we shall undoubtedly greatly strengthen the race; but let us not forget the paramount importance of so improving the social and economic condition as to make it possible for all our geniuses to develop. If we do not put a stop to this national crime of child labor an American Lloyd-George will be struggling with a great American nation of paupers. And undoubtedly the historian will convict our employers of child labor of a vast amount of this crime.

Poverty Both Cause and Effect.

In America we have been anxiously watching the growth and extension of child labor. We shall provide the historian with a full record of thousands upon thousands of cases from which he can generalize.

In New York City alone we have the records of many thousands of families receiving charity, public and private. I cannot say what proportion, but undoubtedly a very large proportion of these families are dependent chiefly because of child labor. Last year eleven thousand families were under the care of the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor. This is but one of the large private charitable organizations in that city. I personally have looked over the histories of many of these families and I can assure you it is difficult to find a single case in which the father or the mother, and usually both, did not go to work at an early age. Here are a few typical cases:

I. Man and woman practically illiterate; both worked at an early agedo not know how young they were when they began. The man kept a coal and ice cellar; worked very hard, contracted pneumonia, tuberculosis developed, and he died of this disease. At the tender age of nine the eldest boy was forced to work to help support the family. Thus he was deprived of education, and hard labor undermined his health. When the father died the family was brought to the attention of the Association. The boy was found to have incipient tuberculosis. If he lives and marries, unless someone continues to help, it is easy to imagine his children repeating this history.

2. A widow with five bright and ambitious children. The eldest girl graduated from public school at the age of thirteen. Anxious to complete a commercial course, she attended high school. But her mother needed her help to support the family. If the assistance the mother is now receiving from private charity is continued, these children, or some of them, may be fortunate enough to escape, and may live to be useful citizens, like Robert Collyer.

3. George graduated from public school and got his working papers. He is a bright boy and his mother was anxious to send him to high school, but she needed his support. Unless George is the one boy in a thousand who subdues his environment, instead of being subdued by it, it is not difficult to tell the sequel to this story.

4. The father worked until he became the victim of an industrial disease, of which he died. Frank, the 18-year-old boy, then became the main support of his mother and four brothers and sisters. Since he was fourteen, Frank has worked in an electrical shop earning $6.00 to $9.00 a week. Bright, industrious and ambitious, he attended night school regularly to fit himself for a better position. He, too, would be a Robert Collyer. But in December, 1912, Frank's tired body broke under the strain. It was tuberculosis again. The family was then referred to the Association for assistance. Frank is now in a hospital, his wage loss is being paid to his mother, and arrangements have been made with the employer to take Frank back to work when discharged from the hospital. There is more to this story. Rosie got her working papers last April and her mother immediately placed her in a garment factory at $3.00 a week. The mother was finally persuaded to let her attend the Manhattan Trade School on condition that the wage loss be paid her. Rosie's progress there was very satisfactory until August, 1912, when it was found that both she and her six-year-old sister had developed tuberculosis. There is a possibility that these three children may be saved, but they will be saved only for a life of child labor, unless the family is kept under care and receives wise treatment.

5. The father of this family became a rock-driller in his youth. There are three grown sons, but not one is working regularly. The mother and the 16-year-old girl, who has never been at school though born in New York City, work at home on feathers; their earnings constitute the only visible income for a family of twelve. As the older children of this family do not know their ages, it needs no fortune-teller to forecast the next generation sprung from this man who began to drill rock while a mere child.

In most of the cases cited above, poverty may be said to be both cause and effect of child labor. As stated at the outset, most anyone will grant that child labor is frequently brought about by poverty.

Actual Family Need Not General.

Comparatively few people in this day of free schools would deny their offspring a good education if they did not feel that the child's labor was needed to keep the wolf from the door, or at least to help provide more of the common comforts of life. As a matter of fact, however, it has been shown by the child labor scholarship plan that the instances are rare in which the child's earnings are required to prevent actual suffering.

