It is declared, then, that actual inquiry has shown that the claim that the earnings of the children are necessary to the support of the family, and that widows and others would suffer serious poverty if their children under fifteen were not permitted to work, is “rarely if ever justified.” Mrs. Frederick Nathan, of the Consumers’ League of the City of New York, whose splendid devotion to the cause of social righteousness lends weight to her words, expresses this view with admirable clearness. She says: “Whenever preventive measures for child labor are enacted or enforced, there is always a wail heard to the effect that the child’s labor is absolutely requisite for the living expenses of the family. Yet, upon investigation, this statement is rarely corroborated. In Illinois, there was recently enacted a law prohibiting children under sixteen from working more than eight hours a day, or after 7 P.M. Thousands of diminutive toilers were discharged. Then a cry of hardship went up in behalf of hundreds of families. Philanthropic women undertook an investigation, supposing they would find a number of cases in which the wages of the working child were absolutely necessary to the family income. To their amazement they found only three families in Chicago, and five in the remainder of the state, where this was true. In every other case it was discovered that either the parent or older children could support the family, or some relative was willing to assist until the child reached the legal age.”[149] Where there are so many coöperating causes, it would be easy to overestimate the importance of any one, and correspondingly easy to underestimate it. How the investigations in Illinois were conducted, what standards were adopted by the investigators, I do not know, and cannot, therefore, in the absence of specified data, express an opinion upon the validity of the conclusions drawn. Frankly, however, I distrust them. Not long since I heard of a case in which a “philanthropic lady investigator” decided that the wages of a child of thirteen were not necessary to the maintenance of the family, because she “had a father in regular employment.” It did not, apparently, occur to her that $9 a week was too little to support decently a family of six persons.