Page:Solution of the Child Labor Problem.djvu/34

27 And why? Simply because the body of the colt is still plastic and unformed; as yet it is not prepared to meet the physical strain involved in plowing. The farmer has learned this fact traditionally and perhaps by experience; but he has learned it, and he respects the period of growth because lack of respect for it will almost inevitably mean money loss.

Why is this discrimination made in favor of the colt?

The child of fourteen years is still developing, with a body plastic and unformed, like that of the colt. Yet such children are expected, as indicated by the laws of nine-tenths of the states, to work ten, eleven, and in some extreme cases, twelve hours a day in a factory, at tasks which prove as burdensome as is the galling plow collar to the colt.

Why such a contrast? Why such a sharp distinction between the treatment of a growing colt and of a growing child? Is the child better prepared to do the work? The figures just cited show that the body of the child of fourteen, like the body of the colt, is developing and rounding out, and that it is,