent of the Southern Negroes. T a b l e 15.— Industries in which children 16 and 17 years o f age were employed, by area 2 New England States Total Industry 2 Middle West ern States 2 Southern States Num ber Percent . distri bution Num-' ber Percent distri bution Total________________ 1,569 100.0 478 100.0 537 100.0 554 100.0 Manufacturing____________ N onmanufacturing_________ 863 706 55.0 45.0 349 129 73.0 27.0 229 308 42.6 57.4 285 269 51.4 48.6 Transportation and pub lic utilities___________ Trade____ ____________ 102 350 6.5 22.3 6 60 1.3 12.6 52 148 9.7 27.6 44 142 8.0 25.6 Wholesale and warehousing ................. Retail_____________ 37 313 2.4 19.9 4 56 .8 11.8 16 132 3.0 24.6 17 125 3.1 22.5 Service..-_____________ O ther............................. 199 55 12.7 3.5 46 17 9.6 3.5 85 23 15.8 4.3 68 15 12.3 27 Num ber Percent distri bution Num ber Percent distri bution In the six States taken together the proportion of the 16- and 17year-old boys and girls who were employed in manufacturing was more than twice as large as the corresponding proportion for the children under 16 years of age, as is shown in table 16. In inter preting these figures it must be remembered that the older group of workers in this study represented a smaller proportion of the total working population of their age in the communities visited than did the younger children interviewed, despite the fact that the older group was so much the larger in absolute numbers. There was therefore an even greater difference between the total number of 16- and 17-year-old persons employed in manufacturing in the com munities visited and the total number of children under 16 years of age who were so employed than appears from the sample groups of young workers in this study. One reason why there were so many more factory workers 16 and 17 than under 16 years of age is that several manufacturing indus tries which did not hire children under 16 at all nevertheless em ployed 16- and 17-year-old boys and girls in large numbers. The branches of manufacturing in which the older group of young workers in this study were most often employed were the cotton mills of the New England and Southern States, the shoe factories of New Eng« See appendix table X, p. 81, for more detailed presentation of industries employing 16- and 17-year-old workers, by area. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 36 YOU NG W ORK ERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN 193 6 land, and the clothing factories of all three regions visited. Yet in all three of these industries the employment of children under 16 appeared to be contrary to general custom. T able 16.— Industries in which working children were employed Children under 16 years of age Children 16 and 17 years of age Industry Percent Percent Number distribu Number distribu tion tion Total____ _______________ _____ _ M anufacturing______________ _____ __ Food and kindred products__________ _ Cotton goods and small w ares____ _ Clothing....... ................. ........... ........... ...... Boots and shoes____________________ Other____ ______ ______ ___________ Nonmanufacturing..____ ______________ . 450 100.0 1,569 100.0 119 26.4 863 55.0 37 12 13 13 44 8.2 2.7 2.9 2.9 9.7 102 218 147 127 2fi9 6.5 13.9 9.4 8.1 17 1 45.0 331 73.6 706 Transportation and public utilities______ 32 7.1 102 Telegraph.................................... Other_______________ ___________ 21 11 4.7 2.4 82 20 5.2 1.3 209 46.5 350 22.3 30 179 6.7 39.8 37 313 2.4 19.9 111 11 57 24.7 2.4 12.7 149 54 110 9.5 3.4 7.0 60 13.3 199 12.7 12 12 11 25 2.7 2.7 2.4 5.5 36 71 27 65 2.3 4. 5 1. 7 4.2 30 ft 7 55 3.6 Trade......................................................... Wholesale and warehousing______ Retail___________ ____ _____ _ Groceries and other foods______ Apparel and general merchandise.____ _________ Other_____________ ____ _____ Service..________ ____________________ Laundries and dry cleaning......... . Restaurants and other eating places.. . Automobile repair and service"___________________ Other___________________ Other........................... ...... ................... Although the proportion of the 16- and 17-year-old workers inter viewed who were employed in trade was less than half as large as the corresponding figure for the younger children, as table 16 shows, the actual number of boys and girls with jobs in trade was larger in the older than in the younger group. There were various types of mercantile employment, seldom open to children under 16, in which young persons of 16 and 17 were found to be working in con siderable numbers. Like the younger children, the older boys and girls with jobs in trade were most often employed by grocery stores, but they also worked for 5-and-10-cent stores and other apparel and general-merchandise stores which, as we have seen, employed very few children under 16. The 16- and 17-year-old workers who were employed by trans portation or public-utility companies and by service establishments included respectively 7 and 13 percent of the 1,569 young persons in the study, the same percentages as for the younger children. The remaining 4 percent of the older boys and girls worked in mis cellaneous nonmanufacturing industries. Boys and girls 16 and 17 years of age were found to be working in fairly large numbers for telegraph companies and restaurants, but they were not often employed in automobile service stations or any other service industry except restaurants. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Occupation The occupation at which a child works, as well as the industry in which he is employed, is significant in any consideration of his work ing life. The nature of his occupation determines to a considerable extent the monotony or variety of his job, the degree of skill to be exercised, the accident and health hazards involved, the hours worked, and the wages received. Any analysis of occupations necessarily cuts across industrial lines. The same type of work frequently is found in more than one industry. For instance, a waitress may work in a restaurant (a service industry) or in a drug store (retail trade), and an operator of a power sewing machine may work in any one of a number of manufacturing indus tries, such as a cotton mill, a shoe factory, or a garment factory. On PERCENTAGE O F CHILDREN IN SPECIFIED OCCUPATIONS PERCENT DELIVERY AND MESSENGER - ] SERVICE WORKERS V/ÆÆÆ/Æ FACTORY AND OTHER DUCTION WORKERS SALESPERSON S LABORERS FOOD AND MISCELLANEOUS SERVICE WORKERS VÆ//Æ W/Æ CRAFTSMEN AND THEIR HELPERS C L E R IC A L WORKERS ^771 Y////A 16 YEARS OF AGE CHILDREN 16 AND 17 YEARS OF AGE the other hand, widely different types of occupations may be found in the same industry, and a child may shift from one occupation to another in the same industry with no break in employment. As in the discussion of the industries in which the working children covered by this survey were engaged (see p. 33), the occupations here analyzed are the occupations in which the children were at work at the date of the interview or the last occupation of the children temporarily out of work. The classification used follows in general that used by the Employment Service Division of the Bureau of Employment Security, Social Security Board. It is made up of seven main groups: Profes sional and kindred workers, salespersons, clerical workers, service workers, craftsmen, semiskilled production workers, and laborers.1 1 The particular occupations falling into these different categories are indicated in table 17 and in the discussion of that table. It was found necessary to make a few modifications in the classification of the Employment Service Division to adapt it to the needs of an analysis of juvenile employment. For example, “ outside errand and messenger boys” have been classified as “ personal service” workers along with delivery boys, instead of as “ clerical workers,” because the conditions of employment of these two groups of young workers are usually similar; and all children working as janitors or cleaners in establishments other than factories have been classified as “ maintenance workers,” though some of them would have been classi fied under “ personal service” in the classification of the Employment Service Division. 37 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 38 YOU N G W ORKERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN 193 6 The two predominant types of occupations of the young workers interviewed were delivery, messenger, or other service jobs, and semiskilled production jobs. Of the children under 16 years of age the largest group, 40 percent, had delivery or other service jobs, 28 percent were semiskilled production workers, 16 percent were salespersons, and the remaining 16 percent worked in a variety of different occupations (table 17). The young workers 16 and 17 years of age, on the other hand, were most often employed as semiskilled production workers. Forty-seven percent of the older boys and girls had jobs of this sort, compared with 25 percent who were in service occupations, 10 percent who were laborers, and still smaller groups who had jobs of other types. T a b l e 17 .— O ccu p a tion s o f w ork ing children Children under 16 years of age Occupation Number Children 16 and 17 years of age Percent Percent distribu Number distribu tion tion Total___________________ — - —---------------------------------- 450 100.0 1,569 100.0 Professional and kindred workers-----------------------------------------Salespersons___________________________ ___________________ 2 70 .4 15.6 5 125 .3 8.0 In stores......... .................................. ................. ..................... Automobile service-station attendants, peddlers, and others. 46 24 10.2 5.4 106 19 6.8 1.2 Clerical workers-------- ------------------------------ — — ----------------- 19 4.2 80 5.1 Office and inside errand boys and girls---------------- -----------Stenographers, typists, bookkeepers, and cashiers------------Other-------------- --------------------- ------------------------------------ 13 1 5 2.9 .2 1.1 23 34 23 1.5 2.1 1.5 179 39.8 385 24.5 Personal service________________________________________ 174 38.7 367 23.4 Delivery and messenger service______________________ 147 32.7 264 16.8 Truck drivers and teamsters ...........- ------ -----------Truck drivers’ and teamsters’ helpers____________ Bicycle delivery and errand boys------------------------Foot delivery and errand boys----------------------------- 4 45 66 32 .9 10.0 14.7 7.1 21 42 164 37 1.3 2.7 10.4 2.4 Service workers________________________________ ___________ 15 3.3 87 5.6 Waiters and waitresses--------------------------------------Kitchen workers and other______________________ 5 10 1.1 2.2 65 22 4.2 1.4 Food and refreshment service........................ - .............- Other personal service______________________________ 12 2.7 16 1.0 Maintenance________ . . . . . . . --------- ------ ------------------------ 5 1.1 18 1.1 Craftsmen and their helpers------------------------------------------------Semiskilled production workers----------------------- -----------------Machine___________ ________ ___________________ _______ Power sewing machine operatives---------- ----------------Weavers, battery fillers, doffers, and textile-frame tenders. Other................. ........................................... ......... — 22 125 18 1 8 9 4.9 27.8 4.0 .2 1.8 2.0 80 731 354 94 149 111 5.1 46.6 22.6 6.0 9.5 7.1 Manual_______________________________________________ Inspectors..____________ ______ _______ _____________ Folders, wrappers, and packagers____________________ Other_____________________________________________ 107 5 15 87 23.8 1.1 3.3 19.4 377 48 60 269 24.0 3.1 3.8 17.1 Laborers_________________________________________________ Stock and floor workers________________________________ Factory cleaners______ _________________________________ 33 5 5 1 4 7.3 1.1 1.1 .2 .9 163 27 50 25 25 10.4 1.7 3.2 1.6 1.6 23 5.1 86 5.5 Other_____________________________________________ https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis OCCUPATION 39 These figures indicate the general types of occupations in which the young workers were employed. To obtain a picture of the actual work which the children were doing, it will, however, be necessary to analyze their occupations in somewhat more detail. PROFESSIONAL AND WHITE-COLLAR WORKERS The professional, clerical, and sales occupations which make up the first three groups in the occupational classification of the Employ ment Service Division include all the types of professional and whitecollar employment as well as some jobs which verge on manual labor. Yet only a small proportion of the young workers in this study had jobs which fell in any one of these three occupational groupings. This fact is significant because of the high position which professional and white-collar jobs occupy in the social and economic scale and the frequency with which young persons aspire to such employment. The rarity of professional and semiprofessional jobs among the young workers in this study was to have been expected, in view of the children’s youth and the early curtailment of their education. It is perhaps surprising that as many as 2 of the 450 workers under 16 years of age, and 5 of the 1,569 of 16 and 17 years, were employed in professional or kindred occupations. One of these children, a 15year-old girl who was learning to be a newspaper reporter, would probably not have been able to obtain her job if she had not had a better education than most of the children in the study. She had completed 3 years of high school, all that were offered in the school she had attended, and since her graduation had been taking a nightschool course in journalism. On the other hand, a 16-year-old boy who had completed only the fifth grade in school was employed as guitar player in a jazz orchestra. Clerical jobs were somewhat more common than professional em ployment among the young workers in this study, but nevertheless only a small minority of the children interviewed were in clerical occupations. Of the children under 16 years of age 4 percent were doing clerical work, and almost all of these children were employed as office or inside errand boys or girls, the most unskilled sort of work falling in the clerical classification. The proportion of the 16- and 17-year-old workers who had clerical jobs was only a little larger, 5 percent. But nearly half of these older clerical workers held jobs as stenographers, typists, bookkeepers, or cashiers, which required definite clerical skills. The infrequency of clerical jobs among the younger workers, especially among the children in the younger group, was undoubtedly due in part to the small number of children who had received enough commercial training in school to qualify them for typing or stenogra phy. The fact that many boys and girls who had completed a pre sumably adequate commercial course were unable to find work in their field of training indicates, however, that the demand for young workers in clerical employment was even more limited than the supply. The salespersons were the third occupational group which included workers in the white-collar category. Sixteen percent of the children under 16 years of age and 8 percent of those in the older group were in sales occupations, much larger proportions than were employed either as professional or as clerical workers. However, by no means all of the young salespersons in the study were white-collar workers. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 40 YOU N G W ORK ERS AND T H E IR JO BS IN 1936 Many of them were employed in grocery stores, where their work involved considerable manual labor, and others were working as junk dealers, attendants in gasoline service stations, and helpers to huck sters or peddlers. SERVICE WORKERS Service occupations employed many more of the young workers in this study than did the professional, clerical, and sales jobs combined. Of the children under 16 years of age, two out of five were employed at a service occupation on their last job, while the corresponding figure for the older boys and girls was one out of four. Although many different types of jobs are included within the general category of service, most of the young service workers were boys who were employed on outside messenger, delivery, or errand jobs. Work of this sort, which was found to be exclusively a boys’ occupation, employed 41 percent of the boys under 16 years of age and 30 percent of those 16 and 17, much larger proportions than were enSag6d in any other type of occupation.2 The delivery and messen ger boys were, in a few cases, working as truck drivers or teamsters in retail delivery and somewhat more often as helpers to truck drivers or teamsters. But they most often made their deliveries on foot or by bicycle, the means of transportation typically used by grocery-store delivery boys and telegraph messengers. The boys and girls who were engaged in food or refreshment service were the second largest group of service workers, but nevertheless they included only 3 percent of the children under 16 and 6 percent of those 16 and 17 years of age. These children were, in some cases, working as kitchen or pantry employees and in others as waiters and waitresses, the latter type of work being especially common among the older group of boys and girls. The waiters and waitresses usually served at a counter or waited on table, but a few of them gave curb service to patrons in automobiles. This curb service by young workers appeared to be especially common in the Southern States, though it was found to some extent also in the Middle West. The few remaining service workers were engaged in a variety of other personal-service occupations and in maintenance work. The miscellaneous group of personal-service workers, who represented only 3 percent of the children under 16 and 1 percent of those 16 and 17 years of age, included children in such diverse occupations as those of barber, bootblack, and pin boy in a bowling alley. The mainte nance workers, who represented exactly 1 percent of the children in each age group, were employed mainly as cleaners and janitors’ assistants, though a few were watchmen and elevator operators. SKILLED CRAFTSMEN The remaining children in this study belonged to the great group of productive workers who do the basic work in the manufacturing, agricultural, and extractive industries and, in addition, have some share in the work of nearly every other industry in the country. These workers have been classified, according to the degree of skill involved in their work, as skilled craftsmen, semiskilled workers, and laborers. 1 Appendix table X I, p. 82, shows the occupational distribution of the boys and of the girls in this study. