pers or serving as messenger boy or bootblack;
for the girl there is little but housework or department-store
service. Both need steady employment out of doors, and he who devises
a method by which boys and girls can be taught such an occupation as
gardening on vacant lots or in the city outskirts, and at the same
time can be given a love for work and for the growing things of the
country, will help to solve the problem of child labor and,
incidentally, may contribute to the solution of poverty, incipient
crime, and even of the rural problem and the high cost of living.

READING REFERENCES

BOSANQUET: _The Family_, pages 299-314.

GODDARD: _The Kallikak Family._

EAMES: _Principles of Eugenics._

SALEEBY: _Parenthood and Race Culture_, pages 213-236.

MCKEEVER: _Farm Boys and Girls_, pages 171-196.

GALTON: _Inquiries into Human Faculty._

CHAPTER VII

WORK, PLAY AND EDUCATION.

55. =Child Labor and Its Effects.=--Excessive child labor away from
home is one of the evils that has called for reform more than the lack
of employment. The child has a right to the home life. It is injurious
for him to be kept at a monotonous task under physical or mental
strain for long hours in a manufacturing establishment, or to be
deprived of time to study and to play. Yet there are nearly two
million children in the United States under sixteen years of age who
are denied the rights of childhood through excessive labor.

This evil began with the adoption of the factory system in modern
industry. The introduction of light machinery into the textile mills
of England made it possible to employ children at low wages, and it
was profitable for the keepers of almshouses to apprentice pauper
children to the manufacturers. Some of them were not more than five or
six years old, but were kept in bondage more than twelve hours a day.
Children were compelled to hard labor in the coal-mines, and to the
dirty work of chimney sweeping. In the United States factory labor for
children did not begin so soon, but by 1880 children eight years old
were being employed in Massachusetts for more than twelve hours a day,
and in parts of the country children are still employed at long hours
in such occupations as the manufacture of cotton, glass, silk, and
candy, in coal-mines and canning factories. Besides these are the
newsboys, bootblacks, and messengers of the cities, children in
domestic and personal service, and the child