Page:Solution of the Child Labor Problem.djvu/83

76 "In the Georgia Legislature last summer a noted cotton manufacturer, a member of the Georgia Senate, in an eloquent plea against the child labor system, challenged his associates in that business who were also members of the Senate, to disprove his statement that the same quality of cotton goods manufactured in the South was sold at a price from two to four cents a pound lower than these goods manufactured in the North.… A Georgia cotton mill imported skilled laborers for the manufacture of fine goods. The goods were sold at Philadelphia and New England prices. Once some tags containing the name and location of this mill were slipped into the bales of finished cloth by the workmen. The mill management immediately received a letter from the commission merchant urging that this should never be done again; that he had concealed the fact that this particular mill was located in the South, and thereby had been able to get northern prices for the goods."

Thus the prevalence of child labor in an industry at once throws discredit on its product. "Industries so recruited cannot long compete with similar industries recruited from men who have been technically trained. In the long run that industry, wherever in the world it is located, which combines with general intelligence the broadest technical knowledge and the highest technical training, will command the markets of the world."