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis OCCUPATION 41 The children employed in skilled trades were the only occupational group in the study, besides the few boys and girls in professional occupations, who had jobs that held marked possibilities of vocational progress. Yet only a very small proportion of the young workers in each age group were employed in skilled trades, either as craftsmen or as learners or helpers. Not one of the girls interviewed had a job in this category, and the proportion of boys with such jobs was only 6 percent in the younger and 7 percent in the older group. Most of these boys reported that they were merely learners or helpers, as would be expected in view of their youth and the long period of train ing required to learn a skilled trade, but a few boys claimed to be full-fledged craftsmen. Among these were a 16-year-old boy who stated that he was a butcher and several boys who claimed to be house or sign painters. The children who were working as learners or helpers in skilled trades either had no agreement whatever with their employers respect ing training or had an understanding which was oral and frequently very indefinite. Not one of them had a written indenture of appren ticeship. One 17-year-old boy, who was learning to be a molder, probably had as clear an understanding regarding his training period as any encountered during the course of the study. He had an oral promise from his employer that his pay would be raised every 6 months and that he would be a fully trained molder at the end of 3 years if he continued to make satisfactory progress; but there was no enforce able legal obligation upon the employer to fulfill these promises. In the absence of a formal indenture of apprenticeship, imposing definite obligations upon the employer, boys who work as learners or helpers have little assurance that they will receive well-rounded training, and they may be assigned only to the tasks at which their employer has immediate need of their services. The absence of formal apprenticeship agreements containing guar anties of well-rounded training and appropriate wage increases for the boys in this study was probably due in large measure to the rarity of such agreements in this country, but it doubtless reflected also the rising age standards for apprenticeship and the preference generally given to high-school graduates. Because of the age and educational standards generally set for bona fide apprenticeship, children who leave school and go to work before they are 18 years of age, as did those in this study, seriously dimmish their small chance of a formal apprentice ship, with its promise of thorough training in a skilled trade. SEMISKILLED PRODUCTION WORKERS The children in this study were much more often employed on semi skilled production jobs than they were in skilled trades. Well over one-fourth of the children under 16 and nearly one-half of those 16 and 17 years of age were employed as semiskilled production workers, usually in factories but sometimes in laundries, warehouses, or other nonmanufacturing establishments, and occasionally in industrial home work. The study included 16 children under 16 years of age and 5 of 16 and 17 years who were doing home work in the pecan-shelling and candlewick-bedspread industries of the South and in the neckwear industry of New England. The semiskilled workers were sometimes employed on machine jobs and sometimes on manual operations. Among the older group of https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 42 YOU N G W ORK ERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN 193 6 boys and girls these two kinds of semiskilled production work were about equally frequent, but the number of children under 16 years of age who were working on machines was only about a sixth as large as the number who had manual jobs. Girls found employment in semiskilled production jobs more fre quently than boys and much more often than in any other type of occupation. Three-fourths of the girls in each age group had jobs of this type, compared with one-sixth of the boys under 16 years of age and one-fourth of those 16 and 17. The semiskilled production jobs open to young people under 18 were mainly in women’s occupa tions, such as power sewing and tending textile-mill machinery. LABORERS The children who were employed on unskilled laboring jobs are the one remaining occupational group. Among the young workers under 16 years of age, 9 percent of the boys and 2 percent of the girls were in occupations classified as unskilled labor. The corresponding pro portions for the 16- and 17-year-old workers were 18 percent for the boys and 1 percent for the girls. Although these young laborers were doing a wide variety of jobs, stock or floor work and factory cleaning were their most frequent occupations. A few girls were employed in cleaning factory machinery or in sweeping or scrubbing factory prem ises, but the number of boys who did these types of work was much larger. And in other types of unskilled laboring work boys were employed almost exclusively. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Accident and Health Hazards The occupations at which the boys and girls in this study were em ployed sometimes involved serious accident and health hazards. Occupations which are hazardous for adults are often still more dangerous for young people, while jobs that are reasonably safe for men and women may not always be safe for boys and girls. Young people tend to be careless and irresponsible and to neglect the continual pre cautions necessary to minimize the risk of accident or occupational disease. Moreover, accidents have a peculiar gravity for children, since any permanent injury which boys and girls may receive imposes a lifelong handicap on them at the very beginning of their working lives. The occupational hazards to which the young workers were exposed were of many kinds, which will be illustrated from the boys’ and girls’ accounts of their jobs. Sometimes the children were fully aware that their jobs were dangerous and they described the hazards in detail, but more often they appeared unconscious of the dangers to which they were exposed, even when they were employed at occupations generally recognized as hazardous. ACCIDENT HAZARDS The accident hazard to which the boys and girls were most often exposed while at work was the danger of motor-vehicle accident. At least 39 percent of the children under 16 and 19 percent of those 16 and 17 years of age were required to be on the streets constantly in the course of their work while employed in hauling or vending or in delivering packages or messages. All these children ran some risk of traffic accidents, although, according to previous studies of accidents to children, the risk was least among those who made their trips on foot. The large majority of the children doing street work were, however, employed either as delivery or messenger boys who traveled on bicycles or as truck drivers or truck drivers’ helpers, and in these occupations the risk of motor-vehicle accident has been found to be considerable.1 The employment of children in the actual operation of motor ve hicles involves a hazard, both to the children and to the public, which is so serious that some legal minimum age for the operation of motor vehicles is now in effect in every State of the United States. In each of the six States visited during this survey, a minimum age of 16 years has been established. Yet in two of these six States a few boys under 16 years of age were interviewed who were driving trucks or other types of automobiles. In all six States boys under 18 were found to be so employed. 1 United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Accidents to Telegraph Messengers, Monthly Labor Review, Vol. 38, No. 1, Jan. 1934, pp. 14-31; and White House Conference on Child Health and Protection, Report of the Subcommittee on Child Labor, pp. 329-330, New York, 1932. 163599°— 40-------4 43 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 44 YO U N G W O RK ERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN 19 3 6 The machines on which the young factory workers were employed were of many types, which in a number of cases involved a serious accident hazard. The operation of rotary saws or other power wood working machinery, for instance, has been found to be especially hazardous because of the danger of injuries such as the amputation or laceration of a hand or arm. Nevertheless, a number of 16- and 17year-old boys were off-bearing from saws and other types of power woodworking machines in New England and Middle Western furni ture factories. And two 15-year-old Southern boys were operating power saws, one in a saw mill and one in a veneer factory, in apparent violation of the State law prohibiting the employment of children under 16 at circular or band saws. One of the boys who had been off-bearing from a saw reported that he had quit his job shortly before the date of interview because the saw was unguarded and his father was unwilling to have him exposed to such danger. A m o n g the large group of textile workers included in the study were some boys under 18 years of age who were employed as back boys on mule spinning frames in Massachusetts woolen mills, although several back boys in the same State had been killed by their machines within the last few years. A back boy is safe so long as he stays in his regular working place, but if he gets down under the frame to clean the machinery or to pick up something he dropped, he is in danger of having his head crushed between the rapidly moving carriage and the stationary part of the machine. Several 16- and 17-year-old boys tended carding, machines in cotton-textile mills, although these machines are distinctly dangerous because of their many exposed pulleys, belts, and other moving parts. Several boys and girls who were employed in the metal industries were operating punch, drill, or stamping presses in which they might easily lose a finger. One of these young metal workers, a 16-year-old girl, was running a press which attached a handle to the gears of an egg beater by flattening the end of a rivet. The girl stated that she was in constant fear lest she get her fingers crushed, since she had to hold the gear in place until the last minute and then quickly remove her hand as the press began to close. Other examples of hazardous employment might be cited, such as operating elevators, running mixing machines m bakeries, and operating flat-work ironers in laundries. As these illustrations indicate, the accident hazards to the working children in this study were not limited in occurrence to a few firms nor to a few localities. Instead, they were found in every one of the States visited and both in manufacturing and in nonmanufacturing industries. While it is true that the number of children found to be exposed to any one of the types of hazards, with the exception of the motor-vehicle hazard, was in most instances very small, nevertheless taken together, the hazards of employment as indicated by this study seem a serious threat to the safety of many young workers in the country. HEALTH HAZARDS In addition to the accident hazards already discussed some of the young workers in this study appeared to be facing definite health hazards in their occupations. Sometimes the children’s jobs involved exposure to conditions which are known to cause specific occupational diseases, but more often the threat to the children’s health lay in the physical and nervous strain of their employment. Since young people https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis ACCIDENT AND H E A L T H H AZARDS 45 under 18 years of age have not yet reached full physical maturity it seems only reasonable to assume that they can in general stand less muscular strain than adults without injury to their health and that they tend to be more easily harmed by industrial poisons, polluted air, and other unfavorable working conditions. Occupational-disease hazards. • While the danger of industrial poisoning did not appear to be wide spread among the young workers interviewed, it is significant that about 60 of the 2,019 children in the study were employed in spray painting and other types of painting and in cementing, usually in the boot-and-shoe industry. The danger of poisoning from the lead and other harmful substances commonly contained in paint is well known. Cements used in the shoe industry often contain toxic ® several girls in this study were employed in cementing celluloid covers on wooden heels and apparently were exposed to poisonous fumes both from the solvents in the cement and from wood alcohol. These girls stated that they received the wooden heels after they had been sprayed with cement but that they had to brush addi tional cement on the corners of the heels before they put on the covers. They took these covers from pans of wood alcohol in which the celluloid had been soaked until softened. In one New Hampshire factory, where several 16- and 17-year-old girls were employed, women had been overcome by the fumes of the cement and of the alcohol. The fumes were reported to be worse in this shop than in some others, because the cement was sprayed on the heels in a comer of the same room where the girls worked, and the exhaust ventilation was ineffective. Dust and lint formed a possible health hazard to which the young workers were exposed much more often than they were to industrial poisons. A dusty atmosphere is characteristic of many cottontextile mills, but it is frequently found also in other types of factories. To cite examples from the children included in this study, a boy workmg m a tire factory said that he was worried about the rubber dust which he was obliged to inhale, and a boy who was oiling hosiery machinery complained that the lint was blown back into his face by the force of the oil spray. In the cotton-textile industry the atmosphere not only tends to be full of lint but in many mill departments it is purposely kept at a mgh temperature and humidity. The young cotton-mill workers in this study, who were the largest group employed in any one manufac turing industry, complained of the heat and humidity of their w o r k in g places more often than they did of the lint. AVhile medical opinion concerning occupational-disease hazards among cotton-mill workers is not in entire agreement, there is some evidence that the combined heat, humidity, and lint may tend to develop among cotton-mill operatives a special susceptibility to respiratory diseases. In any case there can be no doubt that these atmospheric conditions cause the workers marked discomfort and greatly aggravate their fatigue. Physical strain. The physical strain of a worker’s job— considered apart from his working hours, which will be discussed later— is the joint product of many factors. These include not only the heat and humidity of the workrooms, but also the degree of muscular exertion involved in the https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 40 Y O U N G W O RK ERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN 19 3 6 job working posture, the amount of speed-up, and such general work ing conditions as lighting, ventilation, and noise. Among the young workers in this study the physical exertion required, especially ot the boys on laboring jobs, was perhaps the most obvious source of physical strain. Boys in the 16- and 17-year-old group frequently had such jobs*as loading barrels on trucks, moving furniture, and handling heavy automobile tires in a tire factory. In the younger age group heavy labor was less common, but examples were nevertheless found of boys under 16 employed on very heavy work. A 13-year-old boy, for example, had to help lift heavy cases of soft drinks on and off a truck and carry them into customers’ stores. And another boy, who was just 15 years of age, had the job of stacking boards for a lumber company. . , .' . , While heavy labor was not so common among the girls interviewed as among the boys, a few of the girls were on jobs requiring great physical exertion. In a New Hampshire tannery, for instance, a 17-year-old girl was employed in taking hides from a dyeing machine She and another woman had to slip a long pole under each heavy, dripping hide as it came out of the machine and then slide the hide from this pole onto a belt which carried it into the drier. The girl helped 2 or 3 other women push a “ horse” loaded with 150 to 200 hides for a distance of about 20 feet. This horse was so heavy when loaded that it was all the women could do to move it; the work had formerly been done by men. i Constant standing, particularly among the factory workers, was another source of strain. M ost of the girls and boys employed m textile mills were on their feet continuously during their entire working period, and many of them had no place to sit even while eating lunch. However, the work of the textile operatives usually involved walking from machine to machine, and some of the young workers in other types of factories had to stand continuously in one place, a type of posture even more tiring than moving about. The pressure under which the children worked was another impor tant element in the physical and nervous strain of their employment. This pressure was particularly great among the young factory workers, most of whom were employed either on a piece-work system or on mechanized operations where the machines set the pace. The piece work method of wage payment was especially common in industries such as the manufacture of clothing and boots and shoes, where the machinery is not fully automatic but is fed and controlled by the workers, and where this method of payment is a financial inceptive to rapid work. Of the 16- and 17-year-old boys and girls in this study who were employed in these two industries, more than three-fourths were paid at piece rates, compared with about one-fourth of those in other manufacturing industries (table 18). The young piece workers all worked under some pressure, since their earnings depended on their output. But the extreme pressure upon piece workers which results when workers are threatened with dismissal unless they produce a certain minimum amount did not ap pear to be common among the young workers in this study. Most of the clothing and shoe factories which employed boys and girls under 18 in large numbers let their young workers continue on the job unless their output was extremely low. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis ACCID ENT AND H E A L T H T a b l e 18. HAZARDS 47 Proportion of children receiving cash wages in specified industries who were paid on piece-work basis Children under 16 years of age Industry Total Paid on piece work basis Total Number Total_________________ Manufacturing____________ Cotton mills______ Clothing _ Boots and shoes___________ Other _______ . . . _ N onmanufacturing________ Children 16 and 17 years of age Percent Paid on piece work basis Number Percent i 405 110 27.2 1.1,509 440 29.2 113 7 13 13 80 292 63 2 6 8 47 47 55.8 837 202 147 126 362 672 349 45 113 96 95 91 41.7 22.3 76.9 76.2 26.2 13.5 (s) (2) (2) 58.8 16.1 1 Excludes 45 children under 16 years of age, and 60 children of 16 and 17 years, who were self-employed, received no cash wages, or did not report on method of wage payment. 2Percent not shown because number of children was less than 50. In the cotton-textile and certain other highly mechanized industries, where machine speed governs working speed, the boys and girls were usually paid on a time-work basis but were subject to a machine speed up. When the young cotton-mill workers first went to work in the mill they were given a smaller number of machines to tend than were assigned to the experienced workers, the number being gradually increased to a full load as the children gained in experience. At each stage in the learning process, however, they were required to keep up with the machines which were assigned to them if they were to hold their jobs. The pressure under which the children sometimes worked is illustrated by the situation of several boys and girls who were filling batteries 2 in Southern cotton mills. These young people usually managed to snatch a few minutes in which to eat their lunch, no regular lunch period being scheduled, but they reported that there had been shifts when they could not stop work “ even for a minute.” The children employed in nonmanufacturing industries seemed in general to be working under less pressure than the young factory workers. Of the 16- and 17-year-old boys and girls who were em ployed by stores or other nonmanufacturing concerns, only 14 percent were paid on a piece-work basis. Most of these young piece workers were telegraph messenger boys, though the group also included some fishermen paid on a share basis, a few salesmen working on commission, and some other types of workers. The children in these occupations undoubtedly worked hard in many cases in order to increase their earnings; they probably did not work under such intense pressure as did many of the young factory operatives, since jobs like that of messenger boy or sales clerk are likely to have intervals of comparative inactivity, and a variety not found in the repetitive factory jobs. Working hours, on the other hand, tended to be much longer for the children in non manufacturing than for those in manufacturing industries. The total physical strain of employment upon the young workers in trade and service jobs may therefore have been as great as or greater than that upon the boys and girls in factory work, although for each hour of employment the strain seemed to be greatest upon the young factory workers. 2 Filling batteries is an operation in the weaving department of textile mills. It consists in keeping the automatic shuttle-feeding device on each loom supplied with full bobbins. