What, then, are we going to do about it? How deeply are we concerned that this labor shall not result to the detriment of the child, and what excuses are we making to ourselves for thus prematurely using up the strength which really belongs to the next generation? Of course, it is always difficult to see the wrong in a familiar thing; it is almost a test of moral insight to be able to see that an affair of familiar intercourse and daily living may also be wrong. I have taken a Chicago street-car on a night in December at ten o’clock, when dozens of little girls who had worked in the department stores all day were also boarding the cars. I know, as many others do, that these children will not get into their beds before midnight, and that they will have to be up again early in the morning to go to their daily work. And yet because I have seen it many times I take my car almost placidly--I am happy to say, not quite placidly. Almost every day at six o’clock I see certain factories pouring out a stream of men and women and boys and girls. The boys and girls have a peculiar hue--a color so distinctive that one meeting them on the street, even on Sunday when they are in their best clothes and mingled with other children who go to school and play out of doors, can distinguish them in an instant, and there is on their faces a premature anxiety and sense of responsibility, which we should declare pathetic if we were not used to it. How far are we responsible when we allow custom to blind our eyes to the things that are wrong? In spite of the enormous growth in charitable and correctional agencies designed for children, are we really so lacking in moral insight and vigor that we fail even to perceive the real temptation of our age and totally fail to grapple with it? An enlightened State which regarded the industrial situation seriously would wish to conserve the ability of its youth, to give them valuable training in relation to industry, quite as the old-fashioned State carefully calculated the years which were the most valuable for military training. The latter, looking only toward the preservation of the State, took infinite pains, while we are careless in regard to the much greater task which has to do with its upbuilding and extension. We conscientiously ignore industry in relation to government and because we assume that its regulation is unnecessary, so we conclude that the protection of the young from premature participation in its mighty operations is not the concern of the Government.