Page:Solution of the Child Labor Problem.djvu/74

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SOCIAL COST OF CHILD LABOUR.

fective producer than the child who had additional schooling advantages. As Jane Addams puts it:—"The pauperization of society itself, however, is the most serious charge." To paraphrase an illustration used by the Webbs, the factory says of the community, "You have educated the children in the public schools; now please give them to me, I will use them until they begin to demand an adult wage, and then I will turn them out again. If I have broken them down the community will take care of them in the poorhouse and the hospitals."

What connection is there between child labor and pauperism? In his book on American Charities, Dr. A. J. Warner takes statistics from various cities, and compiles, under several heads, the causes of pauperism. The first cause in importance is non-employment. In almost every case, the men who first lose their places and are most quickly thrown out in an industrial crisis, and who are the last to be taken on in times of industrial prosperity, are the men who are inefficient because they have neither sufficient