he does not reach his destination, society is not responsible, for it presented him with a first-class passage to one of these institutions when it robbed him of his childhood.
Mr. Nibecker, Superintendent of the Glen Mills (Pa.) House of Refuge, was asked, "What proportion of your boys were school boys, and what proportion were working boys at the time of their arrest?" His answer was, "I can give no proportion for the reason that the school boy is such a rare exception with us. I can say out of our experience here that the lines of commitment and lack of schooling run parallel. We have very few, if any, boys who were not working boys at the time of their arrest or just previous to their arrest."[1]
"Lines of commitment and lack of schooling run parallel." This "lack of schooling" means lack of the chance to be young. Truly, placing an undeveloped child at work in the world of modern industry, is fraught with grave consequences. With these boys
- ↑ The Cost of Child Labor: a pamphlet issued by the Pennsylvania Child Labor Committee. P. 22.
