“‘For, oh!’ say the children, ‘we are weary, And we cannot run or leap; If we cared for any meadows, it were merely To drop down in them and sleep. Our knees tremble sorely in the stooping, We fall upon our faces trying to go, And, underneath our heavy eyelids drooping, The reddest flower would look as pale as snow. For all day we drag our burden tiring, Through the coal dark underground, Or all day we drive the wheels of iron In the factories round and round.’ “‘How long,’ they say, ‘how long, O cruel nation! Will you stand to move the world on a child’s heart, Stifle down, with a mailed heel, its palpitation, And tread onward to your throne amid the mart? Our blood splashes upward, O gold heaper! And your purple shows your path; But the child’s sob in the silence curses deeper Than the strong man in his wrath.’” In the United States neither girls nor women have ever been employed in or about the mines. The legislative prohibition of such employment, enacted in Pennsylvania in 1885, was therefore unnecessary but not inappropriate. The general mine law of Pennsylvania of 1870, which was the first to limit the employment of boys in the mines according to their age, fixed twelve years as the age under which a boy might not work underground; but maintained silence as to the age at which he might work at a colliery outside. This provision was amended and enlarged by the act of 1885, which prohibited the employment of boys under fourteen years of age inside the mines, and of boys under twelve years of age in or about the outside structures or workings of a colliery.