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Hours of Work The physical strain of employment upon young workers depends to a considerable extent on the hours they are required to devote to their jobs. Equally important from the point of view of their general well-being are the limitations which their hours of labor place upon the time available to them for the recreational and social contacts essential to well-rounded development or for the further education they often sorely need. Since children seeking work are likely to be in a weak bargaining position, because of their inadequate knowledge of the labor market and the oversupply of young workers in relation to the available jobs, they are usually offered the least desirable employment and their hours of work tend to be long. For the young workers included in this study the information obtained relating to hours worked was for the pay-roll week preceding the date of interview, or, in the case of a child temporarily out of work, during his most recent week of employment. USUAL DAILY W ORKING HOURS The daily working hours of the children included in this study were frequently very long despite the increasing acceptance of the 8-hour day as the standard working day in this country. Of the children under 16 years of age, 51 percent reported that they had had a usual working day of more than 8 hours during their most recent week of employment. The corresponding proportion for the older boys and girls was somewhat lower (44 percent). Although some of these young persons worked only a little more than 8 hours a day, 28 percent of the younger and 20 percent of the older group reported a working day of 10 hours or more. And, as table 19 shows, 9 percent of the younger and 5 percent of the older children actually worked 12 or more hours a day. These figures, as well as others to be presented on daily hours, refer to the daily work schedule which was most common during the week selected for study and therefore may not show the length of the child’s longest working day during the given week. T a b l e 19.— D a i ly w o rk in g hours 1 Children under 16 years of age • Children 16 and 17 years of age Daily working hours Number Percent Percent distribu Number distribu tion tion Total_________________ __ ______ _____________________ 450 Hours reported______ . ________________ ____________________ 404 100.0 1,458 100.0 Less than 6. _______________________________________ 6, less than 8___ _ __________________ . ___________ ... 8 even _ ..... . _ _________ ____. . . . More than 8, less than 10____________ ____ ______ ______ 10, less than 12.. ___________ _______________________ 12 or m ore____________________ 39 68 92 90 77 38 9.7 16.8 22.8 22.2 19.1 9.4 82 213 524 353 209 77 5.6 14.6 36.0 24.2 14.3 5.3 Horns not reported, or child held more than 1 job 46 1,569 111 1The figures presented in this table and in tables 20 to 24 relate to the children’s working hours during the week immediately preceding the date of interview or, in the case of unemployed children, during the last week before they were laid off. 48 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis H O U RS OF W O R K 49 In each of the localities visited and in every industry employing a considerable number of the children in the study there were found to be many young workers who were employed more than 8 hours a day. Such working hours were reported by about one-third of the children in each age group who were interviewed in New England and by more than two-fifths of those interviewed in the Middle Western States. In the South, where the children’s average working hours were longer than in either of the other regions visited, two-thirds of the younger and more than half of the older boys and girls reported that they were working more than 8 hours a day.1 When the young workers are grouped according to the industries in which they were employed, it is found that the proportion who were working more than 8 hours a day was smallest in the cotton-textile industry. Yet even in this industry 30 percent of the 16- and 17-yearold boys and girls reported a usual working day of more than 8 hours. Most of the young cotton-mill operatives with a working day of more than 8 hours were interviewed in the South, where several of the mills which employed children in this study were found to be operating 10-, 11-, or 12-hour shifts. Cotton mills with shifts of more than 8 hours appeared, however, to be in the minority in every region visited. The children who had the longest daily hours of any major industrial group were those employed in trade. About three-fifths of the children in each age group who worked for stores or other wholesale or retail concerns worked more than 8 hours a day, nearly three-tenths of these children working more than 10 hours a day. Not infrequently the young delivery boys and sales clerks had a usual working day of 11 or 12 hours and had to work even longer hours on Saturday. For example, a 16-year-old girl who was a sales clerk in a grocery store in the South worked 11 hours a day from Monday to Friday and 13 hours on Saturday, when she was on duty from 6 in the morning to 8 in the evening, with only an hour out for lunch. A 17-year-old boy who was delivering packages for a grocery store had an even longer working day. He was on duty 13 hours a day, 5 days a week, and 15 hours on Saturday. LUNCH PERIODS AND SPLIT SHIFTS The opportunity which workers are given to rest and eat a meal during the course of their working day has a very direct relation to the strain of their employment, especially when their daily hours are as long as those of most young workers in this study. Scientific studies of fatigue, as well as common experience, have shown that frequent meals and rest periods do much to relieve fatigue, while prolonged and unbroken spells of work seriously aggravate the strain of a particular job. It is clear that lunch periods which are long enough to permit a leisurely meal are needed by all workers and especially by adolescents. The data which will be presented on the lunch periods of the young workers in this study refer to the work schedule which was most usual for each child during his last week of employment preceding the inter view. The figures also refer only to intervals of 15 minutes or more off duty, rest periods of less than 15 minutes having been regarded as part of the children’s working time. 1Appendix table X II, pp. 83-85. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 50 YO U N G W ORK ERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN 19 3 6 The large majority of the children in the study were allowed some lunch period. Considering only the boys and girls who worked more than 6 hours a day, about six out of every seven children in each age group had a lunch period lasting 15 minutes or more. In most cases this period off duty was definitely scheduled both as to duration and as to time of day. But in some cases the children reported that they could stop work only when there happened to be a lull in their job and that they had to be back on duty before this lull was over. For example, children who served food in restaurants usually had at least a short lunch period but frequently had to take it at a time when there were no customers waiting to be served. Nevertheless, a considerable number of these young workers had no lunch period at all (table 20). The industry in which this most often occurred was the manufacture of cotton textiles. Many cotton mills customarily scheduled no lunch period for workers on 8-hour shifts and in some cases no such periods were scheduled for workers on 10-hour or even 12-hour shifts. In the absence of a scheduled period, very few of the young employees could take as much as 15 minutes at a time away from the job. Of the 16- and 17-year-old boys and girls working in this industry on shifts lasting longer than 6 hours, 55 percent reported that they had no interval of as much as 15 minutes off for lunch, compared with only 3 percent of those in other types of manufacturing and 15 percent of those in nonmanu facturing industries. T a b l e 2 0 .-— L en gth o f lunch 'period o f children w o rk in g m ore than 6 hours a d a y Children working more than 6 hours a day Length of lunch period Under 16 years of age 16 and 17 years of age Percent Percent Number distribu Number distribu tion tion 1 1,350 i 351 326 100.0 1,305 100.0 44 13 89 166 14 13.5 4.0 27.3 50.9 4.3 181 43 350 664 67 13.9 3.3 26.8 50.9 5.1 25 45 i Excludes 6 children under 16 and 15 children 16 or 17 years of age who held more than 1 job. Of the children working more than 6 hours a day who were allowed lunch periods, 90 percent in each age group had a free interval of 30 minutes to an hour.2 Where the worker is required to take more than an hour off duty, as was the case for 4 percent of the younger group and 5 percent of the older group, the type of work schedule is known as a “ split shift.” This schedule was almost unknown among the young factory workers but was not uncommon in certain of the nonmanufacturing industries, for instance in stores and restaurants. 2These figures are based on the longest single break in the child’s working day and do not take account of secondary lunch periods, which were reported in a few cases. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis H O U RS OF W O R K 51 In such establishments it is often to an employer’s advantage to give his employees some hours off duty at times when there are usually lulls in business, since he thus decreases the number of hours of service for which he must pay and yet has a full quota of employees on duty during the rush hours. To the young worker, on the other hand, the split shift is decidedly disadvantageous, increasing the spread of his working hours and dividing his free time. The majority of the boys and girls on split shifts had an interval of at least 2 hours, and several an interval of 4 hours or more, off duty. As most of them worked at least 8 hours a day, the total spread of their working day was seldom less than 10 hours and frequently much longer. One 16year-old girl reported that she worked as a waitress in a cafe from 10 a. m. to 3 p. m. and from 6 p. m. to 9 :30 p. m., a spread of 11% hours in her working time though she was actually employed only 8y2 hours a day. During the 3-hour interval when she was off duty she spent her time, day after day, idling around the downtown shop ping section, since she could not afford the carfare for two extra trips between home and work every day. This girl’s situation suggests the inconvenience and added fatigue which split shifts may entail for young workers, especially for those who live at a distance from their places of work. Children on a split shift seldom have an opportunity for recreation or continued education after their working day is over or during their few midday hours off duty. EARLY-M ORNING AND EVENING WORK An important aspect of the hours spent on the job by young work ers is the time at which their work begins and ends, because earlymorning and late-evening hours interfere with a normal routine of living and normal opportunities for social contacts. The majority of the young workers included in this study began work at or after 7 o ’clock in the morning and were free by 6 p. m., but there were many who began earlier in the morning or continued until later at night.3 Early-morning work. The children who began work before 7 a. m. included 21 percent of the boys and girls under 16 years of age and 15 percent of those in the older group. Most of these children began their working day at 6 a. m. or later, but 7 percent of the younger and 2 percent of the older group went to work before 6 on at least 1 day and sometimes on all 7 days during the given week. The children whose working day began before 6 a. m. were in most ' cases doing delivery work for milk companies or other retail establish ments, though a few of them were employed in bakeries and other industries in which night work is customary. A working day which began before 4 a. m. was reported by 6 percent of the younger and 5 percent of the older boys who were doing delivery work for whole sale or retail concerns and by several children in other industries.4 For example, one 16-year-old boy who worked as deliveryman’s helper for a dairy in the Middle West went to work at 3 a. m., 7 m o rn in g s a week. Since this boy usually had to work only until noon and was given a half hour off for breakfast, his daily working time was only 8K hours. Yet his early hour of starting work meant that he faced 3 The data here presented refer to the earliest hour at which the child began work on any day during the sample week and the lates t hour of stopping work on any day of that week. 4Appendix table X III, p. 85, gives additional figures on early-morning work, by industry. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 52 YO U N G W O RK ERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN 19 3 6 the alternative either of dividing his sleeping time and almost certainly not securing sufficient sleep or of going to bed so early in the evening as to forfeit his best opportunity for association with other young persons of his own age. Evening work. Evening work, defined as employment continuing until after 6 p. m , was considerably more common among the young workers in this study than work which started in the early morning. Of the children under 16 years of age reporting, 40 percent worked after 6 p. m. on 1 or more days during the week selected for study, as did 33 percent of the older boys and girls. Some of these children stopped Work soon after 6 p. m., but 23 percent of the younger and 22 percent of the older group were on duty after 9 o’clock.5 The groups of children among whom evening work was most fre quent were those employed in the cotton-textile industry, in trade, and in the preparation and serving of food in restaurants. Of the 16- and 17-year-old boys and girls in each of these three industrial and occupational groups, about two-fifths did not stop work for the day until after 9 p. m., a much larger proportion than in any other industry or occupational group in the study (table 21). Correspond ing figures for the children under 16 years of age are not available, because of the small number of children under 16 who were interviewed, but it is probable that, industry for industry, the children under 16 had much the same hour of stopping work as the older boys and girls. T a b l e 21. — Time of stopping work of children 16 and 17 years of age in specified industries and occupations Children 16 and 17 years of age Time of stopping work Industry and occupation Total 6 p. m. or earlier Number After 6 p. m., After 9 p. m., but not after but not after 9 p. m. midnight Percent Number Percent Number Percent After mid night Number cent Total_____________ 1 1,423 956 67.2 148 10.4 257 18.1 62 4.3 Manufacturing industries- 796 628 78.9 30 3.8 95 11.9 43 5.4 202 594 111 517 54.9 87.0 6 24 3.0 4.1 57 38 28.2 6.4 28 15 13 9 2.5 Cotton goods. Other_______ Nonmanufaeturing industries. 627 328 52.3 118 18.8 162 25.9 19 3.0 Trade________________ 319 129 40.4 64 20.1 118 37.0 8 2.5 Salespersons______ Delivery workers. _ Other occupations. 95 96 24 45 60 25.2 35. 2 62.5 22 31 11 23.2 24.2 11.5 49 49 20 51.6 38.3 20.8 3 5 2I 5.2 175 87 49.7 41 23.4 37 21.2 10 5.7 60 115 17 70 28.3 60.9 20 21 33.4 18.2 17 20 28.3 17.4 6 4 10 0 3.5 133 112 84.2 13 9.8 7 5.3 1 .7 Service. Food-service occupations. Other occupations______ Other. : was not reported, and 12 who held more than ljob. 1Appendix table X IV , p. 86, gives more detailed figures on evening work, by locality. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis H O U RS OF W O R K 53 In the cotton-textile industry work after midnight was not un common, being reported by one out of every seven of the 16- and 17year-old cotton-mill workers in the study. While a few of these young persons worked in New England, the large majority of them were in the South. In seven Southern communities, out of the limited num ber visited during the study, boys and girls were found to be working on a night shift which did not end until some time after midnight. Those with the latest hour of stopping work were employed in two mills which operated a 12-hour night shift, from 6 in the evening to 6 in the morning. The young workers employed on the night shift in these mills were either 16 or 17 years of age in most cases, but one 15-year-old girl, who was a full-fledged spinner, reported that she worked from 6 p. m. to 6 a. m., 5 days a week, without any break of as much as 15 minutes in her working time. The young persons who were employed in trade very seldom worked after midnight, though the majority of them were on duty until after 6 o’clock. Of the occupational groups with jobs in trade, it was the delivery boys and salespersons who did evening work in the largest proportion of the cases. Sometimes this evening work was limited to Saturdays, but many of the Southern delivery boys and sales persons had to be on duty until 7 or 8 o ’clock from Monday to Friday, as well as until 10, 11, or 12 o’clock on Saturday. The children engaged in food service often worked until nearly midnight on every working day. For instance, one 16-year-old waitress, whose working hours were longer than average but by no means exceptional for her industry and locality, worked from noon to midnight, with only an hour out for meals, 7 days a week. This girl’s working hours illustrate the way in which evening work, even more than early-morning work, limits young workers’ few free hours to the. times of day when other boys and girls are likely to be in school or at work. NUMBER OF W ORKING DAYS PER WEEK Commonly accepted labor standards demand at least 1 full day off duty, in each week, but the findings of this study indicate that there are still a considerable number of children whose work schedule does not give them this opportunity for rest and recreation. Of the children under 16 years of age in the study, 17 percent worked at least a few hours on all 7 days during their last week of employment before the date of interview. Among the 16- and 17year-old workers, on the other hand, the proportion who worked 7 days a week was somewhat smaller, 10 percent. This difference between the two age groups indicates that, in the matter of a weekly day of rest as in that of daily hours, substandard conditions tend to be more frequent among working children under 16 than among those 16 and 17 years of age. The 5-day week, which may be regarded as the optimum workweek, was likewise less common among the younger than among the older group of young workers. A workweek of 5 days or less was reported by only 31 percent of the children under 16, compared with 50 percent of those 16 and 17 years of age. This left 53 percent of the younger and 40 percent of the older boys and girls who did some work on 6 days of the sample week, in addition to the smaller groups already mentioned who worked on all 7 days of that week. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 54 Y O U N G W O RK ERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN 19 3 6 The explanation for the shorter average workweek of the older than of the younger boys and girls lies in the industries in which the two groups of children were employed. As has been shown, the 16- and 17year-old workers were much more often employed in factories than were the younger children, and it was in factories that the children’s average number of working days per week was smallest. The largest majority of the 16- and 17-year-old workers in the boot-and-shoe, clothing, and cotton-textile industries worked 5 days or less per week, while the remainder worked 6 days.6 Not one young person in any of these three industries worked on all 7 days of the sample week. In the remaining miscellaneous group of manufacturing industries, the 5-day week appeared to be somewhat less well established. But more than half of the 16- and 17-year-old workers in these industries nevertheless had a workweek of 5 days or less, and only a few boys and girls worked 7 days. The children employed in restaurants and other nonmanufacturing establishments were the ones who most often worked 6 and 7 days a week. Of the 16- and 17-year-old boys and girls in nonmanufacturing industries, only 24 percent had a workweek of 5 days or less, while 56 percent worked 6 days and 20 percent, 7 days a week. The 5-day week did not appear to have gained much ground in any nonmanu facturing industry that employed a considerable number of children in this study, but a 7-day week was much more prevalent in some industries and occupations than in others. Among the major groups of nonfactory workers in the study, the proportion of young persons who were on a 7-day week ranged from a minimum of 10 percent for the group in trade occupations other than delivery work to 52 percent for those engaged in preparing or serving food in restaurants. The special prevalence of a 7-day week among the young restaurant workers was the more serious because these boys and girls so often had a long working day. One 17-year-old Negro boy, whose working hours appeared to be not untypical of his industry and locality, reported that he had worked 11% hours a day, 7 days a week, as a dishwasher in a hotel. He had given up his job shortly before the interview, because he was unwilling to work still longer hours as his employer asked, with no increase in his weekly pay of $3.50. WEEKLY W ORKING HOURS The total weekly working hours of the children in this study reflected both the young workers’ long daily hours and their usual 6or 7-day week and therefore tended to be very long. They were especially long among the children under 16 years of age, who had, on the average, both a longer working day and a larger number of working days per week than did the 16- and 17-year-old workers. Of the children in the younger group, 65 percent worked more than 40 hours during their last week of employment before the interview, compared with 53 percent of the older group (table 22). A workweek of 60 or more hours was reported by 23 percent of the younger and 13 percent of the older boys and girls, while 5 percent of the younger and 2 percent of the older group stated that they worked 80 or more hours during the sample week. 6 Appendix table X V, p. 86. