“Little children were forced to work underground from year to year. Deep in the gloom of a night which had neither moonlight nor stars; rarely ever seeing the face of nature and of day—lost to God’s glory of sunlight, shady woods, silvery waters—lost to intelligence, happiness, enjoyment, reduced to the helpless condition of beasts of burden.” What was true of the mines was also true of the factories. Men, women and children were forced to work for a number of hours absolutely inconsistent with physical and moral development. In the year 1833 Lord Ashley led in the noble effort to redeem the children from the clutches of unscrupulous commercialism, and to lighten the burden of men and women by regulating the hours of labor and the conditions of service. After a most stubborn resistance, in which the corporations urged against the reform every reason which we hear urged in our day, England did herself the immense credit of checking the tyranny of those who were grinding the lives out of the poor in order that the rich should become richer. In this country the cry of commercialism is the same as that which in Great Britain said, “_Take the children_.” Corporations want cheap labor. If they can’t get the adult, they take the child. In the Southern states the tendency to employ children has had alarming development. In 1880 the total number of cotton factory employees was 16,740. Of these, 4,090 were children under sixteen years of age. In the year 1900 the total number of employees had increased to 97,559. Of these, 24,459 _were children under sixteen years of age_. In the states outside of the South there were, in 1880, 155,803 employees in cotton factories. Of this number, 24,243 were children under sixteen years of age. In the year 1900 the total number of cotton factory employees in states outside of the South was 205,302. Of these, only 15,796 were children under sixteen years of age. In other words, within the Southern states the children under sixteen years of age constitute now, as they did twenty years ago, _25 per cent. of all the operatives employed_: whereas, _in the states outside the South the children under sixteen number less than 8 per cent. of all those employed_. Therefore the situation which was justly considered so bad in Great Britain that it was reformed seventy years ago, and which has been reformed in most of the states outside of the South, is three times worse in the South than it is in any other portion of the Union, _and is just as bad now as it was twenty years ago_. In _The Tradesman_, of Chattanooga, Tenn., August 15, 1902, the statement is made that the number of children under sixteen years of age now at work in the Southern mills approximated 50,000.