the state would forbid work until physical maturity, eighteen or nineteen, and protect the worker until legal manhood, twenty-one. The age of twenty-one is at best an arbitrary one, but its adoption as the upper limit of child labor legislation would have the advantage of making coincident the age of legal majority and the age of legislative protection.
"But," exclaims the man on the street, "you couldn't adopt such a standard now, it would throw millions out of work into hoboing, prostitution, and starvation. And think of the widowed mothers, dependent on their children for support. You couldn't enforce such a law."
Certainly not. So long as the man on the street believes that such a law cannot be enforced, it is unenforceable. Legislation which affects the real or imagined interests of capital requires a strong public opinion to pass and enforce it. What, then, is the advantage of the discussion? Merely this. A child labor standard of eighteen-twenty-one does not appear to us nearly so extreme as a
