indeed must, sweat their children if they are themselves sweated so mercilessly that they cannot get on without the few pence their children can earn. Now that I have explained the seeming heartlessness of the parents, you have still to ask me why these parents accepted wages so low that they were forced to sacrifice their children to the employers’ greed for profits. The answer is that the increase of population which produced the younger son class in the propertied class, and finally built up the middle class, went on also among the employees who lived from hand to mouth on the wages of manual labor. Now manual labor is like fish or asparagus, dear when it is scarce, cheap when it is plentiful. As the numbers of propertyless manual workers grew from thousands to millions the price of their labor fell and fell. In the nineteenth century everybody knew that wages were higher in America and Australia than in Great Britain and Ireland, because labor was scarcer there; and those who could afford it emigrated to these countries. Half the population of Ireland went to America, where labor was so scarce that immigrants were welcomed from all countries. But today the labor market in America is so choked with them that immigration is sternly restricted to a fixed number from each European country every year. Australia restricts its births artificially, and refuses to admit Chinamen or Japanese on any terms. America also excludes Japanese. But in the days when the Factory Acts were made really effective (the first ones were evaded by all sorts of employers’ tricks) emigration from our islands was unrestricted, and went on at a great rate among those who could afford the passage money.