Page:Solution of the Child Labor Problem.djvu/67

60 is of the utmost importance, but it is insignificant as compared with the influence of the mother. The father is usually away from home, but the mother spends the greater portion of her time there. It is with her that the children come into most intimate contact, and hers is by far the most important influence in the home.

The women who enter a factory at the age of twelve and spend the years from twelve to twenty inside of four dark, dirty walls amid whirring machines, in constant association with bad men and women, have not, in the first place, the physical stamina necessary to bring strong children into the world. As Dr. Davis of Lancaster, Pa., a great women-employing center, puts it,—"These factory girls fade at an early age, and then they cannot discharge the functions of mothers and wives as they should."

In the second place a girl who has spent her life in the factory is usually untrained in the maintenance of a home. There is a wide difference between an intense, high-strung, exciting factory life, and the quiet