Fortune's rocks_ a novel - Anita Shreve [170]
“Your Honor, we have seen here that Albertine and Telesphore Bolduc are deeply embedded in the Franco-American community of Ely Falls. They have said so, and their own counsel has said so. But the Franco-American community in this city has consistently shown itself to be in conflict with progressive views of childhood. As of this year, only three hundred and twelve out of a potential eight hundred and seventy-one school-age Franco-American children in this city have attended any school at all. That is only one-third, Your Honor. Seventy percent of all Franco-American children in this city between the ages of eight and fourteen work in the Ely Falls Mill. Let me remind the court of the child labor laws in this state: No child under the age of twelve is to be employed in any manufacturing or mechanical establishment. Nor any child under the age of fifteen during vacations of public school unless he has attended school for sixteen weeks of each year preceding his sixteenth birthday.
“How is it then that so many children are working in the Ely Falls Mill?” Tucker asks rhetorically. “The answer is simple. The parents of the Franco-American community evade the child labor laws by lying about their children’s ages. This is not opinion, but fact. They do so not because they are bad people. They do so because they do not believe it is wrong within the context of their culture and because they are desperately poor. I quote from a recent editorial in the Franco-American community’s own newspaper, L’Avenir: ‘The child labor statutes of this state are badly enforced and ineffective since so many Franco-American parents falsify their children’s ages. Even the good sisters of the Order of Saint Jean Baptiste de Bienfaisance have professed shock and dismay that so many young Franco-American children are working in the mills.’”
Tucker pauses to let the opinion of the sisters settle over the chamber.
“I have here in my hand a number of photographs that I should be glad to submit to the court,” Tucker says. “These sorry photographs were taken at the Ely Falls Mill this year. One shows six children, each of whom cannot be more than ten years old, looking dirty and exhausted, standing between looms that are at least two feet taller than they are. Another shows a poorly dressed boy, barefoot I might add, standing on a box to reach the controls of his machine.”
Tucker walks to the dais and hands the photographs to Judge Littlefield, who studies them. Sears does not ask to see them.
“Your Honor,” says Tucker, “we have long known about this situation here in Ely Falls, but we have more or less chosen to look the other way. I believe the city officials, both Yankee and Franco alike, have concluded that ‘Petit Canada’ should police its own. Which is not the matter precisely before the court, except insofar as it is relevant to the future of one little boy, Pierre Francis Haskell.
“This boy, if left in the custody of Albertine and Telesphore Bolduc, will enter the mills sometime before his twelfth birthday. Let me tell you what this will mean for him. Not only will he be deprived of schooling, but he will also work eleven hours a day, six days a week, with no fresh air or sunshine, and most likely in a lint-filled room. He will be subject to a wide range of diseases, including measles, diphtheria, and the treacherous white lung. He will probably be stunted in his growth and will compromise his eyesight. He will have no exercise except for