Page:Solution of the Child Labor Problem.djvu/95

88 manner in order to provide an adequate subsistence? And what can be said of the manufacturer who employs the children, often in ignorance of the facts, but with adequate opportunity to discover them if he so desires? Of the manufacturer who pays $2 or $3 as wages for child labor, and takes an enormous surplus in profits? Of the manufacturer who knowingly, for the sake of an extra automobile or some other plaything that may appeal to his fancy, takes from the children the vitality and life which he can never replace? Of the employer who pays his adult laborers such low wages that it is a physical impossibility for them to bring up a family and procure not the luxuries, but the bare necessities of life, and who are, therefore, compelled to send their children at the earliest moment into the mills?

And what shall the community which permits such a system to prevail answer for itself? The community which allows an employer to pay wages that are below the line of possible subsistence, and to take from the