Page:Solution of the Child Labor Problem.djvu/108

101 It is a noticeable fact that the "widowed mother" argument is always used by the employer—never by the labor union interests which, representing the interests of the woman and her children, to whom they may well be paying death benefits, is almost unanimous in urging greater restrictions on the employment of children.

The necessity of the "widowed mother," so often and so effectively used to prevent the change of bad conditions, is clearly representative of only a small portion of working children. Probably not more than one working child in a hundred is the sole support of a widowed mother. At the present time there is, however, a great group of workers in the United States whose wages are so low as to make it practically impossible for them to provide a decent living for their children.

Aside from the necessity arising in the family because of the disability of its head, there are cases in every community of men employed as unskilled and as semi-skilled laborers, who have large families,—their