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CHILD LABOUR PROBLEM.

jets are mysteriously put out, so that all flock down together in pitch blackness. When you are tempted to believe that the evils of child labor are exaggerated, think what they mean to a girl when she is too young to protect or even to understand herself. Terrible things have been begun on those stairs, yes, and happened there; and they are not the only dark flights of stairs in the New York factories."[1]

After a thorough study of conditions in Pennsylvania, Mr. Peter Roberts writes:—"In interviews with physicians, each of them dwelt upon the moral and social evil of the factory life. Dr. Gerhardt of Allentown said that no vice was unknown to many girls of fifteen years, working in the factories of Allentown.…" Dr. Davis of Lancaster said:—"The result of it all is that these girls fade at an early age, and then they cannot discharge the functions of mothers and wives as they should."[2]

  1. "Turning Children Into Dollars." By Juliet Wilbor Tompkins. Success Magazine, January, 1905.
  2. From an unpublished Report by Peter Roberts to the Pennsylvania Child Labor Committee.