Mr. Homer Folks first brought this to the attention of the National Child Labor Committee Annual Meeting in Cincinnati in 1906. He showed that in the greater City of New York a little less than thirty per cent. of the applications for scholarship were granted. After fifteen months of publicity in that city, whose population was then 4,250,000, only ninety-five cases were found to be in actual need of such assistance as the child labor scholarship of $2 to $3 a week. would provide. Mr. Folks found that a similar condition obtained. in every other city in which the plan was in operation. Although I have not the figures at hand, I am informed that the recent statistics substantially confirm Mr. Folks' findings that, if deprived of their children's earnings, only a small percentage of families would be made to actually suffer.

But while poverty is given as an excuse for much child labor, and while, no doubt, it is true that practically all child laborers are children of parents who are living close to the poverty line, the statement that poverty itself requires that these children labor to prevent real suffering is usually quite unwarranted. It is not denied, however, that poverty is the cause of a considerable amount of the child labor of the world; but the important proposition which I wish to emphasize is that poverty is generally the inevitable effect of child labor. I believe it no overstatement to say that in ninetynine cases out of every hundred, where the child is put to work at the tender age of five or six and kept steadily at it until fifteen or sixteen, when he may be old enough to rebel, poverty is the result.

Robert Hunter tells us of a vagrant he once knew who "had for years-from the day he was eleven until the day he was sixteen-made two movements of his hands each second, or 23,760,000 mechanical movements each year, and was at the time I knew him," says Hunter, "at the age of thirty-five, broken down, drunken and diseased, but he still remembered this period of slavery sufficiently well to tell me that he had 'paid up' for all the sins he had ever committed 'by those five years in hell.'"

I maintain that where you have one Robert Collyer making his escape from the deadening effects of child labor, you will have ninety-nine vagrants and paupers. But that is not all. The undermined health, the broken spirit of the child, the incipient vagrant and pauper, are not the only pauperizing effects of child labor.

Child labor causes poverty, in so far as it lowers the scale of

wages below the minimum living wage, and likewise to the extent to which the child displaces the adult laborer. The child can take his father's place in the factory at a wage of about one-third of what the father was getting. All this means more poverty. It would be a most valuable contribution to the statistics of child labor to determine the poverty due to unemployed men and women, whose places have been taken by children, or due to a starvation wage which has been cut and kept down by child labor.

"Child labor in any state lowers manhood labor in every state," says Senator Beveridge, "because the product of child labor in any state competes with the product of manhood labor in every state. Child laborers at the loom in South Carolina mean bayonets at the breasts of men and women workers in Massachusetts, who strike for a living wage.

"Child labor in factories, mills, mines and sweat shops must be ended throughout this republic. Such labor is a crime against childhood, because it prevents the growth of normal manhood and womanhood. It is a crime against the nation because it prevents the growth of a host of children into strong, patriotic and intelligent citizens."

In closing I want again to quote Robert Hunter and join him in saying: "There is to my mind nothing more astonishing in modern society than the way in which the state seems ever willing to support as paupers and at public expense, the men, women and children who are brought to poverty and misery by the parasitic industries.”

DISTRESS BY FINDING WORK FOR CHILDREN?

A SYMPOSIUM.

I.

R. T. SOLENSTEN,

Secretary, Associated Charities, Jacksonville, Fla.

It is the aim and purpose of modern charity to effect such family rehabilitation and to help bring about such social and economic adjustment as will insure a normal standard of living for every family.

We conceive a normal standard of living to be one "which permits each individual of a social unit to exist as a healthy human. being, morally, mentally and physically." We recognize the essential elements of a normal standard to be: Nourishing food in sufficient quantity to maintain physical efficiency; a sanitary house including light, heat and modest household furnishings, which shall provide shelter for the family group in an environment free from moral contamination; clothing for work and for holiday dress adapted to seasonal changes in climate; some leisure time for education and recreation for all members of the family; regular school attendance for all children between the ages of six and fourteen years; provision for dental, surgical and other care necessary for the attainment and preservation of health; insurance against sickness, accident and death, and savings of not less than five per cent. of the income, for contingencies and extraordinary expenses.

A normal standard implies an income sufficient to provide the necessaries briefly described above, and to carry the family through the ordinary vicissitudes of life without charitable assistance. It also presupposes that its requirements be met from the earnings of the father, unsupplemented by any earnings of the mother or children under proper working age. Wherever a family fails to provide for its members the necessities and advantages accepted as requirements of a normal standard, the explanation of the fail