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 55 H OURS OF W O R K T a b l e 22. — Weekly working hours Children under 16 years of age Children 16 and 17 years of age Weekly working hours Number Total______________ 450 Hours reported_______ __________ . . . ... Less than 20______________________ _ 20, less than 30___________ ______ ___ _ 30, less than 40____________ . . . . 40 e v e n ________ ____ _ ________ ._ More than 40, less than 50_________________ . 50, less than 60..... . . . ___________ . . . _ . 60, less than 70____________ ________ ________ 70, less than 80____ _______ _____ .. 80 or more... _______________________________ Hours not reported or child held more than 1 job. Percent distri bution _ Number Percent distri bution 1, 569 420 100.0 1,531 100.0 26 42 59 21 110 64 44 32 22 6.2 10.0 14.1 5.0 26.2 15.2 10.5 7.6 5.2 133 129 222 228 398 223 103 62 33 8.7 8.4 14.5 14.9 26.0 14.6 6.7 30 4 .0 2 .2 38 When the young workers’ long weekly hours are compared with the hour standards of their State child-labor laws, it becomes apparent that the existence of legislative standards for child labor does not necessarily mean the end of long working hours for children, particu larly in the nonmanufacturing industries in which children under 16 are most often employed. In Massachusetts, Indiana, Missouri, and Alabama the child-labor law forbade the employment of children under 16 years of age for more than 48 hours a week in the industries and occupations covered by this study. Yet in each of these four States, from one-fourth to three-fifths of the children under 16 years of age reported that they were working more than 48 hours a week, in apparent violation of the State child-labor law.7 The New Hampshire child-labor law, on the other hand, set a 54-hour maximum workweek for children under 16 in the employments included in the study.8 Of the 11 children under 16 years of age who were interviewed in that State, one reported that he was working more than 54 hours a week. In the case of the 16- and 17-year-old workers in all six States visited and the children under 16 interviewed in Georgia, no attempt has been made to relate working hours to legislative standards, in view of the varied and sometimes very limited occupational coverage of the hours-of-labor laws applying to these groups of young workers. A workweek of 60 or more hours was reported by 40 percent of the Southern children under 16 years of age, compared with 16 percent of the Middle Western children and 8 percent of those from New England. As table 23 shows, there was a parallel variation in working hours among the 16- and 17-year-old boys and girls, the group living in the South being the ones who most often worked 60 or more hours a week and those living in New England the ones who least often had such long working hours. It will be noted, however, that in 7In Missouri children working for a parent or guardian are excluded from the coverage of the child-labor law. The nine Missouri children under 16 years of age in this study who were working for their parents have therefore been excluded from this analysis of apparent child-labor-law violations, though 5 of the 9 were working more than 48 hours a week. The Missouri law also exempted, children working outside school hours in industries employing less than 6 persons, but this study included only children who had left school for full-time employment. 8In 1937 the New Hampshire law was amended to reduce this maximum 54-hour week to a 48-hour week in manual and mechanical work in manufacturing establishments. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 56 YOU N G W ORK ERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN 193 6 PERCENTAGE O F 16- A N D 17- Y EA R -O LD CHILDREN IN M ANUFACTURING A N D IN N O N M AN UFACTURIN G INDUSTRIES W H O WORKED M ORE TH A N 40 HOURS A WEEK, BY A R E A P ERCEN T 100 90 80 70 60 60 40 I CHILDREN IN MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES 30 V/////////A CHILDREN IN NONMANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES 20 10 0 TW O NEW ENGLAND STATES TW O MIDDLE WESTERN STATES TWO SOUTHERN S TA TE S each of the localities visited the older boys and girls had somewhat shorter average weekly hours than did the younger children. T a b l e 23. — Children working 60 or more hours a week, by area Children under 16 years of age Area Total Children 16 and 17 years of age Working 60 or more hours a week Total Number Percent Working 60 or more hours a week Number Percent T o ta l...*_________________ i 420 98 23.3 1 1,531 198 12.9 2 New England States___________ 2 Middle Western States___ 2 Southern States... _ 139 102 179 11 16 71 7.9 15.7 39.7 474 521 536 10 66 122 2.1 12.7 22.8 1 Excludes 30 children under 16 years of age, and 38 children 16 and 17 years of age, for whom weekly hours were not reported. The special prevalence of long working hours among the younger children is explained in large measure by the relative frequency with which they were employed in nonmanufacturing industries and by the fact that weekly hours were, on the average, much longer among the nonfactory than among the factory workers.9 As has been shown, the children employed in nonmanufacturing industries had in general to work longer hours every day and also to be on duty more days in the week than did those in manufacturing. These two factors com8 Appendix table X V I, pp. 87-89, gives the weekly hours of the factory and nonfactory workers, by locality. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis H O U RS OF W O R K 57 bined to produce a marked divergence between the weekly hours of the two groups of young workers. A workweek of 60 hours or more, for example, was reported by only 9 percent of the children under 16 years of age who were employed in factories but by 29 percent of those in nonmanufacturing industries. Among the 16- and 17year-old boys and girls the situation was similar, only 4 percent of the factory workers having a workweek of 60 or more hours, compared with 24 percent of the nonfactory workers. Weekly hours in manufacturing industries. Within the general field of manufacturing, the young workers’ usual weekly hours showed a considerable variation from industry to in dustry. This was true of both age groups in the study, but the follow ing discussion of working hours in different industries has been based only on the 16- and 17-year-old boys and girls, because the number of children in the younger group was too small to warrant an analysis of their working hours in individual industries. The boys and girls who were employed in the cotton-textile industry reported shorter weekly working hours, on the average, than any other industrial group in the study. Eighty percent of the 16- and 17year-old cotton-mill workers interviewed reported a workweek of 40 hours or less. These included 34 percent working exactly 40 hours and 46 percent who worked less than 40 hours and who are thus seen to have been employed only part time. It appeared to be the custom in many cotton-textile mills to carry a larger number of workers on the pay roll than could normally be employed on any one day of plant operation, in order to insure that experienced workers would be avail able in case of sudden rush orders, the illness of regular workers, or other emergencies. The extra workers, who were known as “ spare hands,” were customarily given only a few days’ work a week, though they were expected to be free to go to work whenever they were called. The spare hands were usually the newer and younger workers, a fact which explains why so many of the children in this study were in this classification. Although the spare hands had the hope of being promoted to regular full-time jobs in the mill, the system tended to create a permanent year-round problem of partial unemployment in the cotton-textile industry, especially among the younger workers. The young cotton-mill workers who were employed more than 40 hours a week included 20 percent of the 16- and 17-year-old persons reporting, a much smaller proportion than in any other industry (table 24). Nine percent of these boys and girls worked 50 hours or more and 5 percent, 60 hours or more a week. The young persons working 60 or more hours were all employed in the South, where a few mills were found to be operating 12-hour shifts. In one of these mills the boys and girls who were employed on the night shift worked five 12-hour shifts a week, and those on the day shift worked five 11-hour shifts and made up for the hours wnich they had off for lunch by working 5 hours on Saturday morning. In the clothing and boot-and-shoe industries, a workweek of 40 hours or less was reported by a majority of the 16- and 17-year-old boys and girls but by not nearly so large a majority as in the cottontextile industry (table 24). Twenty-nine percent of the young cloth ing workers and 16 percent of the shoe workers worked exactly 40 hours during the week selected for study, the proportion working less than 40 hours being 31 and 36 percent respectively. In the clothing https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 58 YO U N G W O RK ERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN 193 6 and shoe factories, as in the cotton mills, a workweek of less than 40 hours commonly represented part-time employment. But in this case it was the temporary and periodic part time which is character istic of highly seasonal industries, and not the year-round underem ployment found among spare hands in the cotton-textile industry. T a b l e 2 4 .-— W e e k ly w o rk in g hours o f children 1 6 and 1 7 yea rs o f age in sp ecified in du stries and occu p a tion s Children 16 and 17 years of age Weekly working hours Less than 40 Industry and occupation 40 even More than 40, less than 60 60 or more Total Num ber Per cent 484 31.6 Num ber Per cent Num ber Per cent Num ber Per cent 228 14.9 621 40.6 198 12.9 Manufacturing industries—. _______ 847 309 36.5 205 24.2 301 35.5 32 3.8 Cotton goods__________ ______ Clothing— _______________ ____ Boots and shoes_______________ Other... _ _ ______ _______ 214 147 126 360 98 46 45 120 45.8 31.3 35.7 33.3 73 43 20 69 34.1 29.2 15.9 19.2 33 57 61 150 15.4 38.8 48.4 41.7 10 1 4.7 .7 21 5.8 684 175 25.6 23 3.3 320 46.8 166 24.3 Total__ _ _ __________ _ 11,531 Nonmanufacturing industries_____ 343 86 25.1 4 1.1 144 42.0 109 31.8 Delivery w o r k __ _______ Other occupations__________ 138 205 20 66 14.5 32.2 2 2 1.4 1.0 51 93 37.0 45.4 65 44 47.1 21.4 Service _____________________:. 189 43 22.7 9 4.8 88 46.6 49 25.9 Food-service occupations___ Other occupations__________ 64 125 11 32 17.2 25.6 2 7 3.1 5.6 28 60 43.8 48.0 23 26 35.9 20.8 Other______________________ ._ 152 46 30.3 10 6.6 88 57.9 8 5.2 Trade ... . . . . ..... ................... 1 Excludes 38 children for whom weekly hours were not reported or who held more than 1 job. The very considerable group of clothing and shoe workers who were employed more than 40 hours a week were frequently working a maxi mum of only 8 hours a day but were required to be on duty more than 5 days a week. The work schedule which appeared to be most usual in the shoe factories, for instance, was an 8-hour day from Monday to Friday and 4 or 5 hours’ work on Saturday morning, a total of 44 or 45 hours a week. All but 1 of the 273 16- and 17-year-old clothing and shoe workers reporting worked less than 60 hours a week, the one exception being a 17-year-old girl who worked 67 hours during her most recent week of employment. The weekly hours of the young workers in the remaining group of miscellaneous manufacturing industries had a wide range, as would be expected in view of the diversity of the industries in the group. Of the 16- and 17-year-old workers in these industries, only 19 percent had a workweek of exactly 40 hours, 33 percent worked less than 40 hours, and a still larger group, 48 percent, worked more than 40 hours a week. In a number of cases the young workers had very long hours. For example, two little Negro boys, one 11 and the other 13 years of age, who carried boards and did other laboring jobs in a veneer mill, each worked 61 hours during their most recent week of employment. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis H O U RS OF W O R K 59 Weekly hours in non manufacturing industries. The children with nonmanufacturing jobs had longer average week ly hours than did the young workers in any manufacturing industry which employed many children in this study. A workweek of 40 hours or less was reported by 29 percent of the 16- and 17-year-old workers in nonmanufacturing industries, only 3 percent working exactly 40 hours and 26 percent less than 40 hours a week. It is clear that for the boys and girls with nonfactory jobs the problem of part-time work was quite overshadowed by that o f. excessively long working hours. Not only did 71 percent of these young persons have a workweek of more than 40 hours but 24 percent of them worked 60 hours or more. The nonfactory workers who had to be on duty 60 or more hours a week were almost always employed either in trade or in the service industries. Thirty-two percent of the 16- and 17-year-old boys and girls who worked for mercantile concerns and 26 percent of those em ployed by restaurants or other service industries reported a work week of 60 or more hours, compared with only 5 percent of those in other nonmanufacturing jobs. It was the store delivery boys who had the longest weekly hours of any occupational group in the study. Of the 16- and 17-year-old boys with jobs of this sort, 47 percent had to work 60 or more hours a week. One 16-year-old boy, whose work ing hours were by no means the longest found among delivery boys in the South, worked from 7:30 a. m. to 8 p. m. from Monday to Friday and from 7:30 a. m. to 10 p. m. on Saturday, with 1 hour out for lunch each day; and in addition he had to be on duty from 8 to 12 Sunday morning. This boy’s working hours totaled 75 a week. Since he made his deliveries by bicycle, he was subject to a considerable risk of motor-vehicle accident. This risk would have been grave enough under the most favorable conditions and was certainly aggravated by his long working hours and by the fatigue and inattention that inevitably resulted. 163599°— 40-------5 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Earnings The young workers’ earnings must be considered in relation to the costs and sacrifices of their employment—-their loss of schooling, their long and frequently strenuous hours of labor, and the accident and health hazards often involved in their jobs. As was indicated earlier in this report, the children were seldom in occupations that held much prospect of vocational advancement or that provided them with skills of use on other jobs. Therefore their earnings cannot in general be interpreted as apprentice wages received in addition to training but represent rather the total reward for their work. The data here presented on earnings cover the young workers’ total weekly compensation and their average rate of earnings per hour. The figures relate in each case to the children’s last week of employ ment before the interview and are therefore comparable with the data already presented on industry, occupation, and working hours. Although a few of the children interviewed were working only for the experience or for wages in kind, the large majority of the young workers in the study were receiving at least a small amount of cash remuneration. Of the children under 16 years of age, 90 percent reported some money earnings, while the proportion was even larger, 97 percent, among the 16- and 17-year-old workers. There remained, however, 42 of the 450 younger children and 41 of the 1,569 older boys and girls who received no money wages at all during the sample week. The children who were classified as receiving no cash wages were in many cases working for their parents and being supported by them. In addition to their living expenses, at whatever scale their family could afford, these children frequently received a little spending money. However, boys and girls who were employed by their parents and who received 50 cents or more a week have been classed with the much larger group of children who received money wages. The few boys and girls who worked without money wages for per sons other than their parents were employed in most cases in the cot ton-textile industry. In a number of the Southern mills which employed children in this study, it was the custom for children to work as learners without pay for several weeks when they first went into the mill. Because so few other jobs were available in the mill communities, the mills apparently had no difficulty in finding chil dren who would work for nothing during their learning period in the hope of a paid job in the future. There was, however, no guaranty of a paid job at the end of the learning period, and cases were found of children who had worked without pay until they had learned to tend spinning frames or other machines, only to be told that no pay ing job was open on the operation at which they worked. The following discussion of the children’s earnings omits from con sideration the few children who were working without money wages and deals only with the boys and girls who had some money income from their jobs. 60 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 61 EARNIN GS WEEKLY EARNINGS Money earnings. The young workers with cash earnings were frequently receiving very small weekly wages. In the six States taken together, the median earnings of the children under 16 years of age were $4.15 a week. Nearly one-fifth of the children earned less than $2, while only 1 out of 12 made as much as $10 a week (table 25). The earnings of the 16- and 17-year-old workers were, on the average, considerably higher than those of the younger children. Yet half of the boys and girls in the older group made less than the median sum of $7.40 a week, and not quite one-third made as much as $10. T a b l e 25.— Weekly cash earnings 1 Children under 16 years of age Weekly cash earnings Number Total___ ____ _ _■_____ ____ _____ Weekly earnings reported______________ Less than $2_____ _ __________ : $2, less than $ 4 ___________________ $4, less than $6 _ __________ . . . _ $6, less than $8___________ ______ ._ $8, less than $10. _________________ $10, less than $12__________________ $12, less than $14.„__. _____________ $14 or more. _________________ _ . . . No cash earnings__ . . . . . ____ ... Weekly earnings not reported or child held more than 1 job .. _________ ____ Median cash earnings________________ . Percent distribu tion Cumu lative percent 450 Children 16 and 17 years of age Percent Number distribu tion Cumu lative percent 1,569 381 100.0 67 113 79 61 29 17 10 5 17.6 29.7 20.7 16.0 7.6 4.5 2.6 1.3 17.6 47.3 68.0 84.0 91.6 96.1 98.7 100.0 1,477 100.0 83 202 241 282 209 161 190 109 5.6 13.7 16.3 19.1 14.1 10.9 12.9 7.4 42 41 27 51 $4.15 5.6 19.3 35.6 54.7 68.8 79. 7 92.6 100.0 $7.40 i The figrnes presented in this table and in tables 26 to 30 relate to the children’s earnings during the week immediately preceding the date of interview or, in the case of unemployed children, during the last week before they were laid off. The young workers’ low earnings are accounted for only to a slight extent by part-time employment. Nearly half of the children under 16 years of age who made less than $2 a week worked at least 40 hours to earn their small wages. Of the group who earned between $2 and $4 a week, two-thirds worked 40 or more hours, as did four-fifths of the children earning $4 or more. Among the 16- and 17-year-old workers, low earnings were more often the result of part-time work than among the younger children (table 26). But even in the older age group, half of the boys and girls earning between $2 and $4 worked 40 or more hours a week. The young workers who lived in the New England and the Middle Western States had considerably higher average earnings than those in the South. This comparison held true for the children in both age groups, though in each area the average earnings of the group under 16 were lower than those of the older boys and girls. Among the higher-paid 16- and 17-year-old workers, the median weekly wage was $8.25 in New England and $8.05 in the Middle West, compared with $6.60 among the white boys and girls interviewed in the South and $3.40 among the Southern Negroes.1 1 Appendix table X VII, pp. 90-92, gives more detailed figures on weekly earnings in manufacturing and nonmanufacturing industries, by area. