What are the reasons for the employment of children? It is almost needless to argue that child labor is socially unnecessary, that the labor of little boys and girls is not required in order that wealth sufficient for the needs of society may be produced. If such a claim were made, it would be an all-sufficing reply to point to the great army of unemployed men in our midst, and to say that the last man must be employed before the employment of the first child can be justified. When there is not an unemployed man, when there is not a man employed in useless, unproductive, and wasteful labor, if there is then a shortage of the things necessary for social maintenance, child labor may be necessary and justifiable. Under any other conditions than these it is unjustifiable and brutally wrong. In the primitive struggle with the hostile forces of nature, such struggles as pioneers have had in all lands before the deserts could be made to yield harvests of fruit and grain, the labor of wives and children has been necessary to supplement that of husbands and fathers. But what would be thought of the men, under such conditions, if they forced their wives and children to work while they idled, ate, and slept? Yet that is, essentially, the practice of modern industrial society. Here is a great country with natural resources unparalleled in human experience for their richness and variety; here labor is so productive, and inventive genius so highly developed, that wealth overflows our granaries and warehouses, and forces us to seek foreign markets for its disposal. The children employed in our factories are not employed because it would otherwise be impossible to produce the necessities of life for the nation. The little five-year-old girl seen by Miss Addams working at night in a Southern cotton mill was not so employed because it was necessary in order that the American people might have enough cotton goods to supply their needs. On the contrary, she was making sheeting for the Chinese Army![141] Not that she or those by whom she was employed had any interest in the Chinese Army, but because there was a prospective profit for the manufacturer in the making of sheeting for sale to China for the use of her soldiers. The manufacturer would just as readily have sacrificed little American girls in the manufacture of beads for Hottentots, or gilt idols for poor Hindoo ryots, if the profit were equal. [Illustration: A “KINDERGARTEN” TOBACCO FACTORY IN PHILADELPHIA ]