Page:Solution of the Child Labor Problem.djvu/47

40 school of ethics." That is why, unlike gymnastics, play has as much soul as body. "When a little girl plays 'dolls' or 'keeping house,' she is living herself into the deepest springs of human life." The child who plays has the greatest opportunity for that soul growth for which there is always a demand far above the supply. Among the army of working children, there is more of cigarette smoking, loud talk, and bad talk than there is of play.

Play is to the child what poetry is to the man. Deprive either of this essential element, and from the misdirected sowing is reaped a harvest of misdirected lives. Instill into a boy's mind learning which he sees and feels not to have the highest worth, and which cannot become a part of his active life and increase it, and his freshness, spontaneity, and the fountains of his play slowly run dry. Such is the fate of the average child who spends his play time feeding with