Page:Solution of the Child Labor Problem.djvu/123

116 The discrepancy between the minimum physical efficiency standard, $900, and the wages actually received, is startling. To be sure, the $900 estimate was made for New York City, while the wage figures refer to the country at large, and to a small city, but a discrepancy still exists.

Here, then, is a real cause of child labor. It is clearly a social and economic one; social in so far as society is responsible for maintaining its children—economic in so far as the smallness of the income of a definite group in the community does not enable the man to provide adequately for the needs of his family. In no sense is it an individual cause.

The second important cause of child labor to which allusion has been made is the desire of the child to go to work. The average child has two alternatives—work and school. Few children choose the school. A little questioning of school children will show that most of them—particularly the boys,—detest school and long for work. A similar questioning of working children will show an all