“To the house of ‘Ali Akbar the pea-roaster,” I said to my servant.

“There are two ‘Ali Akbars pea-roasters,” he replied, “one is alive, and one dead; which do you want?”

It proved to be the widow who had sent for me, and we were soon great friends.

“And do you go to school?” I asked Husain, a merry little boy of eight.

“No, I am an apprentice-baker,” he said with an evident sense of importance; he felt he was a wage-earner—a halfpenny a day, I think was the amount, but where a labourer often only earns fivepence a day, even a halfpenny a day counts for something in the family.

Seven years old seems to be a very common age for apprenticing boys in Persia. A boy of that age can make himself useful and gradually learn his trade, and if his master and his fellow-apprentices are kind he may be very happy, like my little baker. He probably fetched and carried, brought sticks for heating the oven, laid out the long thin flat loaves in rows as they were handed to him from the oven, and later carried them in a tray on his head, or hanging over his shoulder, to some of the customers.

Probably our Lord Jesus Christ Himself started work in the carpenter’s shop at Nazareth as soon as He could be of any use. He would fetch and carry tools, sort out the nails, help to clear away the shavings, and later He would learn to hammer nails, to saw and plane, just as the little Persian apprentices do to-day, and He would thoroughly enjoy helping Joseph in the workshop and Mary in the house.

There was a little “apprentice-carpenter” who looked such a baby he can hardly have been as old as seven. He used to run back to the shop for tools or nails, and hold the hammer, and he even succeeded in pulling some nails out of a packing-case. But his master was not always kind to him, and sometimes beat him, and he did not seem as happy as the baker boy.

Servants will often bring their little boys to the house to help them in their work, and gradually fit themselves for service. When they begin to be really useful the master generally gives them a small wage. A servant who has no boy of his own will often bring a nephew or a cousin.

In every trade you find them, little boys whose business it is to lighten their elders’ work a little in any way they can, for the Persians are not over fond of hard work.

You find them too in the houses of poor people, who cannot afford to keep a regular servant, but pay a few coppers or a meal to a little boy to come in and make himself useful, sweeping the floor and watering it in hot weather, preparing the qalian, or hookah, running errands, chopping firewood, and a hundred other things. It is a system that works very well when it is worked with kindness and consideration, but it is a terrible system when it is abused.

In the Persian carpet trade we see this. In the villages the whole family works at one carpet, and as the children grow old enough they are taught and made to join in the work. There need be no cruelty in this, and often the little things are only too proud and happy to do as their elders do, and join in the family task. But unhappily even in the family there are many cases of cruel overwork and ill-treatment.

But for the horrors of child labour in the carpet trade we must turn to the factories of Kirman.

These factories are filled with children from four years old upward, underfed, overworked, living a loveless, joyless, hopeless life. The factories are built without windows lest the children’s attention should be distracted, and the bad air, want of food, and the constantly keeping in one position produce rickets and deformity in nearly all. Of thirty-eight children examined in one factory thirty-six were deformed.

One of the Governors of Kirman forbade the employment of children under twelve in the factories, but the order did not last beyond his governorship. The same Governor gave the order still in force, which forbids the employment of children before dawn or after sunset, thus reducing their working hours to an average of twelve hours a day. A recent Governor added to this an order limiting the Friday work to about two and a half hours, “from sunrise to full sunshine,” so now the children share in part the general Friday holiday of Muhammadanism.

One of our medical missionaries was called to attend the wife of the owner of one of these factories, and consented to do so on condition he made windows in his factory to allow the children air and light. He objected at first, saying that it would prevent their working, but finally consented, and admitted afterwards that the children did more work with the windows than they had done without them.

The factory owners are glad to get the children, for they say children work better than grown-up people at carpet-making, and of course they expect less wages. But how can the parents allow their children to live this cruel life? You will find the answer in the Persian saying that “of every three persons in Kirman, four smoke opium.”

The man who takes opium regularly becomes a wreck; first his digestion is ruined, then his heart gets weak and he get bronchitis and other chest troubles, and he become unreliable physically and morally; he is untruthful and deceitful, and when he is once well under the power of the habit, he goes almost mad if he cannot get his opium at the usual time, and would sell his soul for it, and does sell his children. Over and over again comes the terrible story, the father and mother smoke opium; the little deformed child toils through the long days to earn the money that buys it.

In the villages the children begin almost as soon as they can run about to take out the sheep and goats, not in green fields, for there are none, but among the scattered plants on the mountain-side or under the village trees.

Only the boys are allowed to take the flocks out on the hills at any distance from the village, and on mountains where there are thought to be wolves, even the boys are forbidden to go without a man.

But in and around the villages boys and girls alike turn out. Often they carry a long pole, generally more than twice as long as themselves. This pole serves at times as a fence to keep the flock from wandering into crops as they pass them on their way, or as they graze on the stubble of the neighbouring crops which have been already gathered in. The stubble itself is not much, but there are more weeds there because the ground has been watered. But neither on the hills nor in the fields can they find much pasture in the heat of summer, so the little shepherds and shepherdesses take their flocks under the trees and beat the leaves down with their poles for the animals to eat. When the lower leaves are finished they climb, boys and girls alike, into the trees, often to considerable heights, and beat the higher branches. The leaves that are not eaten are dried and kept for the winter as we keep hay. It is an awkward thing for a child to climb trees encumbered with a long pole, and in the districts where they do this there are often accidents. One little boy of eight or nine was brought to the Yezd hospital with a bad compound fracture of his skull through falling out of a tree while tending the sheep. He got nearly well, and then his mother took him home, so I do not know whether he fully recovered or not.

Among the richer classes the children sometimes undertake nominal work at a very early age, but not actual work. One boy of about sixteen in our school held a position in the Persian army corresponding to that of Colonel, and there was said to be a Field-Marshal of twelve in the army.

Merchants consider it good training for their sons to do a little business on their own account, and some of our schoolboys imported goods from Bombay or elsewhere while they were still at school, and disposed of them at a profit.