An accurate study of the life of the cotton-mill operators shows that the death-rate is so high that the inference is justified that work in the mill has an unfortunate influence upon those who follow it. Approximately half of the deaths of the operatives between fifteen and forty-five years of age are due to tuberculosis. Some years ago a book was published in defense of child labor in the South. The contention was that the workers in the cotton-mill were the most healthful of any people in the community. A report made by the United States government on the conditions in the mills shows that beyond any doubt the mill is a hazardous place for an adult, to say nothing of the child. In Massachusetts, according to reports quoted by Florence I. Taylor of the National Committee on Child Labor, it was found that the average fourteen-year-old mill boy was decidedly below standard in weight and height; and that the sixteen-year-old boys did not show a normal gain in height over the fifteen-year-old boys, and actually decreased two and a half pounds in average weight. “It was evident from the physical examination alone,” said the report, “that there were boys whose interests from the point of view of physical welfare called for further attention after being permitted to go to work, whatever the work for which an employment certificate might be issued.” In the printing trades, in the paint shops, in glass works, in coal-mines, in fact, in every place where children are employed, we find the physical effects all bad. The undeveloped boy or girl is more susceptible to diseases that are inherent in the several businesses themselves. For instance, lead attacks a child worker more quickly than it would an adult. The fumes inhaled and the substances breathed in affect the child, and owing to the demands put upon his physical strength by his growing body it is difficult for nature to throw off the bad effects of these poisons. =Child Labor and Education.= Another evil is the loss of educational opportunities. “There is plenty of time for the children to go to school,” is a common saying among fathers and mothers. “I will send Mary to school next year,” said a farmer in Oklahoma. “She wants to go on with her class. I cannot see that it makes any great difference whether she gets her learning this year or next.” Mary was fourteen years old and we have no record of Mary’s career, but it is quite probable that she never got a chance to go back to school. The school promised to boys and girls who are being used in gainful occupations is like the promise that St. Patrick made to the snakes in Ireland after he had put them all into a box. He promised that he would let them out to-morrow, but to-morrow never came, according to the old Irish legend.