148 PERILS. — SOCIALISM. 



in which multitudes in all large cities continually live, 

 and whose only statistics are those of epidemics, pauper- 

 ism, and crime.' ' Nevertheless, ' they go on to say, an 

 examination of these tables will demonstrate that one- 

 half of these intelligent working men of Illinois ' are not 

 even able to earn enough for their daily bread, and have 

 to depend upon the labor of women and children to eke 

 out their miserable existence. '"i In 1880, of i^ersons- 

 engaged in all occupations in the United States, 1,118,- 

 356 were children fifteen years of age or under. ^ Their 

 number, in ten years, increased 21 per cent, more 

 rapidly than the poi)ulation. These children ought to 

 be in the school instead of in the mill or the mine. How 

 much longer will the operatives of the United States be 

 distinguished for their intelligence if our children under 

 sixteen are pressed into the factory? Child labor, which 

 Professor Ely says ^ is increasing with ' ' alarming rapid- 

 ity," tends to stunt the body and cramp the mind. 

 In mills and factories children are put to feeding ma- 

 chines, and the narrow round of work prevents a 

 natural development of either jnind or body. Girls 

 brought up in the factories, or whose mothers are there 

 employed, make poor housekeepers, learn little of those 

 arts of economy by which the handful of meal and the 

 cruse of oil of a meager income waste not, neither fail. 

 They make poor wives, and keep their husbands poor. 

 Thus the children of another generation are forced into 

 the factory. Hence the tendency to establish a class of 

 hereditary operatives which class is already established 

 in Europe, and will appear here in due time. 



On the other hand machinery also tends to create a 

 class of capitalists and monopolists.* Before the age of 



1 Heniy George's Social Problems, p. 100. 



2 Compendium of the Tenth Census, Part 11. p. 1358. 



3 Political Economy, p. 259. 



4 After discussing these tendencies of modern manufactures, De Tocque- 

 ville advises the friends of democracy to "keep their eyes anxiously fixed 

 in this direction," and adds: " For if ever a permanent inequality of condi- 

 tions and aristocracy again penetrate into the world, it may be predicted 



