United labor bulletin., 1910-09-29
Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

Oh! the roaring of the mill, of the
MILL"
Ella Wheeler Wilcox.
THE child problem is the problem OF
the race" He who helps child helps
humanity with a distinctiveness, with
an immediateness which no other help
given to human creatures in any other
stage of their existence can possibly give
again. BY helping children we help hui
manity at its best end. There Is no fac
tor in the worlds event that looms up
greater than the Child" The child is
to the human race what the drafted sol
diers are to a nation in war; for when
this generation has fought their part In
the everlasting battle toward higher
civilization, and they are called to that
vast unknown, the law of necessity shall
draft the children to take up the gaunt-
let and SO on survivor bound
How little this world is its exagger-
ated ego stops to pause and reflect upon
the problem the cradle presents us with.
We perch ourselves upon the bust Pal
las Athena with an infallible attitude,
giving little thought and consideration
in giving the child adequate protection.
Are our ears deaf to the lamentations
that echo throughout this great land
from ocean to ocean, from the lakes to
the CULTS? Are our hearts callous to the
widows wall and the orphans cry?
Even the sound of battle, the mingled
Shrek of wounded man and beast, eau
not vie with it in horror. Yet that cry
goes up necessarily in the worlds rich
est cities, the infantile hunger cry rises
above the din of the mart.
Fortunate indeed is the child whose
lips have never uttered that cry
More and more emphatically science
declares that almost all the problems
of physical and mental and moral degen-
eracy originate with the child. The ply
sician traces the weakness and disease
of the adult to defective nutrition IN
early childhood; the penologist traces
moral perversion to the same cause; the
pedagogue finds the same explanations
for his failures; and the sociologist sums
the entire situation up and traces all
these ills to our defective economical
system. The burden and blight of pow
erty fall most heavily upon the child.
No more responsible for its poverty than
its birth the helplessness and innocense
of the victim add infinite horror to its
sufferings-for the centuries have not
made tolerable the idea that the weak
ness and wrongdoing of its parents and
others should be expiated by the child.
Poverty, the poverty of civilized man,
which is everywhere coexistent with lux
ury and wealth. is always repellent, ugly
and terrible either to see or experience,
but when it assails the cradle it assumes
its most hdeous form. The problem is
here. Oh, my fair country! | believe
you will solve it. / love thee! I love
thy mountains and thy hills, thy mead
ows and thy groves. l love thy brooks
and rills, and lakes and bays, and seas
and streams, / love the pioneers who
brought the blessing of civilization to the
wilderness. l love the heroes who bore
the Starry Banner from Bunker Hill, till
it waved in triumph above the flag of
the Briton on the walls of Yorktown. II
love the patriots who consecrated the
temple of freedom and enthroned the
Goddess of Liberty in the halls of the
nation. l go back in fancy's flight to
the early days of our history. l visit the
mausoleums where sleep the bones of
thee valiant dead; and as one man said.
IL conjure the spirits of Washington and
Jefferson to arise in their sombre tombs
and breathe upon the ebbing life of the
ha.ioh' .na' sohs VI ' "S 'o IL
to free the rising generation from the
thraldom of capitalism"
/ believe the child problem is nothing
more than an economical problem. Our
political and industrial systems are att
fault-it seems to me that when we en-
deavor to deal with the various complex
tiles which are involved in the labor
problem, we do not touch and dwell en-
phatically enough upon that great factor,
deavor to solve the child labor problem,
or rather its repression by legislative en-
actment or otherwise, we are at once
confronted with a great difficulty that