Mrs. Irene Ashby-Macfadden says: “I have talked with a little boy of seven years, in Alabama, who worked for forty nights; and another child not nine years old, who at six years old had been on the night shift eleven months.” Miss Jane Addams, of Chicago, says: “In South Carolina, in a large new mill, I found a child of five working at night. In Columbia, S. C., in a mill controlled by Northern capital, I stood at ten-thirty at night and saw many children who did not know their own ages, working from 6 P. M. to 6. A. M.” Here is a description of their surroundings: “An atmosphere redolent of oil, thick with lint, the deafening, incessant whir of machinery, in summer stifling heat, always the insensate machinery claiming the strained attention of young eyes and tiny fingers, broken threads clamorously crying for adjustment, all requiring not hard work, but incessant vigilance, springing feet and nimble fingers. Young eyes watching anxiously for a fault in these intricately constructed machines, paying with crushed or broken members for an error in judgment, for the crime of carelessness, how must the responsibility—lightly smiled at by adults—weigh upon the barely developed intelligence of a young child? And after long hours, lagging footsteps, throbbing heads, wandering attention—what sort of stone is this, O Brothers, to be placed in the children’s hands who cry for bread?” Several years ago I saw in the _Independent_ an advertisement setting forth the advantages of the State of Alabama as an investing-place for capital. I wish I had cut it out. The point of it was that there were no “labour-troubles” in Alabama; the boycott being prohibited there, and labour unions being sued for damages and smashed. The advertisement might have added that there is no factory-legislation to amount to anything, and that the percentage of native white illiteracy is fourteen and eight-tenths. There _is_ factory-legislation in Massachusetts, and it is enforced, and the percentage of native white illiteracy is only eight-tenths of one per cent., or one-eighteenth of the proportion of Alabama. So in the last overproduction crisis the mills of Alabama were running, while those of Massachusetts were shut down; and the special correspondence of the New York _Evening Post_ contained the following pregnant item: [Illustration: _Courtesy of Penna. Child Labor Committee_ ] [Illustration: _Courtesy of Penna. Child Labor Committee_ CHILD LABOR IN GLASS FACTORIES AND COAL MINES ] “ATLANTA, Ga., June 12—‘The sceptre of commercial supremacy is falling from the palsied hand of New England industry; apparently it is to be taken up by the South. Grasp it firmly. The whole country, torn by labour disputes, looks to the South to make the final stand against legislative encroachments on the liberty of the individual workman and the individual employer.’