Even a good newspaper editor writes the occasional brain-dead op/ed, and Press Democrat editor Ernest L. Finley penned a couple of pips in July, 1905. First he declaimed that “the so-called flying machine [will never be] useful for any practical purpose,” then he wrote the editorial below, assuring local fruit and hops growers that field picking or working in a cannery was a “benefit” for children because they were toiling away in such a swell place as Sonoma County. “While the Child Labor law may be all right in some places, it certainly has no proper place in the country,” opined Finley.

When Finley wrote “…nobody ever heard of such an arrangement working any injury to those so employed,” he overlooked the reporting found nearly every week in his own newspaper, where children were described as being maimed or seriously injured by agricultural machinery. Nor could he apparently muster sympathy for kids forced into such labor. About a month later, the Press Democrat ran a lightweight item about local authorities making pin money as bounty hunters apprehending runaways from a Sebastopol “summer camp” for orphan boys brought from San Francisco for field work.

Wrapping up this series on 1905 child labor is a story that appeared on the front page of the Press Democrat earlier that year. Judging by the large and heavy font used in the headline, Finley wanted to draw the reader’s attention to events that he deemed reprehensible, and justly so.

THE CHILD LABOR LAW

The folly and injstice [sic] of attempting to enforce a law where its provisions do not properly apply is now being forcibly illustrated here, where with considerable fuss and bluster a commissioner charged with that duty is at present engaged in trying to enforce the provisions of the new Child Labor law. This law was enacted by the last legislature with the idea of relieving conditions said to exist in San Francisco, where it is alleged that lazy parents have in some instances compelled young children to work regularly in factories and thus contribute to their support. The attempt to make this law apply to the canneries here and in other towns of the county where for a few weeks each year the children and pretty much everybody else not otherwise employed assists in handling the fruit crop, is little less than ridiculous. The astute gentlemen responsible for the existence and enforcement of the law in question may not know that some such arrangement is necessary in a great many rural communities in order to prevent the staple products from going to waste, and that working for two or three weeks during the summer vacation in the open air or in a well-lighted and perfectly-ventilated country fruit cannery is a vastly different proposition from toiling year in and year out in a dirty, overcrowded and ill-smelling city factory. In many of the smaller communities where the interests are pretty much along one line it is the custom to close the public schools for a week or two during the busy season so as to utilize all the available help in handling the crop. In some places this is done during the height of the berry season, in others when the grapes are ripe, in some when the hops are full. Nobody ever heard of such an arrangement working any injury to those so employed. On the other hand it is usually a benefit. While the Child Labor law may be all right in some places, it certainly has no proper place in the country, and good judgment would suggest that those charged with its enforcement ought to confine their energies to those places where it is apt to be of benefit.

– Press Democrat editorial, July 27, 1905

A BABY IN THE SWEAT SHOP
Eighteen Months Old Child Earn Fifty Cents per Week in New York Assisting Its Mother
COULD NOT BE SPARED
When Sent to Infirmary For Treatment the Mother Found Her Usual Amount of Work Fell Short For Lack of Material

Special Dispatch to the Press Democrat.
New York, Jan. 13 – The astounding fact has been deveopled that an eighteen month-old-babe has been earning 50 cents per week in sweat shop work here. Dr. E. Daniel of the New York Infirmary for Women and Children reported the case. Some time ago a woman left a child with him for treatment. Later she called for the child saying she could not spare its services any longer.

They physician made inquiries and found that the mother was engaged in making passenementerie [sic]. The child rolled the material into balls for her use. The mother said that without the baby’s assistance she fell below her usual amount 50 cents per week.

There is a law in this state forbidding the employment of children under 13 years of age at any work.

– Press Democrat, January 13, 1905

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Without doubt, both the farmer and the orphanage had the best of intentions. Giving disadvantaged kids a summer in the Sonoma County countryside? What’s not to like?

“The Boys and Girls Aid Society” of San Francisco, described as a home for boys “not sufficiently wayward to require assignment to the reform school, and too hard to manage to be placed in family homes or orphanage,” had a deal with a Sebastopol berry grower to operate a “summer camp” for the boys. There, according to a 1911 profile of the farmer, the boys enjoyed “a pleasant outing in the country as well as an opportunity to earn money.” Living in tents set up in a eucalyptus grove, the kids and their supervisors earned up to $5,000 for the summer’s work. A 1915 survey of the child welfare societies put the organization’s annual expenses at about $37K, so we can safely assume that the money from this farm labor represented a sizable chunk of income for both the Aid Society and the youths.

RIGHT: According to “Child Welfare Work in California” (William Henry Slingerland, Russell Sage Foundation, New York Dept. of Child-Helping, 1915), at the Sebastopol farms “boys pick berries and other fruits for pay, each one retaining his own wages and priding himself on amount earned.” Other pictures in the book portray the boys under their camp tent and at Sunday religious services

But the 1905 Press Democrat story below suggests a less idyllic interpretation. Here boys desperately try to escape, with local police acting as low-rent bounty hunters, earning ten bucks for each child they drag back to the fields in handcuffs. And say, here’s an interesting question: Do you think that the $10 reward came from the kid’s meager earnings, or the Aid Society’s take?

BOYES CORRALS TWO MAVERICKS
BOY PRISONERS SLIP THEIR HANDCUFFS AND THEN SLIP THEMSELVES
They Are Strays From the Band of Juvenile Berry Pickers on the Barlow Ranch

Two runaway boys, one calling himself Riley and the other Roddick, gave Police Officer Boyes his run of the summer Wednesday afternoon. Boyes is no colt with a crack speed record but the street commissioner’s gravel flies when John M. gets action on his 200 pounds avoirdupois.

They boys are part of a delegation of the San Francisco Boys & Girls Aid Society lads who are picking fruit on Mrs. Barlow’s ranch near Sebastopol. The people in charge of the youngsters have enjoyed themselves for several weeks standing guard and the officers of the surrounding towns have made considerable pin money rounding up the young mavericks at $10 per head.

Riley, Roddick, and a third lad made a jump last week and were overhauled near Petaluma. When they were returned to the Barlow camp handcuffs were slipped on their wrists, probably as a means of future identification. [illegible] the lively trio got underway Tuesday night and fetched up in this city.

One got his slim hands out of the iron [illegible] and another borrowed a file at the merry-go-round with which he skillfully filed off his metal ornaments, Boyes caught sight of his prey and the chase was on. They ran well together at first and the big officer grabbed the two R’s, the other runaway escaping. His captives wiggled convulsively in his grasp and Riley tore loose, disappearing over the creek bank. Boyes hurried Roddick to the lock-up and after a hot rush through the creek brush found the boy stowed away in a thicket like a coon. The third lad was seen hanging around a Southern Pacific freight train but got out of sight before being caged.

The Roddick lad hails from Guerneville, and he has been in trouble before. They boys will be returned to the officers of the Society. If they still persist in misbehaving they will get themselves into very serious trouble.

– Press Democrat, August 31, 1905

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