"And you," I ventured, "some day it will kill you too, if you do not look out." The girl laughed a loud and coarse laugh. "Me?" she said, "not by a jugful. I've been soaking it fifteen years and I am alive yet." The dead girl sat there yet, with the cold, staring eyes, when I went my way. Outside the drinking went on with vile oaths. The dead wagon had been sent for, but it had other errands, and had not yet come around to Pell Street. Thus ended the story of Kid McDuff's girl. CHAPTER VI. THE LITTLE TOILERS Poverty and child-labor are yoke-fellows everywhere. Their union is perpetual, indissoluble. The one begets the other. Need sets the child to work when it should have been at school and its labor breeds low wages, thus increasing the need. Solomon said it three thousand years ago, and it has not been said better since: "The destruction of the poor is their poverty." It is the business of the State to see to it that its interest in the child as a future citizen is not imperilled by the compact. Here in New York we set about this within the memory of the youngest of us. To-day we have compulsory education and a factory law prohibiting the employment of young children. All between eight and fourteen years old must go to school at least fourteen weeks in each year. None may labor in factories under the age of fourteen; not under sixteen unless able to read and write simple sentences in English. These are the barriers thrown up against the inroads of ignorance, poverty's threat. They are barriers of paper. We have the laws, but we do not enforce them.