Page:Solution of the Child Labor Problem.djvu/55

48 skilled artisan, the expert business man, or the picked soldier. What child labor employer is there who would exhibit the children in his factory as ideal types of American children? How many employers of child labor give their own children the advantages of a life of factory toil?

Child labor is really harmful to the child. Even if its body is not stunted, and its mind blunted, by the work performed, the child loses an opportunity for mind training in the schools, which can never be duplicated in later life.

What then?

The child is the embryo citizen. The citizen is the unit of society, and the society of to-morrow, composed of its individual citizens, will depend for its standard upon the training received by the children of to-day. If the men and women of to-day decide to advance civilization, to build strong and safe for the future, to know that the coming generation is working out some of the problems which have so vexed the present age,—in short, if the men and women of to-day have