and pressing that we mean to answer by sound and humane laws.
Child labor in factories, mills, mines and sweat-shops must be ended
throughout the Republic. Such labor is a crime against childhood because
it prevents the growth of normal manhood and womanhood. It is a crime
against the Nation because it prevents the growth of a host of children
into strong, patriotic and intelligent citizens.

Only the Nation can stop this industrial vice. The States cannot stop
it. The States never stopped any national wrong--and child labor is a
national wrong. To leave it to the State alone is unjust to business;
for if some States stop it and other States do not, business men of the
former are at a disadvantage with the business men of the latter,
because they must sell in the same market goods made by manhood labor at
manhood wages in competition with goods made by childhood labor at
childhood wages. To leave it to the States is unjust to manhood labor;
for childhood labor in any State lowers manhood labor in every State,
because the product of childhood labor in any State competes with the
product of manhood labor in every State. Children workers at the looms
in South Carolina means bayonets at the breasts of men and women workers
in Massachusetts who strike for living wages. Let the States do what
they can, and more power to their arm; but let the Nation do what it
should and cleanse our flag from this stain.

Modern industrialism has changed the status of women. Women now are wage
earners in factories, stores and other places of toil. In hours of labor
and all the physical conditions of industrial effort they must compete
with men. And they must do it at lower wages than men receive--wages
which, in most cases, are not enough for these women workers to live on.

This is inhuman and indecent. It is unsocial and uneconomic. It is
immoral and unpatriotic. Toward women the Progressive party proclaims
the chivalry of the State. We propose to protect women wage-earners by
suitable laws, an example of which is the minimum wage for women
workers--a wage which shall be high enough to at least buy clothing,
food and shelter for the woman toiler.

The care of the aged is one of the most perplexing problems of modern
life. How is the workingman with less than five hundred dollars a year,
and with earning power waning as his own years advance, to provide for
aged parents or other relatives in addition to furnishing food, shelter
and clothi