That is the root of the child-labor evil; it has no social justification and exists only for the sordid gain of profit-seekers. It is not difficult, therefore, to understand the manufacturers’ interest in child labor, or their opposition to all efforts to legislate against it. Cheap production is the maxim of success in industry, and a plentiful supply of cheap labor is a powerful contributor to that end. The principal items in productive cost are the raw material and the labor necessary, the relative importance of each depending upon the nature of the industry itself. Now, it is obviously to the interest of the manufacturer, as manufacturer, to get both raw material and labor-power as cheaply as possible, whether the industry in which he is interested is governed by competitive, or monopolistic, or any intermediate conditions. If competition rules, cheapness is vitally important to him, since if he can get an advantage over his competitors in that respect he can undersell them, while if he fails to get his supplies of labor and raw material as cheaply as his competitors, he will be undersold. If, on the other hand, monopoly conditions prevail, it is still an important interest to secure them as cheaply as possible, thereby increasing his profit. It is an axiom of commercial economy that supply follows demand, and it is certain that the constant demand for the cheap, tractable labor of children has had much to do with the creation of the supply. At bottom the employers, or, rather, the system of production for profit, must be held responsible for child labor. There are evidences of this on every hand. We see manufacturers in New Jersey and Pennsylvania getting children from orphan asylums, regardless of their physical, mental, and moral ruin, merely because it _pays_ them. When the glass-blowers of Minotola, N.J., went on strike, in 1902, the child-labor question was one of their most important issues. The exposures made of the frightful enslavement of little children attracted widespread attention. There is very little in the history of the English factory system which excels in horror the conditions which existed in that little South Jersey town at the beginning of the twentieth century.[142] When the proprietor of the factory was asked about the employment of young boys ten and eleven years of age, many of whom often fell asleep and were awakened by the men pouring water over them, and at least two of whom died from overexhaustion, he said: “If two men apply to me for work and one has one or two or three children and the other has none, I take the man with children. I need the boys.” In actual practice this meant that no man could get work as a glass-blower unless he was able to bring boys with him. A regular padrone system was developed in consequence of this: the glass-blowers, determined to keep their own boys out of the factories if possible, secured children from orphan asylums, or took the little boys