Page:Solution of the Child Labor Problem.djvu/81

74 child labor is not at all necessary to industry, and that, after all, it entails just as great an industrial waste as it does a social one?

Child labor is wasteful to industry. The statement of the Treasurer of the Alabama City Mill is not an isolated opinion. Manufacturers everywhere are being forced to the new viewpoint. The philosophy is well summed up by a silk manufacturer:—"So far as the economy of production goes, as a manufacturer I think we can do without the labor of children." Child labor is undoubtedly cheap labor. But is not the product cheaper than the labor involved in its creation?

Leaving aside for a moment the very pertinent question as to whether the extensive employment of children will materially affect their efficiency as adult workmen, it may