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 62 YO U N G W O RK ERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN 193 6 T a b l e 2 6 .— P r o p o r tio n o f children with specified w eek ly cash ea rn in gs who worked 40 or m ore hours a week Children under 16 years of age Weekly cash earnings Total Total______________ _____ ________ Less than $2_____ _ ___________________ $2, less than $4________ . . . ___________ $4, less than $6„ . . ______________ $6, less than $8 ____ _ . _____________ $8, less than $10___________________ $10 or more___________________________ Who worked 40 or more hours a week Children 16 and 17 years of age Total Who worked 40 or more hours à week Number Number Percent Percent i 364 256 70.3 i 1,472 1,010 68.6 59 111 78 58 29 29 27 74 60 45 24 26 45.8 66.7 76.9 77.6 (2) (2) 81 202 239 282 208 460 18 101 147 202 161 381 22.2 50.0 61.5 71.6 77.4 82.8 1 Excludes 86 children under 16 and 97 children 16 and 17 years of age who received no cash earnings or for whom earnings or hours worked were not reported or who held more than 1 job. 2 Percent not shown because number of children was less than 50. The children who worked for manufacturing concerns had higher weekly earnings, on the average, than those employed by nonmanu facturing establishments. The 16- and 17-year-old factory workers had median weekly earnings of $8.35; those in nonmanufacturing industries, on the other hand, had median earnings of only $6.30 a week, though their earnings in general represented many more hours of work than did the higher wages of the factory workers.2 The boys who were doing delivery work for stores and the young persons engaged in the preparation or service of food in restaurants were the occupational groups with the lowest weekly earnings, though these were the very groups that had the longest working hours. Half of the 16- and 17-year-old delivery boys in the study made $5.70 or less a week, while the median for the food-service workers was even smaller, $5.35. Example after example could be cited of children in these occupational groups, especially in the South, who worked 60, 80, or even longer hours to earn less than $5 a week. For in stance, one 13-year-old white boy worked about 74 hours a week as delivery boy for a grocery store for the meager wage of $3.50. And a 16-year-old Negro boy, who was a dishwasher in a restaurant, was paid $2 a week for 70 hours’ work. Supplementary wages in kind. In addition to their cash earnings a few of the young workers in this study received supplementary wages in kind, ranging from one or two meals a day up to the provision of all their living expenses. The proportion of the children under 16 years of age who reported some wages in kind in addition to their money earnings was, how ever, only 12 percent, the corresponding figure for the older group being considerably smaller, 4 percent. The young workers who received supplementary wages in kind were often employed in the restaurant industry, where it is not unusual for employees to be given one or more meals a day in addition to their cash earnings. In the other industries covered by the study it ap peared to be contrary to custom for the workers to be given wages in 2 The median weekly earnings of the children under 16 years of age were $4.50 for the group employed in manufacturing and $4.10 for those in nonmanufacturing industries. However, the difference between these two medians is not sufficient to be statistically significant, because of the small number of children on which the figures were based. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 63 EARNIN GS kind, though scattered cases were found of children who received nonmonetary wages for some special reason. Thus a 12-year-old Negro boy, who worked 81% hours a week delivering packages for a Southern grocery store, was given his meals in addition to a money wage of $1.75. Apparently the meals were in lieu of higher cash wages. PERCENTAGE O F CHILDREN WITH CASH EARN IN GS W H O REPORTED SPECIFIED W EEKLY EARNINGS P ER C EN T 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 L E S S THAN $4 $ 4 ,L E S S THAN $8 $ 8 ,L E S S TH AM $I2‘ $12,L E S S TH A N $I6 $ 16 OR MORE CHILDREN UNDER 16 YEAR S OF AGE CHILDREN 16 AND 17 Y E A R S OF AGE Although wages in kind helped to relieve the need of some indi vidual children in the study, they were too infrequent to have any appreciable effect upon the young workers’ average income as shown by the figures on cash earnings. Even among the children with cash earnings of less than $2 a week the proportion that received supple mentary wages in kind was only 16 percent for the younger and 11 percent for the older group. Moreover, as table 27 shows, this proportion became progressively smaller as the children’s wages rose, dropping to 2 percent among the 16- and 17-year-old workers who made $8 or more a week. The full significance of the children’s low earnings is revealed by the fact that in many cases the children with the lowest earnings came from very poor families. This is not surprising, since it would hardly seem worth while to most parents to take a child out of school https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 64 YO U N G W O RK ERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN 19 3 6 to work for $2 or $3 a week unless the family’s need for additional income was extreme. The situation of a 14-year-old white boy who delivered packages for a Southern grocery store appeared to be not untypical of such conditions. This boy made $3 a week for 63 % hours of work. He was the only person in his family who had a job. His father and mother were both unable to work, and his younger sister, who was the fourth member of the family, was still only 12 years of age. Since the family’s monthly relief check just about covered their rent, the boy’s small earnings were used to pay for food, and the family had no income with which to buy clothes or other necessities. T a b l e 27 .— P r o p o r tio n o f children with specified w eek ly cash ea rn in g s w ho received additional w ages in kind Children under 16 years of age Children 16 and 17 years of age Who received additional wages in kind Who received additional wages in kind Weekly cash earnings Total Number Total Number Percent Percent T o ta l-__ 1379 46 12.1 1 1,434 60 4.2 Less than $2----$2, less than $4_. $4, less than $6$6, less than $8$8, less than $10. $10 or more------ 67 112 78 61 29 32 11 15 9 6 2 3 16.4 13.4 11.5 9.8 (2) (2) 81 195 233 ’ 265 207 453 9 8 20 11 5 7 11.1 4.1 8.6 4.2 2.4 1.5 1 Excludes 71 children under 16 years and 135 children 16 and 17 years of age who received no wages in kind or for whom wages in kind were not reported or who held more than 1 job. 2 Percent not shown because number of children was less than 50. HOURLY EARNINGS The young workers in this study who reported the same weekly earnings often had widely different working hours. For example, children who earned between $2 and $4 a week sometimes worked less than 40 hours and sometimes 60 hours or even longer to earn these small wages. To indicate the children’s rates of pay, it was therefore necessary to reduce their earnings to an hourly basis. The method used in this calculation was to divide each child’s weekly cash wages by his weekly working hours, the resulting figure repre senting the child’s average hourly earnings during the sample week. As a result both of long working hours and of low weekly earnings, the children’s rate of earnings per hour was frequently very low, especially among the group under 16 years of age. The median earn ings of these younger children amounted to only 9 cents an hour. Only 3 percent of the children made as much as 30 cents an hour (table 28). Among the 16- and 17-year-old boys and girls, on the other hand, the median hourly earnings were found to be 18 cents, twice as large as those for the younger children but even so less than a living wage. Twenty-one percent of the young workers in this older group made less than 10 cents an hour and only 7 percent made as much as 35 cents. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 65 EARNIN GS T a b l e 2 8 .— H o u r ly cash earnings Children under 16 years of age Children 16 and 17 years of age Hourly cash earnings Percent CumulaPercent CumulaNumber distribuNumber distributive tive percent tion percent tion 450 Less than 5 cents___________________ 5 cents, less than 10_________________ 10 cents, less than 1 5 . . ____ _________ 15 cents, less than 20______ _______ 20 cents, less than 25________________ 25 cents, less than 3 0 _____________ 30 cents, less than 35____________ 35 cents, less than 40___________ _ _ Hourly earnings not reported or child held Median cash earnings.. . --------------------- 1,569 364 100.0 91 106 81 34 23 17 9 3 25.0 29.1 22.3 9.3 6.3 4.7 2.5 .8 25.0 54.1 76.4 85.7 92.0 96.7 99.2 100.0 1,467 100.0 70 236 234 251 188 200 187 55 46 4.8 16.1 16.0 17.1 12.8 13.6 12.7 3.8 3.1 42 41 44 61 9 cents 4.8 20.9 36.8 53.9 66.7 80.4 93.1 96.9 100.0 18 cents These figures on the children’s hourly earnings represent the average situation in the six States taken together. Considering separately the three areas visited, it appears that the children in New England and the Middle West had much higher earnings than either the white or the Negro children in the South. The median hourly earnings of the children under 16 years of age ranged from a low of 4 cents among the Southern Negroes and 8 cents among the Southern white children to 11 cents for all the New England children reporting and 13 cents for all those from the Middle West (table 29). Among the 16- and 17-year-old boys and girls the median earnings ranged from 6 cents an hour for the Southern Negroes to 23 cents for the New England boys and girls.3 This means that even in New England, where the wages of the 16- and 17-year-old workers were found to be highest, half of the older and better-paid group of youngworkers had such low wage rates that they would have earned only $9.20 or less for 40 hours’ work. T a b l e 2 9 .— M e d ia n h o u rly cash ea rn in g s, hy area Children under 16 years of age Area and race Total T o ta l___ :_____________________ ________ _ _________ 2 New England States____ ___________ . . . ________ ____ 2 Middle Western States... ---------- --------- ---------------- . . . ----2 Southern States________ ________________________ _______ White children____________ . . . . ----------------- 1-----------Negro children________________________ _______________ Median hourly cash earnings (cents) Children 16 and 17 years of age Total Median hourly cash earnings (cents) i 364 9 11,467 |§ 120 91 153 80 73 11 13 5 8 4 461 502 504 428 76 23 19 14 16 6 ' Excludes 86 children under 16 years and 102 children 16 and 17 years of age who received no cash earn ings or for whom earnings were not reported or who held more than 1 job. 3 Appendix table X V III, pp. 93-95, gives more detailed figures on hourly earnings in manufacturing and nonmanufaeturing industries, by area. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 66 Y O U N G W O RK ERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN 19 3 6 The children who were employed in manufacturing had considerably higher hourly earnings, on the average, than those in nonmanu facturing industries. The 16- and 17-year-old factory workers in the study had median earnings of 22 cents an hour, compared with a median of only 14 cents an hour for the nonfactory workers.4 The especially low hourly earnings of the young persons in nonmanu facturing jobs were the joint result of their small weekly earnings and of their long working hours. Many of these children, especially those employed by stores and restaurants, were paid a small and fixed weekly wage which bore little relation to their working time. The young factory workers, on the other hand, were usually paid either by the hour or by the piece, with the result that an increase in working hours did not decrease their rate of earnings per hour as it did among the nonfactory workers. Within the general field of manufacturing, the young worker’s wages were by no means uniform, as table 30 shows. The 16- and 17-year-old workers in the clothing industry had median earnings of 17 cents an hour, while the median figure for the young shoe workers was only slightly higher, 20 cents. In the cotton-textile industry, on the other hand, the young workers’ median earnings were found to be 26 cents an hour, and in the other manufacturing industries combined they were 24 cents an hour. T able 30 .— M e d ia n h o u rly cash ea rn in g s o f children 1 6 a nd 1 7 ye a rs o f age in sp ecified in d u stries a n d o ccu p a tion s Children 16 and 17 years of age Industry and occupation Median hourly cash earnings (cents) Total Total_____________ 11,467 18 Manufacturing industries 819 22 Cotton goods_______ Clothing____________ Boots and shoes_____ Other______________ 193 145 125 356 26 17 20 24 Nonmanufacturing industries______ 648 14 Trade___________ _____________ 326 14 Sales, clerical, and floor work. ■ Delivery work_____________ Other occupations_________ 132 131 63 20 Service___________________ Food service occupations Other occupations______ Other. 9 15 179 13 60 119 11 15 14 1 Excludes 102 children who received no cash earnings or for whom earnings were not reported or who held more than 1 job. The very low earnings which prevailed among the boys and girls in the clothing and boot-and-shoe industries are further indicated by 4 The children under 16 years of age who were employed in manufacturing had median earnings of 11 cents an hour, while the children in nonmanufacturing industries had median earnings of 8 cents an hour. How ever, because of the small number of children under 16 years of age in the study, the difference between these two figures is not statistically significant. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis EARNIN GS 67 the fact that nearly one-sixth of the 16- and 17-year-old clothing workers and one-fifth of the boot-and-shoe workers made less than 10 cents an hour. The majority were paid on a piece-work basis and in numerous cases the piece rates were so low that even boys and girls with many months of experience could not earn more than 15 or 20 cents an hour. Although the young workers’ median hourly earnings were higher in the cotton-textile industry than in any other manu facturing industry employing many boys and girls in this study, only two-fifths of the 16- and 17-year-old cotton-mill workers made 30 cents an hour or more. The other three-fifths, who had hourly earn ings of less than 30 cents, were usually in either one of two situations. Some of them were working as learners in mills which still maintained the minimum-wage standards of the N. R. A. code for the cottontextile industry; that is, a minimum hourly wage of 30 cents in the South and 32% cents in the North, with a 6-week exemption for learners. Others worked in mills t}iat had departed from these standards and were paying even the experienced workers less than the former minimum. In a few of the Southern mills where the children worked, the basic wage rate for experienced operatives had been cut from 30 cents to 15 cents an hour soon after the N. R. A. was declared unconstitutional. Some of the young workers in these mills were making even less than this, since the 15-cent hourly rate was paid only for tending a “ full load” of machines—that is, the number regularly assigned to experienced workers— and the boys and girls who were tending less than a full load had their wage rates propor tionately reduced. One 16-year-old girl who had been working as a spinner for over 7 months was still assigned to tend at the most only two-thirds as many spinning frames as the regular workers and there fore earned a maximum of 10 cents an hour and sometimes only 7 or 8 cents. The remaining group of young factory workers were scattered through many different manufacturing industries with a wide range of wage levels— a range concealed by the median earnings figure of 24 cents an hour for the entire group. In the pecan-shelling industry of Georgia, for example, earnings were found to be less than 5 cents an hour in many cases, while in various Northern industries, such as the manufacture of paper and of certain metal products, boys and girls were interviewed who were earning 35 cents an hour or more. The median hourly earnings of the boys and girls in nonmanu facturing industries also varied widely from industry to industry, though they were seldom so high as the median earnings of the young factory workers. The group of 16- and 17-year-old boys and girls who were doing sales, clerical, or floor work in wholesale or retail trade had median earnings of 20 cents an hour; but, as table 30 shows, no other group of nonfactory workers had earnings so high as this. The next highest earnings were those of the young persons employed in miscellaneous occupations in trade and in service occupations other than food service who had median wages of 15 cents an hour. The boys and girls with the lowest earnings were those employed in foodservice occupations in restaurants, half of whom made less than 11 cents an hour, and the store delivery boys, half of whom made less than 9 cents. It was, indeed, to be expected that the food-service workers and delivery boys would be found to have lower hourly earnings than any other industrial or occupational group in the study, https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 68 Y O U N G W ORK ERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN 19 3 6 since according to figures already presented, they had both the longest weekly working hours and the lowest weekly earnings. The variation in hourly earnings from industry to industry helps to explain why the children under 16 years of age had so much lower earnings, on the average, than did the older boys and girls. Although too few children under 16 were interviewed to permit an analysis of their earnings in different industries, it is significant that the in dustries and occupations in which they were most often employed were the very ones in which the older boys and girls had the lowest wages. The pecan-shelling industry, in which earnings of less than 5 cents an hour were not uncommon, was the only branch of manu facturing that employed many children under 16 years of age in this study. And in nonmanufacturing industries, children under 16 were found to be most often employed as store delivery boys, one of the lowest-paid of all occupations. The findings of this study therefore indicate that children under 16 years of age can, in general, obtain employment only in the very lowest-paid types of work that exist in their communities. