Some parents attempted to explain their sending children to work by such reasons as: "To keep them off the streets," or "they get lazy and never will work unless they work before they are 16 years," etc.

No study of economic need based solely on family budgets has been attempted, as the number of budgets thus far collected is inadequate.

Throughout the report, two points seem to stand out conspicuously:

Ist. In the greater number of cases, the call that takes the children into work is not suffering need. The cry of the people seems to be more for relief from strain-for a chance to livethan for the chance to exist.

2nd. Whatever may be the cause, there seems to be something which draws the child more strongly toward work than toward school.

It must be mentioned, however, in closing, as in the opening of this report, that it is a report of impressions only, and is not intended to express any final conclusions.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

In the preparation of this paper, valuable assistance was given by Mrs. Woolley in outlining the method of study of the children's statements; helpful co-operation was given by members of the office staff; advice and encouragement by Prof. F. C. Hicks of the Economics Department of the University of Cincinnati.

EFFECT.

JOHN A. KINGSBURY, New York,

General Agent, New York Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor.

There is a popular misconception about the relation between child labor and poverty. The popular notion seems to be that child labor is the result of poverty, or at any rate, that it is due to the economic status of the parents of the child laborer, and there the matter ends. It is admitted that there is a measure of truth in this proposition. Most of the truth, however, lies in the converse to it, viz., that poverty is the effect of child labor. Of course, it is not claimed that all poverty is the result of child labor, but it is asserted that child labor, as it is understood to-day, almost invariably results in a condition of poverty. To those familiar with the subject it is axiomatic to say that child labor causes poverty, but the general public is slow to grasp this self-evident proposition.

The American nation is only just beginning to feel the baneful effects of child labor. The English nation, however, is staggering under a weight of poverty, much of which is due to child labor: England has come to realize that a very considerable amount of its vast army of paupers has been produced by the pernicious system of child labor which has prevailed there for nearly a century.

At the beginning of the industrial revolution in England over a century ago, factories and mills sprang up on every available site in the British Isles; the demand for labor was so great that the owners of factories, by permission of the government, emptied the orphan asylums of its boys and girls who were strong enough to labor. These little orphans were "apprenticed" until the boys were twenty-one, the girls eighteen. Among these orphans put to work in the mills at a tender age were the father and mother of Dr. Robert Collyer, for many years the beloved minister of the Church. of the Messiah in New York City.

Deprived of training, even for moderate remunerative labor, stunted by the cruel racking of child labor, Robert Collyer's father, even in good times, was able to earn only $4.50 a week. Therefore, at the early age of eight, little Robert began his sad and painful period of child labor. His father's scant earnings and the increasing family forced the child into the mills to labor for a living. Dr. Collyer has left a pitiful picture of his awful experience as a child slave.

The hours were from six o'clock in the morning until eight o'clock in the evening; on Saturday from six to six, with an hour off each day for dinner. Still worse, the little children were never allowed to sit down at their work and if they were caught by the overseer resting themselves for a moment upon some stray box or barrel they were speedily brought to their feet by the stinging lash of a heavy leather strap across their shoulders. "The result of this," says Dr. Collyer, "was that the weaker children were so crippled that the memory of their crooked limbs still casts a sinister light for me on the Scripture, 'The Lord regardeth not the legs of a man.'” "I was tired beyond all telling," he continues, "and thought the bell would never ring to let me out, and home at last, and to bed. And it seemed as if I had only just got to sleep when it rang again to call me to work."

Rev. John Haynes Holmes, the present minister of the Church of the Messiah, from whom I borrow this illustration, says that one day when he "chanced to ask Dr. Collyer if he would like to live his life all over again Dr. Collyer instantly replied with great good cheer that he would. Then his face darkened for a moment and he said, 'But not those years in the mill. I wouldn't live those over again, not for all the blessings for all the blessings that might be given me in compensation.'

