t to do; we should decide unhesitatingly as
to the mother in industry, that _she ought not to be there_.

V

Many facts combine in acclaiming our indifference; all of which show our
distressing inability to take a wide view of social problems with our
commercially blinded eyes. We look at everything, even the nation's
children, through spectacles of gold. I cannot wonder at our endless
sicknesses and crime.

A small paper-backed book is now lying upon my desk. It is an inquiry
most carefully made by the Minister of Reconstruction into the
conditions of juvenile employment during the war, and, to me at any
rate, it is pitiless in its revelation of our failure in this period of
stress in knowing how to live.

It would be difficult, indeed, to find a more complete condemnation of
what we have been allowing to go on in our factories and workshops. The
Report reveals an intolerable neglect, a reckless betrayal of young
lives that not even the emergency of war can sanction.[31:1]

Mark what the report tells us:

_Unless those most competent to judge are mistaken, in the
generation which entered industry between 1914 and 1918
vitality has been lowered, morale undermined, and training
neglected...._

_For three years numbers of young persons have been exposed to
almost every influence which could impair health, undermine
character and unfit them, both in body and mind, for regular
industry and intelligent citizenship._

And this passage also:

_From the point of view of the community, the adolescent
worker is a potential parent and a potential citizen ... there
is no doubt whatever what course of action should be
prescribed by consideration for the interests of the nation.
It would be to subordinate the employment of young persons for
their immediate utility to their preparation for more
effective work as men and women.... The danger is not that
there may, in the present, be too few adolescent laborers, but
that there may be too many, and that as a result there may in
the future be too few healthy and well trained adult workers
and intelligent citizens._

The profit-seeking employer, the patriotic maker of munitions, considers
output: he does not think of the girls' or the boys' future, of the
adult employment for which they are being prepared, or not prepared, or
if the occupation leads, as so often is the case, to a