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Conclusion Certain important social aspects of child labor are revealed in this survey of young workers under 18 years of age—first, the price which the working child pays in loss of opportunity for education and nor mal development and in physical strain and exposure to industrial hazards; and second, the return he receives in money wages, in a con sciousness of contributing to family support, and in training for adult wage earning. But behind and beyond these findings on child labor, some explanation should be sought of the forces that send adolescent boys and girls into the labor market and an attempt should be made to find social expedients which will remedy these undesirable condi tions. The meager educational equipment with which many of these young workers left school to take up the business of wage earning was a part of the heavy price which they paid for their jobs. Though a high-school education is becoming increasingly important as a pre requisite for the better types of employment open to young persons, only 1 in 10 of the 16- and 17-year-old workers was a high-school graduate. Nearly two-thirds of the group under 16, and a third of those 16 and 17 years of age, had failed to complete the eighth grade, and a considerable proportion were hardly more than literate. Nor was this inadequate educational equipment substantially increased either by later academic schooling or by supplementary vocational education. Many of the children had left school at so early an age that no vocational training had been open to them; many even of those able to begin a course of training left before it was completed. The jobs that took the place of school for these boys and girls re quired little skill, offered little opportunity for advancement or train ing for more desirable work, and in many cases subjected them to physical strain and hazard. The young workers were employed chiefly as messengers or delivery boys, as sales clerks, on semiskilled production processes, or as laborers. The chief difference between the occupations of the workers in the two age groups is that the older boys and girls were much more frequently found in semiskilled pro duction work than were those in the younger group. The physical strain, whatever the job, is indicated by the length of the children’s daily and weekly work periods— a workweek of 60 hours or more for about a fourth of those under 16 and for 13 percent of those 16 and 17 years of age, and of more than 40 hours for 65 percent of the younger and 53 percent of the older group. There were many instances also of work at unsuitable hours or for long stretches without rest periods. In addition to the physical strain of these hours of work, many of the jobs entailed exposure to unhealthful conditions or to the hazard of accident or industrial disease. In money return the value of the job for the young worker was extremely low, particularly when taken in conjunction with the long hours of work. The median cash earnings of the children under 16 were only $4.15 per week, and 18 percent earned less than $2 a week. 69 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 70 Y O U N G W O RK ERS AND T H E IR JO BS IN 193 6 Half made 9 cents an hour or less. The older group had somewhat higher earnings on the whole, but one-fifth earned less than $4 for a week’s work, more than half earned less than $7.40 weekly, and half were working for 18 cents an hour or less. No one group of industries can be held responsible for this low wage. Median earnings for the 16- and 17-year-old boys and girls were about $2 a week higher in manufacturing than in nonmanufacturing ($8.35 as compared with $6.30, respectively) but those for the younger children were so low (only slightly over $4 both in manufacturing and in nonmanufac turing) that little difference was found between the two types of employment. Nor was this low wage offset by training received on the job, since, as has been indicated, very few children held jobs that would fit them for adult wage earning. Furthermore, whatever training value the work might have had was seriously lessened by the frequent and often prolonged periods of unemployment experienced by the children with the inevitable tendency toward lowering of morale that such unemployment entails. ^ # _ In considering the remedies for the socially undesirable conditions of child labor revealed by this report, it has been generally felt that the problem requires a different approach for children who have not yet reached the age of 16 years than for those of 16 and 17 years, although, as has been seen, the working conditions for the two groups are not essentially different. For a number of years public opinion in this country has been developing toward the conviction that the years of a child’s life up to 16 should be devoted to physical, mental, and social growth rather than to full-time wage earning. On the other hand, the entrance of 16- and 17-year-old boys and girls into industry has been generally recognized as permissible, provided they are given the benefit of vocational counsel and suitable placement and are protected against unfavorable working conditions. The adverse conditions under which 14- and 15-year-old children often work despite their special need of protection from fatigue and physical strain, and these children’s long periods of idleness, lead inevitably to the conclusion that child-labor laws throughout the country should set a basic 16-year minimum, allowing, if desired, work outside school hours in certain nonfactory employments. This basic standard is already embodied in the child-labor laws of 10 States and it now applies to workers in industries producing goods for inter state commerce under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. The extension of this standard to both interstate and intrastate employ ment in every State, with the exception of work in the child’s own home or on the home farm, would eliminate the ironic situation which permits such young children to be out of school and looking for work while adults are unemployed. This 16-year minimum age should be linked with a 16-year school leaving age and a requirement that young persons of 16 and 17 attend school unless employed, together with an adequate system of employ ment-certificate issuance which will make possible its effective enforce ment. Many of the children included in this study who left school and went to work while under 16 years of age would not have done so if there had been strict enforcement of the existing legislation in their States, which required school attendance at least to 14 years of age, fixed a basic minimum age of 14 for work, and placed some restrictions https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis CO N CLU SIO N 71 upon the employment of children 14 and 15 years of age. The large proportion who had left school before they were 14 reflects a laxity in the administration of the State compulsory school-attendance laws; and the long periods of unemployment between the time when many of these children left school and the time of their going to work represented a serious waste of opportunity and a disheartening ex perience of difficulties and delays. Laxness in enforcing the school-attendance laws and lack of oppor tunity to attend school because the children were too poor to buy books or clothing suitable for school contributed to the low grade standing and inadequate educational equipment of the children in this study, particularly but by no means exclusively those in the younger group. It is significant that in the two Southern States, where the periods of unemployment before going to work were longest, the grades completed lowest, and the vocational education least ex tensive, the annual State expenses per pupil in average daily attend ance at public elementary and secondary schools in 1935-36 were $25 to $30, as compared with $60 and $70 in the two Middle-Western States and $85 to $105 in the New England States.1 The long periods of unemployment between jobs of children under 16 decrease what little value the industrial experience which these children are able to obtain before they reach 16 can have for them. School-attendance and child-labor legislation in many States have attempted to remedy this situation by requiring unemployed children to attend school, and this dovetailing of child-labor and compulsoryschool-attendance laws is highly desirable. It must be recognized, however, that the most important effect of such legislation is that it keeps children in school until they actually have jobs and have fulfilled all the legal requirements for going to work, since it is very difficult to fit a child into regular school classes who has gone to work and later suffers a period of unemployment. In some States vocational schools attempt to bridge this gap with short-term courses suited to the particular needs of these 14- and 15-year-old children. The extension to all boys and girls under 18 years of age of some such system of part-time school training adapted to the special needs of working children has been carried out in a few States and might well be the ultimate goal in all States, since 16- and 17-year-old adolescents have a very real need for the supervised activity possible in school. This study indicates that if school-attendance laws such as are here advocated are to be effective, some form of financial aid to help families keep their children in school is a necessity. Provision of free schoolbooks and other school supplies and of adequate clothing for needy children of school age is a minimum necessity. Such a program would, however, fall far short of the children’s total need. To prevent children from leaving school for work because of the death or absence of the father, the provisions for aid to dependent children should be extended so as to furnish a reasonable subsistence for all needy widowed and deserted mothers with children under 18 years of age in school. Scholarship aid, also, should be provided for young people under 18 years of age who would benefit from continued schooling but who would have to leave school unless given such assistance. Though the need for such scholarship aid is especially 1Report of the Advisory Committee on Education, Feb. 1938, p. 225. Washington, 1938. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 72 YO U N G W O RK ERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN 19 3 6 great in communities where relief standards are low, scholarships should not be put on a relief basis, for if this is done some children who would benefit greatly by staying in school would be deprived of the necessary financial assistance. If 16- and 17-year-old boys and girls do not have money enough to buy decent clothes and pay for a little recreation they are likely to take almost any job which offers them a few dollars a week, without considering that their early departure from school may handicap them later in their effort to secure good employment opportunities. Extension of school attendance is, however, by no means a com plete answer to the educational problems of young workers. Children who are entering industrial life while still in their teens need neither a strictly academic nor a narrow vocational training but a broad, general education which will prepare them to adapt themselves in telligently to shifting economic conditions and changing industrial opportunities. Development of educational theory and practice to meet these problems has begun, but further progress is necessary. To meet the requirements of children who desire and are fitted for intensive training in a skilled occupation, vocational education should be extended in localities where little such training is offered, and in all localities there should be a closer integration of the vocationaltraining program with the placement program and with the employ ment opportunities for young workers. The proportion of young people in this study who had completed a vocational course and had been unable to obtain a job in their field of training emphasized the need for this integration. It also shows the need for vocationalguidance services which will help children to select their occupations and courses of training wisely. In addition to adequate school training and advice in selecting and preparing for an occupation, young workers under 18 years of age need legal protection against unduly hazardous jobs, long working hours, and low wages. Sixteen and 17-year-old boys and girls, who in general are more careless and irresponsible than adults, tend to have a special liability to accident, and for this reason an 18-year m i n i m u m age for employment in hazardous occupations is now pro vided in a number of State child-labor laws and in the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which applies to workers in industries pro ducing goods for interstate commerce. Yet, as this study indicates, there are many groups of intrastate workers with hazardous jobs, and all young workers, regardless of whether their work is in an intrastate or an interstate industry, clearly need the protection of an 18-year minimum age for hazardous employment. Adolescents under 18 years of age are in special need of protection from fatigue and physical strain and should not be permitted to work for such long hours as did many boys and girls included in this study. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 sets a basic 44-hour week, to be decreased to a 40-hour week in 1940, for workers of all ages who are employed in interstate commerce or in the production of goods for such commerce. A maximum 8-hour day for children under 16 is set by most of the State laws, but a few States permit a longer workday, and this standard is much less widespread for the 16- and 17-yearold worker. Only 21 States have set any limit on the daily hours of both boys and girls of 16 and 17 years, and this limit ranges from 8 to 10 hours a day and often applies only to the workers in a limited https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis CO N CLU SIO N 73 group of industries. Minimum-wage standards are also obviously essential in the light of the very low earnings of these young workers. Such standards are now set up for workers of all ages under the Fair Labor Standards Act but are made possible for minor workers of both sexes by State laws in only 22 States. Because young workers have poor bargaining power their labor has always tended to be cheap labor and will continue to be cheap labor unless society steps in to protect them. In view of the findings of this study that young workers have longer working hours and lower earnings in nonmanufacturing than in manufacturing industries it is particularly important that maximumhour and minimum-wage standards such as those provided in the Fair Labor Standards Act for workers in industries producing goods for interstate commerce be extended to boys and girls employed in mer cantile and service industries that are intrastate in scope. The advances in legal protection which the findings of this report indicate to be essential for the well-being of young workers, as well as advances in administrative methods, must be sought through both State and Federal law. The uneven standards of State laws show the need for a Federal minimum below which no State standard may fall. This study indicates that at least three-fourths of the working children under 16 and about half of those 16 and 17 engaged in nonagricultural occupations are in occupations not subject to the childlabor provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act. In order that Federal legislation may protect young workers in intrastate industires, an amendment to thè Federal Constitution which would empower Con gress to regulate all gainful employment of children under 18 years of age is needed, and the proposed child-labor amendment now ratified by 28 States would make it possible to assure adequate minimum labor standards for all child workers throughout the country. Legislative standards alone, however, cannot fully remedy the socially undesirable conditions which this study reveals. It must be recognized that in many cases an important driving force behind the entrance of these boys and girls into the labor market was the low economic level of their families, which was indicated by the number who had been receiving relief and by the large amount of unemploy ment or partial employment and the low earnings for adult members of the family. This drive appeared to be especially strong in the case of the younger group of workers, since the largest per centage of unemployment among adult members of the family, the largest percentage of relief recipiency, and the lowest earnings for the children themselves, were in the families where children under 16 were employed. No program of child protection can be complete until it meets the economic problem of eliminating family need that demands the financial contribution of children at an age when their own welfare, as well as the welfare of society, requires that they have freedom for normal physical, mental, and social growth. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis Appendix T a b l e I.— Population1 of communities visited in each State included in the study Number of communities visited in— Population 6 States 52 Less than 5,000_____________ 5,000, less than 10,000_________ 10,000, less than 50,000___ _ 50,000, less than 100,000______ 100,000, less than 250,000______ 250,000, less than 500,000______ 500,000 or more____ .. 10 3 17 9 8 4 1 Massa chusetts New Hamp shire Indiana Missouri Alabama 17 6 7 14 5 g 1 2 2 4 1 i 1 7 3 6 2 3 1 i i 2 2 1 1 1 1 Georgia 1According to the 1930 census. T a b l e II.— Number of boys and girls under 16 years o f age and 16 and 17 years of age1 interviewed in each State included in the study Sex of child 6 States Massa chusetts New Hamp shire Indiana Missouri Alabama Georgia Children under 16 years of age Total _______________ Boys..... ......... ................. ...... ... Girls____________ _________ 450 141 11 4 99 35 160 356 94 120 21 10 1 2 2 85 14 23 12 116 44 Children 16 and 17 years of age Total_________________ Boys________________________ Girls_____________________ 1 Age at date of interview. 74 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 1,569 247 231 293 244 282 272 864 705 93 154 102 129 201 92 143 101 152 130 173 99 75 APPEN D IX T a b l e I I I . — P r es en c e and e m p lo ym en t status o f fa th e rs in f a m i li e s o f child ren in clu d ed in the s tu d y , hy area a n d race Total status of father1 2 New Eng land States 2 Middle Western States 2 Southern States Total White Negro Per Per Per Per Per Per cent Num cent Num cent Num cent Num cent Num cent Num distri distri distri distri ber ber ber ■ ber distri ber distri ber bu bu bu bu bu bu tion tion tion tion tion tion Children under 16 years of age Child living with family group................. .......... Father present______ 450 152 103 195 447 100.0 151 100.0 102 100.0 194 100.0 307 68.7 126 83.4 68 66.7 113 103 92 102 100.0 92 100.0 58.2 75 73.5 38 41.3 43.1 27.5 2.9 24 13 1 26.1 14.1 1.1 26.5 54 58.7 Employed_______ Unemployed .. . Disabled or retired. 201 96 10 45.0 21.5 2.2 91 34 1 60.2 22.5 .7 42 21 5 41.2 20.6 4.9 68 41 4 35.0 21.1 2.1 44 28 3 Father dead or absent. 140 31.3 25 16.6 34 33.3 81 41.8 27 Child living independ- 1 3 1 1 1 Children 16 and 17 years of age 1,569 554 537 478 Child living with family group___________ _ _ 1,548 100.0 472 82 474 100.0 527 100.0 466 100.0 81 1,163 75.1 404 85.2 390 74.0 369 67.5 338 72.5 31 38.3 E m ployed... . . . Unemployed... . Disabled or retired. 882 222 59 57.0 14.3 3.8 309 77 18 65.2 16.2 3.8 303 74 13 57.5 14.0 2.5 270 71 28 49.4 13.0 5.1 249 62 27 53.4 13.3 5.8 21 9 1 25.9 11.1 1.3 Father dead or absent. 385 24.9 70 14.8 137 26.0 178 32.5 128 27.5 50 61.7 Father present_____ Child living independ- 21 4 1Includes stepfathers but not foster fathers. 163599°— 40- 6 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 10 547 100.0 7 6 1 100.0 76 YOU N G W O RK ERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN 193 6 T a b l e I V — Relief status during year previous to interview o f fam ilies of workinq children included in the study, by area and race 2 New Eng land States Total Relief status during year before interview 2 Middle Western States 2 Southern States Total Per Per Per cent cent Num cent Num distri Num distri Num distri ber ber ber ber bu bu bu tion tion tion White Negro Per Per cent cent distri Num distri Num ber ber bu bu tion tion Per cent distri bu tion Children under 16 years of age Total___________ Status reported___ 450 152 103 195 103 445 100.0 151 100.0 102 100.0 192 100.0 102 100.0 92 90 100.0 155 34.8 47 31.1 42 41.2 66 34.4 44 43.1 22 24.4 130 29.2 37 24.5 40 39.2 53 27.6 34 33.3 19 21.1 21 4.7 8 5.3 2.0 11 5.7 8 7.8 3 3.3 4 .9 2 1.3 2 L1 2 2.0 No relief received____ 290 65.2 104 68.9 126 65.6 58 56.9 68 75.6 Status not reported, or child lived independ ently_________ _ 5 472 82 464 100.0 81 100.0 Relief received_____ For 2 months or more... _ _ _ _ For less than 2 months______ Duration not reported______ 1 60 58.8 3 1 Children 16 and 17 years of age Total. ______ Status reported. 1,569 478 537 554 1,546 100.0 474 100.0 527 100.0 " \4a5k 5 100.0 Relief received 415 26.8 134 28.3 154 29.2 127 23.3 109 23.5 18 22.2 342 22.1 104 22.0 139 26.4 99 18.2 86 18.5 13 16.0 71 4.6 30 6.3 14 2.6 27 4.9 22 4.8 5 6.2 2 .1 1 .2 1 J2 1 1,131 73.2 373 70.8 418 76.7 355 76.5 63 77.8 For 2 months or more___ __ For less than 2 months___ Duration not reported_______ No relief received__ Status not reported, or child lived independently___ ' https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 23 340 4 71.7 10 9 8 1 77 A PP E N D IX T a b l e V .