At fourteen years of age Robert Collyer was rescued from this slavery by the necessity of learning a trade. "There was one article in our home creed," he tells us, "that would admit of no doubt or denial; 'the boys must learn some craft better than we were taught in the factory.'

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Fortunate Robert Collyer! Happily the age of apprenticeship had not completely passed in England; otherwise, in all probability, the world would have been deprived of a multitude of blessings brought to it through the life of this "Saint and Seer." To-day

chances are hundreds to one that Robert Collyer-even so strong a character as he-would not have escaped the terrible consequences of child labor. Instead, he would have lived to complete the remaining segment of the vicious circle in which his life started to move. Moreover, the chances are that he would have lived only to start the next vicious circle on its monotonous round.

The Vicious Circle.

In this illustration you have my subject fully developed. The poverty of these orphans forced them into the factories to become child laborers. The long hours of confining labor must have broken most of them in body and in spirit. "The intensity of modern methods of labor, made possible by the machine, sets a pace so fast and uninterrupted as to tax the strength of the strongest men, and naturally therefore, to rack the weaker bodies of the children." Only a small fraction of these little laborers could have been so fortunate as Robert Collyer. Most of them must have brought forth. a generation of weak and wretched children condemned at birth to a life of child slavery, deprived of education, denied the wholesome development of play; at best, nothing to look forward to but a miserable existence at hard labor; at worst, a life of poverty, pauperism and probably a career of crime. They must live the same lives their fathers have lived and in turn beget a generation similarly condemned at birth.

Statistics Cannot Show All.

England is notoriously a land of paupers. A third of its last generation lies at rest in a Potter's Field. If the life histories of these poor wretches could be traced, how many of them would lead back to the poor little tired bodies, to the crooked limbs of the Robert Collyers who were dragged out from the barren walls of orphan asylums to be bound to the racking machines in the factories and mills-the Collyers who never escaped? The question cannot be answered. We haven't the figures. But who will doubt that they would be most illuminating if they could be obtained? If we could show accurately the extent of the poverty under which England staggers to-day, which is the result of child labor, the statistics would be invaluable to us in securing proper child labor legislation.

But after all, as someone has strikingly put it, "You cannot put tired eyes, pallid checks and languid little limbs into statistics."

But Robert Collyer escaped the common fate of a child laborer. In 1850, when about twenty-five years of age, he and his bride reached the bright shores of this Land of Opportunity. It was a land of opportunity then. No child labor to speak of, as it was then known in England, as it is known here to-day. No poverty such as England was then beginning to struggle with, such as we now see in our large cities. A half century has passed since Robert Collyer landed. We have recruited a standing army of child laborers, 1,700,000 strong. It is quite impossible to visualize this appalling number of little tots at labor, but as Robert Hunter says: "We could never forget the sight of a hundred of these little ones if they were marched out of the mills, mines and factories, before our eyes, or if we saw them together toiling for ten or twelve hours a day or night for a pittance of a wage; but that we do not see. What we see are the figures, and we forget figures."

One million seven hundred thousand child slaves! "New York City has not so many children," asserts Hunter; "all the thousands in the streets are not so many as those children of the workshops; even the massed crowds in the evening at Brooklyn Bridge are few compared with this 1,700,000; but it is all figures again and not tired eyes, pallid cheeks and languid little limbs, and we forget figures."

Preventing Development of Genius.

Among these 1,700,000 children there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Robert Collyers, doomed in this land of opportunity to a life of hard labor and poverty, destined to be the forebears of generations of paupers and criminals.

Prof. Lester F. Ward, the dean of American sociologists, as a result of a careful study of the subject of genius, has reached the conclusion that it is possible to increase the supply of our geniuses two hundredfold by removing the social and economic obstacles which now prevent their development; and perhaps the greatest among these obstacles is child labor. In other words, in Dr. Ward's opinion, society is teeming with potential Collyers. It should have two hundred dynamic Collyers where now it has but one.

Eugenics is a valuable science, and by its practical application