I knew what he meant: that lads went to school when they were incapacitated by accidents.
And you scarcely blamed the children for preferring mills and mines. The schools were wretched, poorly taught, the lessons dull.
Through the ceaseless efforts of the unions, through continual agitation, we have done away with the most outstanding evils of child labor in the mines. Pennsylvania has passed better and better laws. More and more children are going to school. Better schools have come to the mining districts. We have yet a long way to go. Fourteen years of age is still too young to begin the life of the breaker boy. There is still too little joy and beauty in the miner's life but one who like myself has watched the long, long struggle knows that the end is not yet.
