Felix Adler

Child Labor in the United States and Its Great Attendant Evils

There are many centenaries that have received attention of late; there is one that has been almost ignored, and yet it well deserved to be remembered. Two years ago a hundred years had elapsed since the first act was passed by the British Parliament to abate the evils of child labor. England industrially is the most advanced country in the world, and English economic history shows the good and evil sides of industrial civilization writ large. A momentary glance at the conditions which called forth the Factory Act of 1802 and the legislation that followed will serve as a useful introduction to our subject. Briefly, the facts were these: The pauper children of London workhouses were being fed to the machine, almost as the children in the ancient idolatry were fed to Moloch. Pauper children whom nobody owned, deserted waifs, orphans left on the parish-a burden on the rate payers-were

Annual Address of the Chairman of the National Child Labor Committee

The National Child Labor Committee, which has been in existence for five years, and of whose work you will receive a full outline in the course of these sessions, is national, not only in scope, but in its distinctive aim. Its purpose, as I understand it, is to contribute toward the abolition of child labor and also, by means of its propaganda, to aid in infusing into the American people a new

Child Labor a Menace To Civilization

I wish to emphasize, in the remarks I am about to offer, the importance of this movement, as being not ’only in the interest of the child, but of civilization. There is a Greek legend, according to which an ancient city was built to the sound of music. A great musician struck the lyre, and as the strains he wooed from it rose into the air, so rose the walls of the favored city. The meaning of the legend is transparent. Music was to the Greeks the incarnation of measure. They believed that the whole life of nations, as well as of individuals, should be musical-that is, subject to due restraints. They would have condemned as grotesque a civilization based on the exaggerated appreciation of a single end, such as material prosperity, and characterized by the absence of self-containment in the pursuit of this and

The Moral Value of Silence

cultivation to the discipline of ones daily work is like that of gymnastics to natural exercise. The latter is the true foundation of a good physique, but it does not bring every muscle into play. A man must train systematically if he would have all parts equally strong. So it is with the active citizen, who, having passed the stress of mastering his profession, finds himself with leisure for self-cultivation. In this matter no man can lack employment. Innate faults of character, faults contracted from the world, abound in every one and usually defy complete eradication. However diligently the field be cleaned, the weeds spring up year after year; while in aesthetic and intellectual culture there is literally no end to what one may do. But even in this quiet autumn of life, one need hardly say, the maxim of self-realization remains secondary. Man, in some sort, continues in harness to the end. He may have retired from business, his family may have grown up and gone out into the world, but at least the duties of citizenship and religion remain. So soon as he ceases to recognize the sway of duty and to serve an ideal which is something higher and wider than his own personal perfection, he ceases to lead a good moral life. If he does not actually work much, he must hold himself ready to work, or, at least, to suffer. Death is the only final manumission from the service of life. HENRY STURT. OXFORD, ENGLAND.

The Relation of Ethical Culture to Religion and Philosophy

IT is a matter of regret that the Positivists of Newton Hall find themselves unable to take personal part in the Conference of Ethical Societies. Primarily and essentially, this body claims to be an Ethical Society; for it seeks to promote the development of moral life on a strict basis of positive sociology and scientific ethics. It would therefore find itself in complete accord with all serious efforts to place the true culture of self and of the community on rational and human grounds. Whatever differences of view might arise between a Positivist and an Ethical movement would be found-not in the common ground which would extend over the entire programme of an Ethical Association-but in the further aim of the Positivist movement to add to ethical culture Philosophy and Religion. It would serve little purpose to enlarge on the ground which is common to both Positivist and Ethical movements. It will be more useful to state the grounds which, in the former point of view, make the ultimate extension of the ethical culture to Philosophy and Religion not only legitimate, but indispensable. Right conduct is the true end of a worthy human life. But our conduct is ultimately determined -not by what we are taught to do, or by what we should like to do-but by what we believe and what we revere. In using the word Religion, we are not giving it any theological significance, nor are we limiting it to any special form of belief. The Chinese and the Negroes (not to mention many other races) have a formal religion which is certainly without God; and in all schemes of belief which can be called religion there is a common element. That common element is (i) a belief in some Power recognized as greater than the individual or even than the community, as able to deal out

The Problem of Unsectarian Moral Instruction

IT will be the object of the present course of lectures to give in outline the subject-matter of moral instruction for children of the school age, and to discuss the methods by which this kind of instruction should be imparted. At the outset, however, we are confronted by what certainly is a grave, and what seems to many an insuperable, difficulty. It is the firm conviction of many serious persons that morality depends on religious sanction, and that rules of right conduct can be taught neither to adults nor to the young, except in the name and under the authority of some religious belief. To such persons the very name of unsectarian or independent morality seems to savor of infidelity. It seems to them that the attempt to accomplish, without the aid of religion, what has always been regarded as the most precious prerogative and the most valuable service of religion to mankind, is tantamount to an attack on religion, and argues a deliberate design to depose it from the position of pre-eminence which it has heretofore occupied. The friends of unsectarian morality are chargeable with no such secret machinations; they are not necessarily either irreligious or anti-religious. In fact, as will appear later on, the principle of unsectarian moral teaching may be made to rest on purely educational grounds, with which the religious bias of the educator has nothing whatever to do. But there are also grounds of expediency, which in the United States compel us to face the problem of unsectarian moral education, and to these let us first devote attention. Admit argument causa the justice of the proposition that moral truths must be taught in the name of some form of religious