dren when the lungs are not yet strong. We keep the
'crusader' here in order to help him as much as we can, although he
gives a lot of trouble in the works with his revolutionary theories. I
haven't the heart to send him away; he couldn't get other work, and
being all alone in the world, he might starve."

"You mean--"

"That he will not live six months. That army of boys of which he speaks
so often will never go on the march, the banners he has designed for it
will wave over no other battalions than those he has seen in dreams, and
the drums will sound the final 'taps' for him before they roll for the
advance. And in that sleep, the cries of the children shall all be happy
ones."

[Illustration: EIGHT YEARS OLD AND "TIRED OF WORKING." Boy in Southern
cotton mill who has been employed "two summers and a winter before
that."]

CHAPTER V

"DON'T DEPORT MY OLD MOTHER!"

The "crusader's" talk on the child-labor question set Hamilton's mind
working, and as soon as he got back to Washington and was busy
tabulating the manufacturing statistics which had been gathered and sent
in, he tried to learn something about the employment of children. He
chanced to meet one of the photographers who had been with the
Congressional commission, and the tales this man told were even more
detailed. Hamilton found that the figures quoted had not been
overstated, and he determined that just as soon as he grew old enough he
would do all he could toward correcting this abuse.

But Hamilton found the actual statistical work not a little tedious,
although it was work which usually he enjoyed, and this sense of the
time dragging was largely due to the fact that the boy had not heard a
word about his being considered in line for the population work. It was
therefore a considerable relief to him when Mr. Burns said to him
suddenly one morning:

"So you're going over to the population side, I hear?"

"Am I? I didn't know," Hamilton replied. "I had wanted to go, but not
hearing anything about it, I was afraid the plan had been shelved."

"The Director told me this morning that you were going to be
transferred."

"The Director himself?"

"Yes. I had a talk with him about the figures for the manufactures of
the New England States, and we happened to mention you; he knew your
name, so I told him that your schedules had averaged six and a third per
cent better than those of any one else in that section. So he said,
'That reminds me,