Prominent among the rights of the child must be the right to abstain from the task of earning money either for his own support or to increase the family income. Premature child labor is an absolute evil and is wholly without justification.... The enlightened view of today refuses to regard the child as a mere commercial asset of the parent. On the contrary, the relation of the two is exactly reversed. Until children reach a certain age it is absolutely necessary that they be supported by their parents, and society must enforce this obligation.[38] [Sidenote: Bedouin girls at work.] “How hard the Bedouin girls have to work,” we read in “Topsy-Turvey Land,”[39] “treated like beasts of burden as if they had no souls! They go barefoot carrying heavy loads of wood or skins of water, grind the meal and make fresh bread every morning, or spin the camel’s hair or goat’s hair into one coarse garment.” One little Bedouin girl said, “I tote my two small brothers on my back all day long, and they kill me a thousand times with their crying.” Another said, “What do I do? Why, nothing but work--that’s what children are for.”[40] The familiar Chinese proverb,--“A child of six should earn his own salt,” is an indication of public opinion that needs revision. On the African girl the burden falls early and heavily, while her brother, joining the men in their occupations, finds life much easier and more enjoyable than she does. [Sidenote: The burden of the African girl.] “The girl follows her mother to the plantation (distance one-half to one mile from the village), imitating her mother in carrying a basket on her back, its weight supported by a broad strap going around it and over her forehead. Some burden is always put into that basket, often one beyond the child’s strength, as a jug of water. The little one staggers under it, leaning far forward to lessen the direct traction over her forehead. With that daily bending the child would become deformed, were it not counteracted by the carrying at other times of a log of firewood or some lighter burden on her head.”[41] [Sidenote: Children at work in many lands.] The little coolie children of Hong Kong toiling up a steep road under the broiling sun with great loads of bricks slung on either end of a bamboo pole; the thousands of Chinese children gathering and carrying home great loads of fuel and manure; the Japanese girls sitting closely on their heels and painting cheap crockery for $1.00 a week; the little children of a Japanese village helping to support themselves by making match boxes for the sum of eight cents a thousand; the mere babies picking tea leaves under the hot sun in Bengal; the seven year old girls working from five in the morning to six at night in the cotton and silk mills in China;--these and countless others seem to be calling to us in the name of the Child of Bethlehem to lighten in some way their heavy load.