Page:Solution of the Child Labor Problem.djvu/73

66 laid to child labor, which inevitably means lack of schooling for the child laborer.

In addition to facing the problem of supporting, in its houses of refuge and its penitentiaries, boys and men whose criminal careers have been started by a too early exposure to the trials and temptations of modern industrial life, the community must face the problem of maintaining in its hospitals and almshouses the crippled and degenerate and inefficient, who have been thrown out of the great industrial tread-mills and left ruined for life,—broken, incompetent workers. The studies which have been made indicate that the proportion of industrial accidents among working children is far higher than that among adult workers. Children are essentially ignorant and careless. They do not realize the dangers connected with their occupations, and constant injuries and accidents are the result.

The average child who enters industry at an early age closes behind him the door of opportunity to a higher and better industrial plane. The child laborer becomes a less