Page:Solution of the Child Labor Problem.djvu/100

93 their children into industrial slavery. Yet a close acquaintance with the parents of working children shows that they are very much like other parents. They love their children as much and have as much care for their well-being as other fathers and mothers. They send them to work, as a rule, only when necessity demands it.

Would many "pocket-money-saving" children and a few greedy parents have caused the child labor problem? Undoubtedly not. Neither childish love of money nor parental greed can be assigned as a leading cause, nor even as an important cause of child labor.

Can the same be said of the greedy employer,—greedy, not for children, but for profits; the manufacturer who must needs have profits even though he grind up a few children's futures in the getting of them?

All manufacturers are not greedy. Many give attention and study to the child labor problem, because they feel that it is hurting them as well as the public at large, but there are a group of manufacturers who are madly struggling for wealth, and so madly do they