facturer who wants "small girls and boys;" and to the society which demands and gets cheap goods.
IV. The Extent of Child Labor
It is of little interest and of no practical importance that the census of 1900 places the number of children between ten and fifteen engaged in gainful occupations at a million and three-quarters, while certain critics state that it should be two millions. If the census figures are accepted, seven-tenths of the child laborers were boys and three-tenths were girls. But these definite figures are, as such, matters of little importance, because if there were but a hundred thousand, or even a hundred children, whose lives were stunted and misshapen by premature work, the conditions would imperatively demand recognition and reform. The only facts worth remembering in this connection are that the child laborers are very numerous, and that about one-third of them are girls.
A discussion of the extent of child labor should include a distinction between the work
