Page:Solution of the Child Labor Problem.djvu/69

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
62
CHILD LABOUR PROBLEM.

to go outside. What refuge have the father and the children in such a family, save the open streets, the saloons, the public squares? Bad companions and unwholesome life are infinitely preferable to the dank, nauseating smell of clothes, forever washing and drying, and, as it seems, never washed or dried. The solidarity of family life can be maintained only by trained mothers and capable fathers, mothers who will make inhabitable homes to the extent of their means, and fathers who will use every effort to provide the means with which to make the home inhabitable. Factory work for children goes far to thwart both ideals, by making of the boy an unskilled worker, incapable of earning large means, and by making of the girl a wife and mother, incapable of doing her duty by her husband, her home, or her children.

III. Child Labor and Taxes

There is a second social aspect of the problem, of almost equal interest with the effect of child labor on the family. "What effect has child labor on taxes? A definite, accurate an-