parents at their own homes; but the labor
of children for wages, especially in gangs on large farms (as in
beet cultivation and cranberry picking) or in canning factories,
has exhibited evils as pronounced as any in urban manufacturing
conditions.

The evil of forcing children into factories was early recognized.
The most obvious evils of child-labor are neglect of the child's
schooling; destruction of home life; overwork, overstrain, and loss of
sleep, with resulting injury to health; unusual danger of industrial
accidents; and exposure to demoralizing conditions. The usual
assumption that the worker is able to contract regarding the
conditions of labor on terms of equality with the employer is most
palpably false in the case of children. The child, subject to the
commands of his parents and guardians, is not a free agent. Lazy
fathers are tempted to support themselves in idleness on the wages
of their young children. Often poverty leads the parents to rob their
children of health, of schooling, and of the joys of childhood. The
competition of child-labor also depresses the wages of adults, and
thus the evil grows.

Sec. 5. #Child-labor legislation.# The limitation of hours was first
applied to children working in English factories early in the
nineteenth century and thence has extended throughout the world,
tardily following the spread of the factory system. The first American
law of the kind was in Massachusetts, in 1842, limiting to 10 hours
the labor of children under twelve years of age in manufacturing
establishments. All the earlier state laws established low minimums of
age and high maximums of hours, and were poorly enforced for lack of
adequate administrative machinery, this in turn being the result of
lack of active public interest. In all these respects many states
gradually improved their child-labor laws in the latter part of
the last century, and much more rapidly since 1903. Now the maximum
working day for children in about one half of the states is 8 hours,
in one quarter is 9 hours, and in one quarter is 10 hours (and in
a few southern states, 11 hours). Night work by children is very
generally forbidden (in about forty states). During the same time the
minimum age has been pretty generally raised to fourteen years for
factory work, with higher ages (sixteen, eighteen, or even twenty-one)
in some states for certain occupations dangerous to health or morals.
In addition to these general limitation