Page:Solution of the Child Labor Problem.djvu/63

56 In a community where child labor is extensively employed, the entire family is forced to work for what proves to be a bare living. Looking at the question from the standpoint of the family, it is not therefore economical to have the children at work. Dr. J. E. McKelway, Assistant Secretary of the National Child Labor Committee, said in a recent address:—"Child labor reduces wages. Only 30 per cent, of the factory operatives of England are able to support their children through the sixteenth year without putting them to work. And here comes in the economic law that those occupations which admit the labor of women and children pay the whole family what the man alone receives in the occupations in which he is the sole bread-winner." It will be more readily understood why the child fails to assist the family materially when the rate at which child workers are paid is borne in mind. The wage of the working child is startlingly low. "It ranges from $2.00 to $5.00, seldom $6.00 even in the more