“Children are a blessing from the Lord,” says an old writer. But the modern interpretation is that they are industrial units that can be utilized to advantage. Another reason for child labor, however, is found in the stress of poverty. Here is the story told by another father: “I love my children just as much as anybody in the city and I would like to see them have a good time. Joe is selling papers on the street, May working as cash-girl in a dry-goods store, Frankie clerking in a five-and-ten-cent store, and William working in a pencil factory--but not just because I do not care to provide for them. You see it is this way. My folks were poor and there were nine of us children. When I was eight years old I had to go to work. To begin with I got good wages for a boy, and until I was eighteen or nineteen years old I got along all right. Just about that time other fellows came in that had more than twelve dollars a week. I began at six dollars. Now I am nearly fifty, and am already considered an old man, and I am getting forty dollars a month. How can I support my children and give them an education such as they ought to have?” This indicates the vicious circle that is formed between poverty and childhood. Poverty forces children into industry. They help out for the time being but it is not very long before they have used up all their initiative, and have gone just as far as they can go; and as they grow older their wages are reduced, and in turn their children have to go into the mills to help them out. =Poverty and the Cost of Living.= Poverty is the chief enemy of humanity. It is the parent of nearly all of our ills. This is the demon that drives bad bargains. For the present the high wages that are being paid for labor everywhere has done away with a great deal of poverty; but even yet wages have not been advanced in proportion to the increased cost of living. Last fall in Scranton a gentleman whom I met was bitterly complaining of the high price of coal. “If it is so high now what in the world will the poor people of the city do when the cold weather really comes?” Scranton is built on the largest anthracite coal deposit in the world. It is said that in some places the vein is seventy-five feet thick. It is estimated that at the present rate of production the supply will last for one hundred years. If, therefore, the poor people of Scranton suffer for lack of coal what about the people in other places? We learned last winter how essential coal is to the life of the people. Combinations all tend to keep the prices high; our foodstuffs, our fuel, our clothes are high, not because of the law of supply and demand, for we have learned how to circumvent that law, but we are all “jobbed by the jobbers.”