Declaration Project

Editor’s Note: Journalist, Presbyterian minister and child labor advocate Alexander J. McKelway (1866-1918), who was instrumental in early efforts to enact legislation to address child labor reform, crafted this concise “declaration of dependence” — really a declaration of children’s rights — sometime between 1910 and 1913, though he claims its true authors are all of America’s children “in Mines and Factories and Workshops Assembled.”

Declaration of Dependence

by the Children of America

in Mines and Factories and Workshops Assembled

Whereas, We, Children of America, are declared to have been born free and equal, and

Whereas, We are yet in bondage in this land of the free; are forced to toil the long day or the long night, with no control over the conditions of labor, as to health or safety or hours or wages, and with no right to the rewards of our service, therefor be it

Resolved, I — That childhood is endowed with certain inherent and inalienable rights, among which are freedom from toil for daily bread; the right to play and to dream; the right to the normal sleep of the night season; the right to an education, that we may have equality of opportunity for developing all that there is in us of mind and heart.

Resolved, II — That we declare ourselves to be helpless and dependent; that we are and of right ought to be dependent, and that we hereby present the appeal of our helplessness that we may be protected in the enjoyment of the rights of childhood.

Resolved, III — That we demand the restoration of our rights by the abolition of child labor in America.

 

Further reading: Child Labor: An American History, by Hugh D. Hindman, M.E. Sharpe, Inc., Publisher, 2002. (the declaration is on page 44)

Child Labor: A World History Companion, Sandy Hobbs, Jim McKechnie, and Michael Lavalette, ABC-CLIO, Inc., 1999.

Photo source: Library of Congress http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/nclc.02873

Photo attributions:

  • Title: Fourteen year old spinner in a[?] Brazos Valley Cotton Mill at West. Violation of the law. Matty Lott runs six sides. See family group and their story. Location: West, Texas.
  • Creator(s): Hine, Lewis Wickes, 1874-1940, photographer