═══════╤═══════════════╤═══════════════╤═══════════════╤═══════════════ REPORT │ A │ B │ C │ D ───────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼───────────────┼─────────────── 1 │Mine boys │Truants │Messenger boys │Miscellaneous 2 │Glass-house │Other factory │Miscellaneous │Truants │ boys │ boys │ │ 3 │Mill boys │Messenger boys │Truants │Miscellaneous 4 │Mill boys │Mine boys │Truants │Miscellaneous 5 │Mill boys │Truants │Newsboys │Miscellaneous 6 │Mine boys │Messenger boys │Miscellaneous │Truants ═══════╧═══════════════╧═══════════════╧═══════════════╧═══════════════ These facts, and other facts of a like nature, are only indicative of the ill effects of child labor upon the morals of the children. In some cases the moral peril lies in the nature of the work itself, while in others it lies, not in the work, but in the conditions by which it is surrounded. In the Chicago Stock Yards, for example, judging by what I saw there, I should say that in most, if not all, of the departments the work itself is degrading and brutalizing, and that no person under eighteen years of age ought to be permitted to work in them. In large laundries little girls are very commonly employed as “sorters.” Their work is to sort out the soiled clothes as they come in and to classify them. While such work must be disagreeable and unwholesome for a young girl, there is nothing necessarily demoralizing about it. But when such little girls are compelled to work with men and women of the coarsest and most illiterate type, as they frequently are, and to listen to constant conversation charged with foul suggestions, it becomes a soul-destroying occupation. At its best, even when all possible efforts are made to keep the place of employment pure and above reproach—and I know that there are many such places—still the whole tendency of child labor is in the direction of a lower moral standard. The feeling of independence caused by the ability to earn wages, the relaxation of parental authority, with the result that the children roam the streets at night or frequent places of amusement of questionable character; the ruthless destruction of the bloom of youthful innocence and the forced consciousness of life properly belonging to adult years—these are inevitably associated with child labor. X