CHAPTER III
THE SOCIAL COST OF CHILD LABOR
I. Child Labor and Social Ideals
There is a child labor problem, first because a large number of children are at work, and second because the probable result of their work will be the stunting of body or mind. All child workers do not have stunted bodies. As one great man of the nation, towering to his full six feet two, exclaimed, "I went to work in a factory when I was seven, and look at me." There is only one answer,—thousands of other children have gone to work at seven and look at them. At ten they bear the factory stamp, and they carry it through life.
In the vast majority of cases, the factory child of seven does not become great. He disappears among the "submerged tenth," an inefficient, fagged-out worker. The child worker does not as a rule develop into the
