ight, an' work an' sleep in peace? An' there's one thing more to say,
an' then I must go,--that there's a stain o' shame 'pon the honor of
America that'll never be wiped away until child labor is put down!"

Thoughtful and subdued in spirit, Hamilton strolled back to the night
superintendent's office, where he found the figures done at last and the
completed schedule awaiting him. He gratefully accepted the offer of a
cup of coffee, from some which had just been sent in, and sat down
beside the desk.

"I've been talking with the 'crusader,'" he remarked.

The night superintendent looked up interestedly.

"What do you think of him?" he asked, a little sharply, Hamilton
thought.

"I think there's no question about his being sincere," the boy answered,
"but I can hardly believe that the figures he gives and the facts he
talks about are true."

"They're true enough, I'm sorry to say," said the older man, sighing,
"but the 'crusader' usually isn't fair to the South. He blames the South
for the cotton mill horrors, when, as a matter of fact, a very large
proportion of the mills in which the worst conditions were found are
owned by New England capitalists. I'm a New Englander by birth myself,
'naughty-two' at Yale, but I'm able to see the mistakes of the North
just the same."

"I've always been taught that the North was more or less mixed up in
it," answered Hamilton. "It was shown to me a long time ago that the
slavery in the South wasn't started by the plantation owners. There were
no Southern vessels in the slave trade, they were all New England
skippers and New England bottoms. The shame of the slave traffic belongs
originally to the North."

"And now a large share of the child labor, too," the other agreed. "But
you've got to remember that it was the easy shiftlessness of the South
that made such conditions possible. I guess the blame is about even."

"But is nothing being done on this child-labor business?" asked
Hamilton. "I tried to find that out from the 'crusader' but he didn't
answer."

"Yes," said the superintendent heartily, "a great deal is being done.
The Bureau of the Census has been of immense service, and other bureaus
of the Department of Commerce and Labor are working on it, largely
through information gathered for them by the census. Then there have
been thorough Congressional investigations, and the States are being
checked up hard to insure that factory inspection shall be real, not
nominal.