— A g e o f children at tim e o f first leaving regular sch o o l,1 hy area a n d r ace Total Age of child at time of first leaving regular school 2 New Eng land States 2 Middle Western States • 2 Southern States Total White Negro Per Per Per Per Per Per cent Num cent Num cent Num cent Num cent Num cent Num distri distri distri distri distri ber ber ber ber ber distri ber bu bu bu bu bu bu tion tion tion tion tion tion Children under 16 years of age 446 100.0 Age reported_______ ____ 9 12 23 54 185 163 13 years_____________ 14 years_____________ 15 years ____________ 103 152 450 2.0 2.7 5.2 12.1 41.5 36.5 152 100.0 5 70 77 3.3 46.0 50.7 103 100.0 2 6 47 48 2.0 5.8 45.6 46.6 103 191 100.0 102 100.0 9 12 21 43 68 38 4.7 6.3 11.0 22.5 35.6 19.9 4 4 92 195 2 6 5 19 42 28 2.0 5.9 4.9 18.6 41.2 27.4 89 100.0 7 6 16 24 26 10 7.9 6.7 18.0 27.0 29.2 11.2 1 3 82 Children 16 and 17 years of age 1,569 Age reported____________ 1,565 100.0 12 years_____________ 13 years_____ 1 ______ 14 years_____ ._______ 15 years.. -------------16 years_____________ 17 years____________ 4 7 18 47 179 498 620 192 .3 .4 1.2 3.0 11.4 31.8 39.6 12.3 478 537 554 472 478 100.0 537 100.0 550 100.0 469 100.0 81 100.0 1 2 8 38 168 227 93 4 6 15 26 96 187 171 45 3 3 8 21 80 164 149 41 1 3 7 5 16 23 22 4 1.2 3.7 8.6 6.2 19.8 28.4 27.2 4.9 1 13 45 143 222 54 4 i Schools in session 20 hours or more a week. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis .2 2.7 9.4 29.9 46.5 11.3 .2 .4 1.5 7.1 31.3 42.2 17.3 4 .7 1.1 2.7 4.7 17.5 34.0 31.1 8.2 3 .6 .6 1.7 4.5 17.1 35.0 31.8 8.7 1 78 YOU NG W O RK ERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN 193 6 T a b l e V I .— S ch o ol grade com pleted b y w ork in g children before first leaving regular ■«fy_______ school, b y area Total 2 New Eng land States 2 Southern States 2 Middle Western States Total White Negro School grade completed 1 Per Per Per Per Per Per Num cent Num cent Num cent Num cent Num cent Num cent distri distri distri distri ber distri ber ber ber ber bu bu ber distri bu bu bu bu tion tion tion tion tion tion Children under 16 years of age Total. Grade reported. None______________ First grade_________ Second grade_______ Third grade.............. Fourth grade_______ Fifth grade.________ Sixth grade_________ Seventh grade______ Eighth grade_______ First-year high school Second-y e a r h i g h school_______ _____ Third-year high school Fourth-y e a r h i g h school_________ ___ 433 100.0 195 103 100.0 195 100.0 103 100.0 .7 3.7 21.2 4.0 5.9 8.9 35.8 15.3 23.8 27.7 3.1 5.1 10.3 11.3 12.8 13.3 14.4 13.8 6.7 6.7 9.7 11.7 9.7 16.5 20.4 9.7 9.7 6.5 8.7 14.1 13.0 14.1 17.4 12.0 6.5 3.3 3.3 2.0 2.9 1.1 137 100.0 6 10 20 22 30 37 66 81 22.6 86 62 12 1 2.8 .2 22.8 .7 92 100.0 1.9 6.8 1.0 .5 Child attended ungraded class....... ........ Children 16 and 17 years of age Total. Grade reported. First grade_________ Second grade_______ Third grade............. . Fourth grade......... Fifth grade......... ...... Sixth grade_________ Seventh grade______ Eighth grade_______ First-year high school S e c o n d -y e a r high school____________ T h i r d - y e a r h ig h school____________ F o u r th -y e a r high school_________ Grade not reported______ Child attended ungraded class_________ 1,569 478 1,510 100.0 440 100.0 .4 .4 9 17 28 65 140 232 339 299 4.3 9.3 15.4 22.4 19.8 169 57 149 .6 1.1 1.8 1 .2 14.3 70 3.0 29 12.3 77 11.2 63 3.8 13 9.9 54 36 24 .2 .4 1.7 3.6 11.1 25.1 24.4 7.5 12.3 29.8 19.1 14 1 2 9 19 58 132 128 1.1 5 33 54 131 84 23 100.0 554 472 545 100.0 469 100.0 .7 1.7 2.9 4.6 9.4 16.1 .4 1.3 1.9 3.4 8.1 17.3 16 25 51 88 120 22.0 16 38 81 106 72 78 82 22.6 100.0 2.6 3.9 9.2 11.9 17.1 9.2 18.4 5.3 11.9 76 87 13.9 16.0 13.3 36 5.5 15 6.6 2.8 2 .8 6.6 2.6 14.7 18 3.3 3.6 1.3 15.4 16.6 6.6 3 garded'a^havin^no eigh th *gra^ ^ n d ^id ren S R o l i ^ r s of w o r have been re‘ been tabulated as having completed the first to the fourth year «8f high schoohrelpective'ly^ systems have https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 79 A PP E N D IX T a b l e V I I .— S ch o ol p rogress o f w o rk in g children at tim e o f first leaving regular school, b y area Total 2 New Eng land States 2 Middle Western States 2 Southern States Total White Negro School progress Per cent Num Num distri ber ber bu tion Per Per Per cent cent Num cent distri Num distri distri Num ber ber ber bu bu bu tion tion tion Per Per cent cent distri Num distri ber bu bu tion tion Children under 16 years of age Total_____________ Progress reported_______ Advanced. ________ Normal,. ________ Retarded..- _______ 450 152 103 195 103 92 431 100.0 137 100.0 101 100.0 193 100.0 103 100.0 90 100.0 45 195 191 10.4 45.3 44.3 16 81 40 11.7 59.1 29.2 11 62 28 10.9 61.4 27.7 18 52 123 9.3 26.9 63.8 10 35 58 9.7 34.0 56.3 8 17 65 8.9 18.9 72.2 1 year _________ 2 years..- - _____ 3 years__________ 4 years or more__ 82 48 33 28 19.0 11.1 7.7 6.5 24 13 3 17.5 9.5 2.2 15 7 5 1 14.9 6.9 4.9 1.0 43 28 25 27 22.3 14.5 13.0 14.0 26 9 15 8 25.2 8.7 14.6 7.8 17 19 10 19 18.9 21.1 11.1 21.1 Progress not reported____ 19 — — 15 2 2 2 — Children 16 and 17 years of age Total_____________ 1,569 Progress reported______ Advanced. ________ Normal ___________ Retarded___ _______ 1 year _________ 2 years______ _ _ 3 y e a r s..______ 4 years or more__ Progress not reported ___ https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 1,509 100.0 478 537 554 472 82 440 100.0 525 100.0 544 100.0 469 100.0 75 100.0 239 698 572 15.8 46.3 37.9 90 226 124 20.4 51.4 28.2 111 273 141 21.1 52.0 26.9 38 199 307 7.0 36.6 56.4 31 181 257 6.6 38.6 54.8 7 18 50 9.3 24.0 66.7 297 159 73 43 19.7 10.5 4.8 2.9 81 31 6 6 18.4 7.0 1.4 1.4 79 40 18 4 15.1 7.6 3.4 .8 137 88 49 33 25.2 16.2 9.0 6.0 122 77 38 20 26.0 16.4 8.1 4.3 15 11 11 13 20.0 14.7 14.7 17.3 60 38 12 10 3 7 80 Y O U N G W O RK ERS AN D T H E IR JOBS IN 19 3 6 T a b l e V III.— Number of employers for whom child had worked, by length of time since beginning first job Length of time since beginning first job Total Number of employers 3 months, less than 1 year Less than 3 months 1 year or more Not re ported Percent Percent Percent Percent Num Num distri Num distri Num distri distri ber ber ber ber bution bution bution bution Children under 16 years of age 174 450 2 65 209 Number reported-------------- 430 100.0 174 100.0 195 100.0 59 100.0 2 1 - .........- __________ 2— ......................... ........ 3 ________________ 329 68 21 12 76.5 15.8 4.9 2.8 166 6 2 95.4 3.4 1.2 131 47 11 6 67.2 24.1 5.6 3.1 31 14 8 6 52.5 23.7 13.6 10.2 1 1 14 20 6 Children 16 and 17 years of age 1, 569 433 663. 470 Number reported. ------------ 1,494 100.0 470 100.0 635 100.0 386 1_____________________ 2___________ ________ 3_____________________ 1,025 308 114 47 68.6 20.6 7.6 3.2 438 28 4 93.2 6.0 .8 420 158 45 12 66.1 24.9 7.1 1.9 165 121 65 35 Number not reported_____ 75 28 3 100.0 3 4a 7 31.4 16.8 ___ 9.1 2 i _ 47 T a b l e I X .— Industries in which children under 16 years of age were employed, by area 2 New England 2 Middle West States ern States Total Industry 2 Southern States Percent Num Percent Num Percent Num Percent distri Num distri distri distri ber ber ber ber bution bution bution bution 450 100.0 152 100.0 103 100.0 195 100.0 119 26.4 32 21.1 18 17.5 69 35.4 Food and kindred products,-_ .. Cotton goods and small wares... Clothing______________________ Boots and shoes______________ Other_____________ _____ _____ 37 12 13 13 44 8.2 2.7 2.9 2.9 9.7 6 1 7 11 7 4.0 .7 4.6 7.2 4.6 1 1.0 3 1 13 2.9 1.0 12.6 30 11 3 1 24 15.4 5.7 1.5 .5 12.3 Nonmanufacturing._____ __________ 331 73.6 120 78.9 85 82.5 126 64.6 Transportation and public utilities_________________________ Trade_____ ___________ _ . 32 209 7.1 46.5 3 68 2.0 44.7 21 43 20.4 41.7 8 98 4.1 50.2 Wholesale and warehousing.. Retail____________________ 30 179 6.7 39.8 5 63 3.3 41.4 6 37 5.8 35.9 19 79 9.7 40.5 Groceries and other foods________________ Other_________________ 111 68 24.7 15.1 40 23 26.3 15.1 17 20 16.5 19.4 54 25 27.7 12.8 Service_____ __________________ Other_____ ___________ ______ 60 30 13.3 6.7 30 19 19. 7 12.5 15 6 14.6 5.8 15 5 7.7 2.6 T o t a l-._____ _______ - - Manufacturing _______________ https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 81 A PP E N D IX T a b l e X .— Industries in which children 16 and 17 years o f age were employed, by area 2 New Eng land States Total Industry • 2 Middle Western States 2 Southern States Total White Negro Per Per Per Per Per cent Num cent Num cent Num cent Num cent Num Num distri distri ber distri ber distri ber distri ber ber ber bu bu bu bu bu tion tion tion tion tion Total_____________ 1,569 100.0 Per cent distri bu tion 478 100.0 537 100.0 554 100.0 472 100.0 82 100.0 349 73.0 229 42.6 285 259 54.9 26 31.7 8 1.7 52 9.7 42 7.6 23 4.9 19 23.2 59 77 118 87 12.3 16.1 24.7 18.2 7 40 3 127 1.3 7.4 .6 23.6 152 30 6 55 27.4 5.4 1.1 9.9 152 27 6 51 32.2 5.7 1.3 10.8 3 3.6 4 4.9 129 27.0 308 57.4 269 48.6 213 45.1 56 68.3 6.5 6 1.3 52 9.7 44 8.0 44 9.3 5.2 1.3 6 1.3 37 15 6.9 2.8 39 5 7.1 .9 39 5 8.3 1.0 350 22.3 60 12.6 148 27.6 142 25.6 107 22.7 35 42.7 37 313 2.4 19.9 4 56 0.8 11.8 16 132 3.0 24.6 17 125 3.1 22.5 13 94 2.7 20.0 4 31 4.9 37.8 Groceries and other foods.. Other_______ 149 164 9.5 10.4 28 28 5.9 5.9 54 78 10.1 14.5 67 58 12.1 10.4 47 47 10.0 10.0 20 11 24.4 13.4 Service___________ -- 199 12.7 46 9.6 85 15.8 68 12.3 50 10.6 18 22.0 36 2.3 15 3.1 13 2.4 8 1.5 3 .6 5 6.1 71 92 4.5 5.9 7 24 1.5 5.0 33 39 6.1 7.3 31 29 5.6 5.2 24 23 5.1 4.9 7 6 8.6 7.3 55 3.5 17 3.5 23 4.3 15 2.7 12 2.5 3 3.6 Manufacturing--------------- 863 Food and kindred products__________ Cotton goods and 102 6.5 Clothing---- ------------Other_________ _____ 218 147 127 269 13.9 9.4 8.1 17.1 N onmanufaeturing---------- 706 45.0 Transportation and public utilities ------ 102 82 20 Trade_______________ Wholesale and warehousing----Bétail----- --------- Laundries and dry cleaning............. Restaurants and o th e r e a tin g places_________ Other_______ ___ Other__________ ____ https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 55.0 51.4 82 YOU N G W O RK ERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN 193 6 T a b l e X I .— Occupations o f boys and girls included in the study Children under 16 years of age Total Occupation Boys Children 16 and 17 years of age Girls Total Boys Girls Per Per Per Per Per Per Num cent Num cent Num cent Num cent Num cent Num cent distri distri distri distri distri distri ber ber ber ber ber ber bu bu bu bu bu bu tion tion tion tion tion tion 450 100.0 Professional and kindred 356 100.0 Sales persons____________ 2 70 0. 4 15.6 1 55 0.3 15.4 Other_______________ 46 24 10.2 5.4 31 24 6.7 19 4.2 17 4.8 13 6 2.9 1.3 13 4 3.7 1.1 Office and inside er rand boys and girls.. Service workers________ 94 100.0 1,569 100.0 1. 1.1 15 16.0 15 864 100.0 705 100.0 52 0.4 7.4 52 7.4 125 0.3 8.0 2 73 0.2 8.5 106 19 6.8 1.2 54 19 2.2 2.1 80 5.1 27 3.1 53 7.5 2.1 23 57 1.5 3.6 16 11 1.8 1.3 46 1.0 6.5 16.0 179 39.8 174 48.9 5 5.3 385 24.5 323 37.4 62 8.8 Personal service_____ 174 38.7 170 47.8 4 4.2 367 23.4 306 35.4 61 8,7 Delivery and mes senger service____ Food and refresh ment service....... 147 32.7 147 41.3 264 16.8 263 30.4 1 0.2 15 12 3.3 2.7 13 10 3.7 2.8 2 2.1 2.1 87 16 5.6 1.0 34 9 3.9 1.1 53 7 7.5 1.0 1.1 4 1.1 1 1.1 18 1.1 17 2.0 1 0.1 Maintenance______ _ 5 Craftsmen and their help ers.. _________________ Semiskilled production workers___________ 22 4.9 22 6.2 80 5.1 80 125 27.8 56 15.7 69 73.4 731 46.6 205 23.7 526 74.6 Machine___. . . . . Manual__________ 18 107 4.0 23.8 10 46 2.8 12.9 8 61 8.5 64.9 354 377 22.6 24.0 108 97 12.5 11.2 246 280 34.9 39.7 33 7.3 31 8.7 2.1 163 10.4 154 17.8 9 1.3 Laborers_______ __ https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 83 APPEN D IX T a b l e X I I. Usual daily working hours in manufacturing and nonmanufacturing industries, by area A l l I n d u s t r ie s 2 New England 2 Middle West States ern States Total Usual daily working hours 2 Southern States Num- Percent Num Percent Num Percent Percent hpr distri distri distri Num distri ber ber ber bution bution bution bution Children under 16 years of age Total___ 8_________________ Hours reported___________________ Less than 6__________ 6, less than 7_________________ 7, less than 8_________________ 8 even________________________ More than 8, less than 9_______ 9, less than 10_________________ 10, less than 11________________ 11, less than 12________________ 12 or more____________________ Hours not reported, or child held more than 1 job__________ __ j___ Total______________________ 1,669 Hours reported___________________ 1,458 100.0 451 100.0 491 100.0 516 100.0 Less than 6______________ ____ 6, less than 7_________________ 7, less than 8_________________ 8 e v e n ...____________ ______ More than 8, less than 9_______ 9, less than 10_________________ 10, less than 11________________ 11, less than 12________________ 12 or more____________________ 82 44 169 524 14V 206 126 83 77 5.6 3.0 11.6 36.0 10.1 14.1 8.6 5.7 5.3 35 11 60 200 49 69 22 1 4 7.8 2.4 13.3 44.3 10.9 15.3 4.9 .2 .9 28 25 71 153 55 81 44 17 17 5.7 5.1 14.4 31.1 11.2 16.5 9.0 3.5 3.5 19 8 38 171 43 56 60 65 56 3.7 1.5 7.4 33.1 8.3 10.9 11.6 12.6 10.9 Hours not reported, or child held more than 1 job_________________ https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis in 478 27 537 46 554 38 84 YO U N G W O RK ERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN 19 3 6 T a b l e X I I .— Usual daily working hours in manufacturing and nonmanufacturing industries, by area— Continued M Usual daily working hours a n u f a c t u r in g I n d u s t r ie s 2 New England 2 Middle West States ern States Total 2 Southern States Percent Num Percent Percent Num Percent distri Num distri distri Num distri ber ber ber ber bution bution bution bution Children under 16 years of age Total_____ _______ ____ 119 Hours reported______________ 112 100.0 30 6 4 15 31 18 18 8 7 5 5.3 3.6 13. 4 27.7 16.1 16.1 7.1 6.2 4.5 2 Less than 6______________ 6, less than 7_____________ 7, less than 8____ ______ 8 even___________ ______ More than 8, less than 9. __ 9, less than 10________ 10, less than 11_________ 11, less than 12______________ 12 or more - ____ Hours not reported, or child held more than 1 job__________ 32 7 0) 6 12 2 7 1 18 69 18 64 0) 100.0 g 3 1 t y, o 7.8 2 Children 16 and 17 years of age Total_____________ Hours reported__________ Less than 6_____________ 6, less than 7___ j . . . . 7, less than 8__________ 8 even__________ More than 8, less than 9 _ 9, less than 10______ 10, less than 11__________ 11, less than 12____ 12 or more______ Hours not reported, or child held more than 1 job______ 863 349 229 100.0 332 100.0 216 100.0 268 30 21 84 377 92 104 50 35 23 3.7 2.6 10.3 46.2 11.3 12.7 6.1 4.3 2.8 16 5 39 166 38 56 12 4.8 1.5 11.8 50.0 11.4 16.9 3.6 11 11 27 85 31 34 10 5.1 5.1 12.5 39 4 14.4 15.7 4.6 3 5 18 126 23 14 28 1.4 20 47 17 13 1Percent distribution not shown because number of children was less than 50. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 285 816 17 100.0 6! 7 86 62 7.5 85 A PP E N D IX T a b l e X I I .— Usual daily working hours in manufacturing and nonmanufacturing industries, by area— Continued N o n m a n u f a c t u r in g I n d u s t r ie s 2 New England 2 Middle West ern States States Total Usual daily working hours 2 Southern States Percent Num Percent Num Percent Num Percent distri Num distri distri distri ber. ber ber ber bution bution bution bution Children under 16 years of age 85 120 331 126 Hours reported----------------------------- 292 100.0 101 100.0 82 100.0 109 100.0 Less than 6______________ _____ 6, less than 7____________ ______ 7, less than 8 ---- ------------ --------8 even_______________ ----More than 8, less than 9________ 9, less than 1 0 __________ ______ 10, less than 11________________ 11, less than 12____ _____ ______ 12 or more____________ ________ 33 20 29 61 27 27 33 29 33 11.3 6.8 9.9 20.9 9.3 9.3 11.3 9.9 11.3 19 11 15 21 10 13 6 1 5 18.8 10.9 14.9 20.8 9.9 12.9 5.9 1.0 4.9 9 5 7 22 14 6 8 9 2 11.0 6.1 8.5 26.8 17.1 7.3 9.8 11.0 2.4 5 4 7 18 3 8 19 19 26 4.6 3.7 6.4 16.5 2.8 7.3 17.4 17.4 23.9 Hours not reported, or child held 19 39 3 17 Children 16 and 17 years of age 129 706 642 52 23 85 147 55 102 76 48 54 Hours reported--------------------- -------Less than 6___________ -----------6, less than 7 .. ______________ 7, less than 8----------- ---------------8 even -----. ------------------------More than 8, less than 9_______ 9, less than 10_________________ 10, less than 11 ------- ------------11, less than 12_____________ Hours not reported, or child held 100.0 8.1 3.6 13.2 22.9 8.6 15.9 11.8 7.5 8.4 64 308 119 19 6 21 34 11 13 10 1 4 100.0 16.0 5.0 17.7 28.6 9.2 10.9 8.4 .8 3.4 275 17 14 44 68 24 47 34 13 14 269 100.0 6.2 5.1 16.0 24.7 8.7 17.1 12.4 4.7 5.1 33 10 248 16 3 20 45 20 42 32 34 36 100.0 6.5 1.2 8.1 18.1 8.1 16.9 12.9 13.7 14.5 21 T a b l e X I I I .— Hour o f beginning work of children 16 and 17 years of age in specified industries and occupations Children 16 and 17 years of age Hour of beginning work Industry and occupation Total Total_______ _ _______ Manufacturing industries_____ Other. _______________ Nonmanufacturing industries-. Trade_________________ -Delivery workers_____ Other occupations____ Other industries__________ Before 6 a. m. 6 a. m., but before 7 a. m. Number Percent Number 1 1,425 32 2.3 799 202 597 626 318 127 191 308 15 1.9 15 17 16 14 2 1 2.5 2.7 5.0 11.0 1.1 .3 7 a. m. or later Percent Number 183 12.8 1,210 84.9 119 83 36 64 39 26 13 25 . 14.9 41.1 6.0 10.2 12.3 20.5 6.8 8.1 665 119 546 545 263 87 176 282 83.2 58.9 91.5 87.1 82.7 68.5 92.1 91.6 Percent 1 Excludes 144 children for whom hour of beginning work was not reported or who held more than 1 job. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 86 YOU N G W ORK ERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN 19 3 6 T a b l e X I V .^ H o u r of stopping work, by area 2 New England 2 Middle Western States States Total 2 Southern States Hour of stopping work Percent Num Percent Num Percent Num Percent distri Num distri distri distri ber ber ber ber bution bution bution bution Children under 16 years of age 450 373 224 14 22 26 36 37 14 Hour reported____________________ 6 p. m. or earlier____________ .. After 6 p. m., but not after 7___ After 7 p. m., but not after 8___ After 8 p. m., but not after 9___ After 9 p. m., but not after 10___ After 10 p. m., but not after 12—. Hour not reported, or child held 152 100.0 60.1 3.7 5.9 7.0 9.7 9.9 3.7 133 94 7 4 8 10 9 1 77 103 100.0 70.7 5.3 3.0 6.0 7.5 6.8 .7 100 74 2 4 5 5 10 19 195 100.0 74.0 2.0 4.0 5.0 5.0 10.0 3 140 56 5 14 13 21 18 13 100.0 40.0 3.6 10.0 9.3 15.0 12.8 9.3 55 Children 16 and 17 years of age 1,569 Hour reported. ______ _____ _______ After 6 p. m., but not after 7_. _ After 7 p. m., but not after 8— After 8 p. m., but not after 9___ After 9 p. m., but not after 10__ After 10"p. m., but not after 12_— 12 p. m. or later____________ . . Hour not reported, or child held 1,423 956 51 39 58 128 129 62 478 100.0 67.2 3.6 2.7 4.1 9.0 9.1 4.3 469 367 3 7 14 39 33 6 146 537 100.0 78.3 .6 1.5 3.0 8.3 7.0 1.3 518 373 28 20 21 22 32 22 554 100.0 72.0 5.4 3.9 4.1 4.2 6.2 4.2 19 9 436 216 20 12 23 67 64 34 100.0 49.5 4.6 2.7 5.3 15.4 14.7 7.8 118 T a b l e X V .— Number of days worked per week by children 16 and 17 years of age in specified industries and occupations Children 16 and 17 years of age Days worked per week Industry and occupation Total Total_____________ 5 or less 7 6 Percent Number Percent 769 50.0 617 40.2 Number Percent 9.8 1.2 Manufacturing industries. 847 604 71.3 233 27.5 Cotton goods_____ Clothing________ ___ Boots and shoes_____ Other______________ 215 147 126 359 197 109 89 209 91.6 74.1 70.6 58.2 18 38 37 140 8.4 25.9 29.4 39.0 10 2.8 690 165 23.9 384 55.7 141 20.4 347 81 23.4 200 57.6 66 19.0 140 207 15 80 120 57. 2 58.0 45 66 10.7 31.9 21 32.1 10.1 Nonmanufacturing industries.. Trade.._____ ____________ Delivery work________ Other occupations____ Service__________________ 10 191 40 20.9 93 48.7 58 30.4 Pood-service occupations. Other occupations____ 65 126 10 30 15.4 23.8 21 72 32.3 57.1 34 24 52.3 19.1 Other industries__________ 152 44 28.9 91 59.9 17 11.2 1Excludes 32 children for whom number of working days per week was not reported or who held more than 1 job. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 87 APPEN D IX T able X V I .— W eekly working hours in manufacturing and nonmanufacturing industries, by area A l l I n d u s t r ie s Weekly hours of work 2 New 2 Middle England States Western States Total 2 Southern States Percent Percent Percent Num Percent distri Num distri Num distri Num distri ber ber ber ber bution bution bution bution Children under 16 years of age Total_______________________ 450 Hours reported—1___________ _ __ . 420 100.0 139 100.0 102 100.0 179 26 42 59 21. 110 64 44 32 22 6.2 10.0 14.1 5.0 26.2 15.2 10.5 7.6 5.2 13 23 19 6 43 24 7 2 2 9.4 16.6 13.7 4.3 30.9 17.3 5.0 1.4 1.4 5 7 14 8 35 17 8 6 2 4.9 6.9 13.7 7.8 34.3 16.7 7.8 5.9 2.0 8 12 26 7 32 23 29 24 18 Less than 2 0 .