Booker T. Washington is a well-known figure in African-American history. His entry at Wikipedia is found here. I had forgotten that he was born into slavery, and that he was biracial.
I also did not know that he had an interest in the plight of working people outside the United States. It turns out that around the year 1910, he visited Sicily, and was horrified to find child slavery in various places, but especially in that region's sulfur mines. He wrote in a compelling fashion regarding what he found:
“Certainly there is no other country
[i.e. Sicily] where so much of the labour of all kinds, the skilled
labour of the artisan as well as the rough labour of digging and
carrying on the streets and in the mines, is performed by children,
especially boys."
“About nine o'clock
Saturday night my attention was attracted to a man engaged in some
delicate sort of metal tool-making. What particularly attracted my
attention was a little girl, certainly not more than seven years of
age, who was busily engaged at this late hour in polishing and
sharpening the stamps the man used. I could but marvel at the patience
and the skill the child showed at her work. It was the first time in my
life that I had seen such a very little child at work, although I saw
many others in the days that followed.”
“I came across a tile manufacturing
plant where almost all of the actual work was performed by the
children, who ranged, I should say, from eight to twelve years of age.
The work of carrying the heavy clay, and piling it up in the sun after
it had been formed into tiles, was done by the younger children. I am
certain that if I had not seen them with my own eyes I would never have
believed that such very little children could carry such heavy loads,
or that they could work so systematically and steadily as they were
compelled to do in order to keep up the pace. I was so filled with pity
and at the same time with admiration for these boys.”
“I remember, one day in Palermo, seeing, for the first time in
my life, boys, who were certainly not more than fourteen years of age,
engaged in carrying on their backs earth from a cellar that was being
excavated for a building. Men did the work of digging, but the mere
drudgery of carrying the earth from the bottom of the excavation to the
surface was performed by these boys. It was not simply the fact that
mere children were engaged in this heavy work which impressed me. It
was the slow, dragging steps, the fixed and unalterable expression of
weariness that showed in every line of their bodies.”
He describes the organization of the
work in a sulphur mine: “The actual work of digging the sulphur is
performed by the miner, who is paid by the amount of crude ore he
succeeds in getting out. He, in his turn, has a boy, sometimes two or
three of them, to assist him in getting the ore out of the mine to the
smelter, where it is melted and refined. The caruso is purchased by the
miner from the parents.”
“The manner in which the purchase is made is as follows:
In Sicily, where the masses of the people are so wretchedly poor in
everything else, they are nevertheless unusually rich in children, and,
as often happens, the family that has the largest number of mouths to
fill has the least to put in them. It is from these families that the
carusi are recruited. The father who turns his child over to a miner
receives in return a sum of money in the form of a loan. The sum
usually amounts to from eight to thirty dollars, according to the age
of the boy, his strength and general usefulness. With the payment of
this sum the child is turned over absolutely to his master.”
“From this SLAVERY (emp.+) there is no hope of freedom,
because neither the parents nor the child will ever have sufficient
money to repay the original loan.”
“Strange and terrible stories are
told about the way in which these boy slaves have been treated by their
masters…one sees processions of half-naked boys, their bodies bowed
under the heavy weight of the loads they carried, groaning and cursing
as they made their way up out of the hot and sulphurous holes in the
earth, carrying the ore from the mine to the smelter…
“The cruelties to which the child
slaves have been subjected, as related by those who have studied them,
are as bad as anything that was ever reported of the cruelties of Negro
slavery. These boy slaves were frequently beaten and pinched, in order
to wring from their overburdened bodies the last drop of strength they
had in them. When beatings did not suffice, it was the custom to singe
the calves of their legs with lanterns to put them again on their feet.
If they sought to escape from this slavery in flight, they were
captured and beaten, sometimes even killed.
“As they climbed out of the hot and
poisonous atmosphere of the mines their bodies, naked to the waist and
dripping with sweat, were chilled by the cold draughts in the corridors
leading out of the mines, and this sudden transition was the frequent
cause of pneumonia and tuberculosis.
“Children of six and seven years of
age were employed at these crushing and terrible tasks. Under the heavy
burdens (averaging about forty pounds) they were compelled to carry,
they often became deformed, and the number of cases of curvature of the
spine and deformations of the bones of the chest reported was very
large. More than that, these children were frequently made the victims
of the lust and unnatural vices of their masters. It is not surprising,
therefore, that they early gained the appearance of gray old men, and
that it has become a common saying that a caruso rarely reaches the age
of twenty five.”
“It seemed incredible to me that any
one could live and work in such heat… in a burrow, twisting and winding
its way, but going constantly deeper and deeper into the dark depths of
the earth where the miners loosen the ore from the walls of the seams
in which it is found, and then it is carried up out of these holes in
sacks by the carusi.”
“All the ore is carried on the backs
of boys. In cases where the mine descended to the depth of two, three,
or four hundred feet, the task of carrying these loads of ore to the
surface is simply heartbreaking. I can well understand that persons who
have seen conditions at the worst should speak of the children who have
been condemned to this slavery as the most unhappy creatures on earth.
“For many miles in every
direction the vegetation has been blasted by the poisonous smoke and
vapours from the smelters, and the whole country has a blotched and
scrofulous appearance which is depressing to look upon, particularly
when one considers the amount of misery and the number of human lives
it has cost to create this condition. I have never in my life seen any
place that seemed to come so near meeting the description of the
"abomination of desolation" referred to in the Bible. There is even a
certain grandeur in the desolation of this country which looks as if
the curse of God rested upon it. I am not prepared just now to say to
what extent I believe in a physical hell in the next world, but a
sulphur mine in Sicily is about the nearest thing to hell that I expect
to see in this life.”
Booker T. Washington said that what he saw in Sicily during his 1910 visit was as bad as anything previously endured in the United States with respect to slavery. He said child slavery in the sulfur mines there was the "nearest thing to hell" he had seen.
As one reads Washington's Wiki biography, one cannot help but be impressed with the life of this man. In contrast with many current leaders, he demonstrated substance and wisdom and balance rather than appeals to entitlement.
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