believe in legislative control have always been reenforced by the efforts of trades-unionists rather than by the efforts of employers.  Partly because the employment of workingmen in the factories brings them in contact with the children who tend to lower wages and demoralize their trades, and partly because workingmen have no money nor time to spend in alleviating philanthropy, and must perforce seize upon agitation and legal enactment as the only channel of redress which is open to them.

We may illustrate by imagining a row of people seated in a moving street-car, into which darts a boy of eight, calling out the details of the last murder, in the hope of selling an evening newspaper.  A comfortable looking man buys a paper from him with no sense of moral shock; he may even be a trifle complacent that he has helped along the little fellow, who is making his way in the world.  The philanthropic lady sitting next to him may perhaps reflect that it is a pity that such a bright boy is not in school.  She may make up her mind in a moment of compunction to redouble her efforts for various newsboys’ schools and homes, that this poor child may have better teaching, and perhaps a chance at manual training.  She probably is convinced that he alone, by his unaided efforts, is supporting a widowed mother, and her heart is moved to do all she can for him.  Next to her sits a workingman trained in trades-union methods.  He knows that the boy’s natural development is arrested, and that the abnormal activity of his body and mind uses up the force which should go into growth; moreover, that this premature use of his powers has but a momentary and specious value.  He is forced to these conclusions because he has seen many a man, entering the factory at eighteen and twenty, so worn out by premature work that he was “laid on the shelf” within ten or fifteen years.  He knows very well that he can do nothing in the way of ameliorating the lot of this particular boy; that his only possible chance is to agitate for proper child-labor laws; to regulate, and if possible prohibit, street-vending by children, in order that the child of the poorest may have his school time secured to him, and may have at least his short chance for growth.

These three people, sitting in the street car, are all honest and upright, and recognize a certain duty toward the forlorn children of the community.  The self-made man is encouraging one boy’s own efforts; the philanthropic lady is helping on a few boys; the workingman alone is obliged to include all the boys of his class.  Workingmen, because of their feebleness in all but numbers, have been forced to appeal to the state, in order to secure protection for themselves and for their children.  They cannot all rise out of their class, as the occasionally successful man has done; some of them must be left to do the work in the factories and mines, and they have no money to spend in philanthropy.