________________ 20, less than 30________ ____ _ 30, less than 40________________ 40 even__________________ _ More than 40, less than 50___ . 50, less than 60 ______ ________ 60, less than 70___ ______ .. 70, less than 80_ . . . _________ 80 or more_______________ Hours not reported, or child held more than 1 job _________________ 152 30 103 195 1 13 100.0 4 5 6.7 14.5 3 9 17 9 12.8 16 2 13.4 10.1 16 Children 16 and 17 years of age Total............................ .......... 1,569 Hours reported___________________ 1,531 100.0 474 100.0 521 100.0 536 100.0 133 129 222 228 398 223 103 62 33 8.7 8.4 14.5 14.9 26.0 14.6 6.7 4.0 2.2 51 41 88 111 137 36 6 2 2 10.8 8.6 18.6 23.4 28.9 7.6 1.3 .4 .4 40 30 77 55 151 102 41 17 8 7.7 5.7 14.8 10.5 29.0 19.6 7.9 3.3 1.5 42 58 57 62 110 85 56 43 23 7.8 10.8 10.6 11 6 20. 5 15 9 10 5 8.0 4.3 Less than 2 0 .____ ______ :______ 20, less than 30 ______________ 30, less than 40. . . . _____ ___ 40even . _ .... More than 40, less than 50... _. 50, less than 60 . . . __________ 60, less than 70. _ __ .. ___ 70, less than 80________________ 80 or more.. . _______ ____ Hours not reported, or child held more than l jo b . . . ___ https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 38 478 4 537 16 554 18 88 YOU N G W ORK ERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN T able 1936 X V I. — Weekly working hours in manufacturing and nonmanufacturing industries, by area— Continued M Weekly hours of work a n u f a c t u r in g I n d u s t r ie s 2 New 2 Middle England States Western States Total 2 Southern States Num Percent Num Percent Num Percent Num Percent distri distri distri distri ber ber ber ber bution bution bution bution Children under 16 years of age Total_______________________ 119 Hours reported___________________ 114 100.0 31 Less than 20_____________ _____ 20, less than 30. ______________ 30, less than 40 ______________ 40even _ . . . _ _____________ More than 40, less than 50. . . . 50, less than 60___________ . .. 60, less than 70 _______________ 70, less than 80 . . . . . . . ____ 80 or more_______ _ . ______ 6 11 21 16 36 14 7 2 1 5.3 9.6 18.4 14.0 31.6 12.3 6.1 1.8 .9 2 5 3 5 12 4 Hours not reported, or child held more than 1 jo b . ______. . . _____ 5 32 18 0 18 69 0 65 100.0 1 1.5 4 4 9 1 1 Children 16 and 17 years of age Total_______________________ 863 Hours reported__________________ . 847 100.0 346 100.0 226 100.0 275 Less than 20. . . ________ .. 20, less than 30 _____ . . . . . . . . 30, less than 40 ___ _ _________ 40 even_________ ____________ More than 40, less than 50. ____ 50, less than 60 ______ ______ 60, less than 70. ___ _ _______ 70, less than 80. _. . . . _______ 80 or more___________ _______ 58 94 157 205 219 82 25 5 2 6.8 11.1 18.5 24.2 25.9 9.7 3.0 .6 .2 23 33 66 104 101 19 6.6 9.5 19.1 30.1 29.2 5.5 13 18 43 47 63 33 7 5.7 8.0 19.0 20.8 27.9 14.6 22 43 48 54 55 30 Hours not reported, or child held more than 1 job _____ _____ 16 349 229 .9 3 ' 3 1 Percent distribution not shown because number of children was less than 50. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 285 10 100.0 8 0 15*6 17.5 19 ft 2ft ft 1ft 9 89 APPEN D IX T able X V I .— Weekly working hours in manufacturing and nonmanufacturing industries, hy area-—Continued N Weekly hours of work o n m a n u f a c t u r in g I n d u s t r ie s 2 New 2 Middle England States Western States Total 2 Southern States Num Percent Num Percent Num Percent Num Percent distri distri distri distri ber ber ber ber bution bution bution bution Children under 16 years of age Total______ _______ _________ Hours reported____ _____ ______ _. _ 331 120 85 126 306 100.0 108 100.0 84 100.0 114 100.0 Less than 20___________________ 20, less than 30 ______________ 30, less than 40. . 40 even_________ ______ -More than 40, less than 50______ 50, less than 60 __ _ . . . . ____ 60, less than 70 _____________ 70, less than 80. ________ . . . . 80 or more.. .. _______________ 20 31 38 5 74 50 37 30 21 6.5 10.1 12.4 1.6 24.2 16.4 12.1 9.8 6.9 11 18 16 10.2 16.6 14.8 .9 28.7 18.5 6.5 1.9 1.9 5 7 10 4 36 17 7 6 2 6.0 8.3 11.9 48 31.0 20.2 8.3 7.1 2.4 4 6 12 3.5 5.3 10.5 17 13 23 22 17 14.9 11.4 20.2 19.3 14.9 Hours not reported, or child held more than 1 jo b . _______________ 25 1 31 20 7 2 2 1 12 12 Children 16 and 17 years of age Total________ _____ _________ 706 ____ 129 Hours reported....... ............................ 684 100.0 128 100.0 295 100.0 261 Less than 20__________________ 20, less than 30. _____________ 30, less than 40 _______________ 40 even_________ ____________ More fhan 40, less than 50._ . . . 50, less than 60 __ _ _______ 60, less than 70 ______ _ ______ 70, less than 80 .. __________ 80 or m o re ___________________ 75 35 65 23 179 141 78 57 31 11.0 5.1 9.5 3.4 26.2 20.6 11.4 8.3 4.5 28 8 22 7 36 17 21.9 6.2 17.2 5.4 28.1 13.3 4.7 1.6 1.6 27 12 34 8 88 69 34 15 8 9.2 4.1 11.5 2.7 29.8 23.4 11.5 5.1 2.7 20 15 9 8 55 55 38 40 21 Hours not reported, or child held more than 1 jo b .. _________ . . . https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 22 6 2 2 1 308 13 269 g 100.0 . 7.7 5.7 3.4 3.1 21.1 21.1 14.6 15.3 8.0 90 YO U N G W O RK ERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN T a b l e X V I I . — Weekly 19 3 6 cash earnings of children in manufacturing and non manufacturing industries, by area A ll I n d u s t r ie s Total Weekly cash earnings 2 New England States 2 Middle Western States 2 Southern States Total White Negro Per Per Per Per Per Per cent Num cent Num cent Num cent Num cent Num cent Num distri distri distri distri distri distri ber ber ber ber ber ber bu bu bu bu bu bu tion tion tion tion tion tion Children under 16 years of age Total___ __________ Earnings reported_______ 450 152 381 100.0 128 100.0 103 195 92 100.0 103 161 100.0 92 83 100.0 78 100.0 12 16 21 16 6 1 2 2 1 20.5 26.9 20.5 7.7 1,3 2.6 2.6 1.3 1 1.3 Less than $1_________ $1, less than $2_____ $2, less than $3_______ $3, less than $4._ -$4, less than $5___ __ $5, less than $6_______ $6, less than $7______ $7, less than $8_______ $8, less than $9. $9, less than $10______ $10, less than $11..___ $11, less than $12____ $12, less than $13_____ $13, less than $14_____ $14 or more__________ 26 41 49 64 38 41 37 24 19 10 13 4 7 3 5 No cash earnings________ Earnings not reported, or child held more than 1 job__________________ 42 18 10 14 13 1 27 6 1 20 7 13 $4.30 $6.25 Median cash earnings__ 6.8 10.8. 12.9 16.8 10.0 10.8 9.7 6.3 5.0 2.6 3.4 1.0 1.8 .8 1.3 $4.15 4 11 14 26 18 14 10 9 5 2 6 2 3 3.1 8.6 10.9 20.3 14.1 10.9 7.8 7.0 3.9 1.6 4.7 1.6 2.4 4 3.1 4 8 7 6 15 15 10 8 6 6 2 4.3 8.7 7.6 6.5 16.3 16.3 10.9 8.7 6.5 6.5 2.2 3 3.3 1 1 1.1 1.1 22 26 27 31 14 12 12 5 6 2 1 13. 7 16.1 16.8 19.3 8.7 7.5 7.5 3.1 3.7 1.2 .6 10 10 6 15 8 11 10 5 2 1 12.1 12.1 .7.2 18.1 9.6 13.3 12.1 3.6 6.0 2.3 1.2 1 2 .6 1.2 1 1 1.2 1.2 $3.15 3 $4.05 1.5. 3 $2.35 Children 16 and 17 years of age Total_____________ 1,569 Earnings reported______ 1,477 100.0 478 537 554 472 461 100.0 503 100.0 513 100.0 436 100.0 Less than $1_____ . . . $1, less than $2_______ $2, less than $3_______ $3, less than $4_______ $4, less than $5_______ $5, less than $6_______ $6, less than $7_______ $7, less than $8______ $8, less than $9______ $9, less than $10_____ $10, less than $11_____ $11, less than $12_____ $12, less than $13____ $13, less than $14_____ $14 or more___ _____ 20 63 88 114 100 141 139 143 107 102 109 52 131 59 109 No cash earnings_______ Earnings not reported, or child held more than 1 job--------------------------- 41 13 14 14 14 51 4 20 27 22 Median cash earnings___ https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 1.3 4.3 6.0 7.7 6.8 9.5 9.4 9.7 7.2 6.9 7.4 3.5 8.9 4.0 7.4 $7.40 6 20 24 26 35 34 26 44 35 32 25 17 53 26 58 1.3 4.3 5.2 5.6 7.6 7.4 5.6 9.6 7.6 7.0 5.4 3.7 11.5 5.6 12.6 $8.25 3 7 23 35 27 48 51 54 42 31 59 29 42 17 35 0.6 1.4 4.6 7.0 5.4 9.5 10.1 10.7 8.3 6.2 11.7 5.8 8.3 3.4 7.0 $8.05 11 36 41 53 38 59 62 45 30 39 25 6 36 16 16 2.1 7.0 8.0 10.3 7.4 11.5 12.1 8.8 5.9 7.6 4.9 1.2 7.0 3.1 3.1 $6.20 8 20 26 39 31 48 57 41 30 38 24 6 36 16 16 82 1.8 4.6 6.0 8.9 7.1 11.0 13.1 9.4 6.9 8.7 5.5 1.4 8.2 3.7 3. 7 $6.60 77 100.0 3 16 15 14 7 11 5 4 3.9 20. 7 19. 5 18.2 9.1 14.3 6.5 5.2 1 1 1.3 1.3 5 $3.40 91 APPEN D IX T a b l e X V I I .— Weekly cash earnings of children in manufacturing and nonmanu facturing industries, by area— Continued M a n u f a c t u r in g I n d u st r ie s Total Weekly cash earnings 2 New England States 2 Middle Western States 2 Southern States Total White Negro Per Per Per Per Per Num cent Num cent Num cent Num cent Num cent Num distri distri distri ber distri distri ber ber ber ber ber bu bu bu bu bu tion tion tion tion tion Per cent distri bu tion Children under 16 years of age Total____________ 119 Earnings reported_______ 32 98 100.0 Less than $1_______ .. $1, less than $ 2 -._ ___ $2, less than $3______ $3, less than $4.. . $4, less than $5______ $5, less than $6______ $6, less than $7_______ $7, less than $8______ $8, less than $9______ $9, less than $10. __ __ $10, less than $11 . . . $11, less than $12_____ $12, less than $13____ $13, less than $14_____ $14 or more______ ___ 10 12 11 10 9 8 10 5 8 3 3 2 6 1 No cash earnings . . . ____ Earnings not reported, or child held more than 1 job____________ ____ 6 10.2 12.2 11.2 10.2 9.2 8.2 10.2 5.1 8.2 3.1 3.1 2.0 6.1 1.0 15 Median cash earnings___ 18 31 0) 1 4 4 6 3 6 1 3 69 18 0) 1 2 3 2 1 2 2 2 3 1 2 1 49~ 32 0) 37 22 10 11 7 5 3 3 1 2 4 1 7 2 1 2 1 1 1 1 6 6 14 4 (0 27 0) 3 9 6 3 3 3 1 1 1 1 3 1 10 $4.50 Children 16 and 17 years of age Total_____________ Earnings reported_______ 863 349 229 285 259 26 825 100.0 339 100.0 225 100.0 261 100.0 236 100.0 25 Less than $1___ _ . . $l,less than $ 2 ______ $2, less than $3_______ $3, less than $4- ____ $4, less than $5_______ $5, less than $6. .. $6, less than $7______ $7, less than $8._ ____ $8, less than $9___ $9, less than $10____ $10, less than $11.. $11, less than $12..___ $12, less than $13_____ $13, less than $14____ $14 or more_______ _ 10 37 38 54 56 51 51 80 71 70 55 34 93 41 84 No cash earnings ... Earnings not reported, or child held more than 1 job________________ _ 17 6 1 10 10 21 4 3 14 13 $9.10 $9.00 Median cash earnings__ 1.2 4.5 4.6 6.5 6.8 6.2 6.2 9.7 8.6 8.5 6.6 4.1 11.3 5.0 10.2 $8.35 3 10 11 20 28 18 18 32 25 27 16 14 41 22 54 .9 3.0 3.2 5.9 8.3 5.3 5.3 9.4 7.4 8.0 4.7 4.1 12.1 6.5 15.9 1 3 8 15 7 12 17 25 24 13 27 19 23 7 24 .4 1.3 3.6 6.7 3.1 5.3 7.6 11.1 10.7 5.8 2.0 8.4 10.2 3.1 10.7 6 24 19 19 21 21 16 23 22 30 12 1 29 12 6 2.3 9. 2 73 7. 3 8. 0 8.0 6. 2 88 8.4 11.5 4.6 .4 11.1 4.6 2. 3 $7.15 4 12 15 16 19 20 16 22 22 30 12 1 29 12 6 1. 7 5 1 2 68 80 8. 5 6. 8 1 9.3 12.7 5.1 .4 12.3 5.1 2.5 $7.55 1Percent distribution and median not sbown because number of children was less than 50. 163599°— 40- -7 https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (>) 92 T YO U N G W O RK ERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN able 19 3 6 X V I I .— Weekly cash earnings of children in manufacturing and nonmanu facturing industries, by area— Continued N o n m a n u f a c t u r in g I n d u st r ie s Total Weekly cash earnings 2 New England States 2 Middle .Western States 2 Southern States Total White Per Per Per Per Num cent Num cent Num cent Num cent Num distri distri distri distri ber ber ber ber ber bu bu bu bu tion tion tion tion Negro Per Per cent cent distri Num distri ber bu bu tion tion Children under 16 years of age Total. ___________ Earnings reported_______ 331 120 283 100.0 97 100.0 85 126 71 74 1C0.0 112 100.0 61 100.0 51 100.0 3 8 5 13 8 8 10 2 2 9 7 15 13 3 1 1 1 13.7 29.4 25.5 5.8 2.0 2.0 2.0 1 2.0 55 Less than $1________ $1, less than $2______ $2, less than $3______ $3, less than $4______ $4, less than $ 5 ______ $5, less than $6______ $6, less than $7_______ $7, less than $8______ $8, less than $ 9 . . __ $9, less than $10______ $10, less than $11.. . . $11, less than $12_____ $12, less than $13_____ $13, less than $14_____ $14 or more____ . . . 16 29 38 54 29 33 27 19 11 No cash earnings______ Earnings not reported, or child held more than 1 job_________________ . 36 18 10 8 7 12 5 1 6 3 3 $4.10 $6.00 $3.30 $4.10 $2.45 Median cash earnings____ 7 10 2 1 2 5 5.7 10.2 13.4 19.1 10.2 11.7 9.5 6.7 3.9 2.5 3.5 c7 .4 .7 1.8 $4.10 4 10 10 22 12 11 4 8 2 2 5 2 1 4.1 10.3 10.3 22.7 12.4 11.3 4. 1 8.2 2.1 2.1 5.2 2.1 1.0 4 4.1 4 8 6 6 13 12 8 4 4 5.4 10.8 8.1 8.1 17.6 16.2 10.8 9.4 5.4 5.4 1 1 1. 4 1.4 7 12 15 20 26 11 9 11 3 2 1 1 10 7 13.4 17.9 23.2 9.8 8.0 9.8 2.7 1.8 .9 .9 1 .9 1 1 5.0 13.1 8.2 21.3 13.1 13.1 16.4 3.3 3.3 1. 6 1. 6 Children 16 and 17 years of age Total Earnings reported_______ 706 129 308 269 213 652 100.0 122 100.0 278 100.0 252 100.0 200 100.0 52 100.0 4 8 11 23 12 ' 28 41 19 8 8 12 - 5 7 4 10 1 4 11 11 5 10 5 3 1.9 7.7 21. 2 21.2 9.6 19.2 9. 6 5.8 1 1 1.9 1.9 Less than $1................ $1, less than $2______ $2, less than $3______ $3, less than $4___ . . . $4, less than $5______ $5, less than $ 6 . . . ___ $6, less than $7______ $7, less than $8______ $8, less than $9___ . . . $9, less than $10— ___ $10, less than $11_____ $11, less than $12.. . . . $12, less than $13_____ $13, less than $14... $14 or more__ _____ _ 10 26 50 60 44 90 88 63 36 32 54 18 38 18 25 No cash earnings__ _____ Earnings not reported, or child held more than 1 job________ ________— 24 Median cash earnings. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 1.5 4.0 7.7 9.2 6.7 13.8 13.5 9.7 5.5 4.9 8.3 2.8 5.8 2.8 3.8 3 10 13 6 7 16 8 12 10 5 9 3 12 4 4 2.5 8.2 10.6 4.9 5.7 13.1 6.6 9.8 8.2 4.1 7.4 2.5 9.8 3.3 3.3 7 30 $6. 30 $6.40 2 4 15 20 20 36 34 29 18 18 32 10 19 10 11 .7 1.4 5.4 7.2 7.2 13.0 12.2 10.4 6.5 6.5 11.5 3. 6 6.8 3.6 4.0 5 12 22 34 17 38 46 22 8 9 13 5 7 4 10 2.0 4.7 8.7 13.4 6.7 15.1 18.3 8.7 3. 2 3.6 5.2 2. 0 2.8 1.6 4.0 13 4 4 17 13 9 $7.20 $5.90 56 2.0 4.0 11.5 6.0 14.0 20.5 9.5 4.0 4.0 6.0 2. 5 3. 5 2. 0 5.0 $6.25 $3.90 93 A PP E N D IX T able X V I I I .— Hourly cash earnings in manufacturing and nonmanufacturing industries, by area and race A l l I n d u st r ie s Total Hourly cash earnings 2 New England States 2 M iddle Western States 2 Southern States Total White Per Per Per Per Num cent Num cent Num cent Num cent Num distri distri ber distri ber distri ber ber ber bu bu bu bu tion tion tion tion Negro Per cent distri Num ber bu tion Per cent distri bu tion Children under 16 years of age Total. __________ 450 152 Earnings reported_______ 364 100.0 120 100.0 Less than 5 cents________ 5 cents, less than 10... 10 cents, less than 15.. 15 cents, less than 20.. 20 cents, less than 25.. 25 cents, less than 30_. 30 cents, less than 35.. 35 cents, less than 40.. 91 106 81 34 23 17 9 3 No cash earnings______ Earnings not reported, or child held more than 1 job ._____ ____________ 42 18 10 14 13 1 44 14 2 28 10 18 Median cash earnings___ 9 cents 11 cents 5 cents 8 cents 4 cents 25.0 29.1 22.3 9.3 6.3 4.7 2.5 .8 15 35 38 7 11 7 4 3 103 12.5 29.2 31.7 5.8 9.2 5.8 3.3 2.5 195 91 100.0 4 24 23 22 8 8 2 4.4 26.3 25.3 24.2 8.8 8.8 2.2 13 cents 103 153 100.0 72 47 20 5 4 2 3 47.0 30.7 13.1 3.3 2.6 1.3 2.0 92 80 100.0 73 100.0 27 25 16 4 3 2 3 45 22 4 1 1 61.6 30.1 33.8 31.3 20.0 5.0 3.7 2. 5 3.7 1.4 1.4 Children 16 and 17 years of age Total ____________ 1,569 Earnings reported............. 1,467 100.0 478 537 554 472 82 461 100.0 502 100.0 504 100.0 428 100.0 76 100.0 30 32 6 5 39.5 42.1 7.9 6.6 2 2.6 1 1.3 Less than 5 cents________ 5 cents, less than 10... 10 cents, less than 15.. 15 cents, less than 20.. 20 cents, less than 25.. 25 cents, less than 30.. 30 cents, less than 35.. 35 cents, less than 40.. 40 or more__________ 70 236 234 251 188 200 187 55 46 No cash earnings________ Earnings not reported, or child held more than 1 job____ _____________ 41 13 14 14 ■ 14 61 4 21 36 30 Median cash earnings___ 18 cents 19 cents 14 cents 16 cents https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 4.8 16.1 16.0 17.1 12.8 13.6 12.7 3.8 3.1 7 47 61 70 54 83 74 42 23 1.5 10.2 13.2 15.2 11.7 18.0 16.1 9.1 5.0 23 cents 11 65 86 96 91 77 53 6 17 2.2 13.0 17.1 19.1 18.1 15.3 10.6 1.2 3.4 52 124 87 85 43 40 60 7 6 10.3 24.6 17.3 16.9 8.5 7.9 11.9 1.4 1.2 22 92 81 80 43 38 60 6 6 5.1 21.5 18.9 18.7 10.1 8.9 14.0 1.4 1.4 6 6 cents 94 YO U N G W ORK ERS AND T H E IR JOBS IN 193 6 T a b l e X V I I I .— Hourly cash earnings in manufacturing and nonmanufacturing industries, by area— Continued M a n u f a c tu r in g I n d u st r ie s Total Hourly cash earnings 2 New England States 2 Middle Western States 2 Southern States Total White Negro Per Per Per Per Per Per cent Num cent cent Num cent Num cent Num distri Num distri Num cent distri distri distri distri ber ber ber ber ber ber bu bu bu bu bu bu tion tion tion tion tion tion Children under 16 years of age Total_____________ 119 Earnings reported - ........... 32 97 100.0 31 Less than 5 cents____ 5 cents, less than 10... 10 cents, less than 15.. 15 cents, less than 20.. 20 cents, less than 25.. 25 cents, less than 30.. 30 cents, less than 35.. 25 18 23 10 6 10 5 1 7 12 3 3 4 1 No cash earnings________ Earnings not reported, or child held more than 1 job___ . . . . . _______ 6 16 Median cash earnings___ 11 cents 25.8 18.6 23.7 10.3 6.2 10.3 5.1 0) 18 69 18 48 1 4 5 1 6 1 1 32 (>) 22 24 10 7 2 2 8 4 3 2 2 37 0) 26 0) 16 6 4 3 3 6 6 15 4 h 26 Children 16 and 17 years of age Total_____ ________ Earnings reported ___ _ Less than 5 cents . . 5 cents, less than 10. 10 cents, less than 15.. 15 cents, less than 20__ 20 cents, less than 25.. 25 cents, less than 30.. 30 cents, less than 35._ 35 cents, less than 40. _ 40 cents or more___ . 863 349 229 285 259 819 100.0 339 100.0 225 100.0 255 100.0 231 100.0 30 81 85 143 115 128 154 48 35 3.7 9.9 10.4 17.5 14.0 15.6 18.8 5.8 4.3 3 31 39 50 37 53 69 39 18 0.9 9.1 11.5 14.8 10.9 15.6 20.4 11.5 5.3 3 16 19 40 49 48 33 5 12 1.3 7.1 8.5 17.8 21.8 21.3 14.7 2.2 5.3 24 34 27 53 29 27 52 4 5 9.4 13.3 10.6 20.8 11.4 10.6 20.4 1.6 1.9 11 29 25 51 29 26 52 3 5 4.8 12.6 10.8 22.1 12.6 11. 2 22.5 1.3 2.1 No cash earnings_______ Earnings not reported, or child held more than 1 job___________________ 17 6 1 10 10 27 4 3 20 18 Median cash earnings___ 22 cents 19 cents 20 cents 26 cents 23 cents 1 Percent distribution and median not shown because number of children was less than 50. https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis 24 13 5 2 2 1 1 (*) 95 A PP E N D IX T a b l e X V I I I .— Hourly cash earnings in manufacturing and nonmanufacturing industries, by area— Continued N o n m a n u f a c t u r in g I n d u s t r ie s Total Hourly cash earnings 2 New England States 2 Middle Western States 2 Southern States Total White Negro Per Per Per Per Per Per Num cent Num cent Num cent Num cent Num cent Num cent distri distri distri distri distri distri ber ber ber ber ber ber bu bu bu bu bu bu tion tion tion tion tion tion Children under 16 years of age Total_____________ Earnings reported. _____ 331 120 267 100.0 85 _____! 126 71 55 89 100.0 73 100.0 58 100.0 47 14 28 26 4 8 3 3 3 4 23 19 17 7 2 1 19 21 13 2 1 2 29 16 105 100.0 Less than 5 cents . . . 5 cents, less than 10... 10 cents, less than 15.. 15 cents, less than 20.. 20 cents, less than 25.. 25 cents, less than 30.. 30 cents, less than 35.. 35 cents, less than 40.. 66 88 58 24 17 7 4 3 No cash earnings___ ____ Earnings not reported, or child held more than 1 __________ job. ____ 36 18 10 8 28 13 2 13 Median cash earnings___ 8 cents 10 cents 24.7 33.0 21.7 9.0 6.4 2.6 1.5 1.1 15.7 31.4 29.2 4.5 9.0 3.4 3.4 3.4 5.5 31.5 26.0 23.3 9.6 2.7 1.4 12 cents 48 37 13 3 2 2 45.7 35.2 12.4 2.9 1.9 1.9 32.7 36. 2 22.4 35 0 3.5 7 5 cents 7 cents Children 16 and 17 years of age Total________ ____ Earnings reported _____ 706 129 308 269 213 56 648 100.0 122 100.0 277 100.0 249 100.0 197 100.0 52 100.0 17 27 4 3 5.8 Less than 5 cents____ 5 cents, less than 10... 10 cents, less than 15.. 15 cents, less than 20.. 20 cents, less than 25.. 25 cents, less than 30.. 30 cents, less than 35.. 35 cents, less than 40.. 40 cents or more_____ 40 155 149 108 73 72 33 7 11 No cash earnings____ Earnings not reported, or child held more than 1 job___________________ 24 Median cash earnings___ 14 cents 6.2 23.9 23.0 16.7 11.2 11.1 5.1 1.1 1.7 4 16 22 20 17 30 5 3 5 3.3 13.1 18.0 16.4 13.9 24.6 4.1 2.5 4.1 7 34 20 cents 8 49 67 56 42 29 20 1 5 2.9 17.7 24.2 20.2 15.2 10.5 7.2 .3 1.8 28 90 60 32 14 13 8 3 1 11.3 36.1 24.1 12.9 5.6 5.2 3.2 1.2 .4 11 63 56 29 14 12 8 3 1 5.6 32.0 28 4 14. 7 7.1 6 1 4.1 1.5 .5 13 4 4 18 16 12 16 cents 11 cents 13 cents 1 Percent distribution and median not shown because number of children was less than 50. o https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis '7 cents https://fraser.stlouisfed.org Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
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