every child has an opportunity for
health and growth. This idyllic conception of American country life
does not correspond with the picture presented by this investigator, who
points out:

"To promote the physical and mental development of the child, we forbid
his employment in factories, shops and stores. On the other hand, we are
prone to believe that the right kind of farm-work is healthful and the
best thing for children. But for a child to crawl along the ground,
weeding beets in the hot sun for fourteen hours a day--the average
workday--is far from being the best thing. The law of compensation is
bound to work in some way, and the immediate result of this agricultural
work is interference with school attendance."

How closely related this form of child-slavery is to the over-large
family, is definitely illustrated: "In the one hundred and thirty-three
families visited, there were six hundred children. A conversation held
with a 'Rooshian-German' woman is indicative of the size of most of the
families:"

"How many children have you?" inquired the investigator.

"Eight--Julius, und Rose, und Martha, dey is mine; Gottlieb und Philip,
und Frieda, dey is my husband's;--und Otto und Charlie--dey are ours."

Families with ten and twelve children were frequently found, while those
of six and eight children are the general rule. The advantage of a large
family in the beet fields is that it does the most work. In the one
hundred thirty-three families interviewed, there were one hundred
eighty-six children under the age of six years, ranging from eight weeks
up; thirty-six children between the ages of six and eight, approximately
twenty-five of whom had never been to school, and eleven over sixteen
years of age who had never been to school. One ten-year-old boy had
never been to school because he was a mental defective; one child of
nine was practically blinded by cataracts. This child was found groping
his way down the beet-rows pulling out weeds and feeling for the
beet-plants--in the glare of the sun he had lost all sense of light and
dark. Of the three hundred and forty children who were not going or had
never gone to school, only four had reached the point of graduation, and
only one had gone to high school. These large families migrated to the
beet-fields in early spring. Seventy-two per cent. of them are retarded.
When we realize that feeble-mindedness is arrested development and
retardation, we see that these "b