The greatest infamy of which our great and rich republic must be ashamed is child labor. We all know that in the United States, one and a half million children of the age of 10 to 15 years, are employed in different branches of industry, mostly cotton mills, glass factories, and mines.

The unthinking, average American does not trouble at all that each year thousands and thousands of children sacrifice their health or young lives at hard and unhealthy work in industries. The American considers child labor as a necessary evil, just as he is certain that one must be the hammer, the other the anvil.

But we Socialists who took up the duty to struggle against everything that is harmful and dangerous to the laboring classes, look upon child labor as a crime.

For this reason many among our comrades wrote and tried to call the attention of the public to the danger of child labor. It is a pity that they 2did not have the success due to them because the general public just shrugs its shoulders and thinks - concerning child labor - that such things are incredible or impossible, and falls back into its coma.

Whoever read the book written by Mrs. Van Vorst, under the title: The Cry of the Children, must be struck by the description of these poor children with pale cheeks and sad eyes.

This noble woman who thought that reports about child labor and misery are overdone went to see for herself to Alabama, Georgia, and New Hampshire, where the centers of the American cotton industry are.

What the lady saw and heard there exceeds anything she heard or read about before.

The poor children are not only victims of capitalistic greed and brutality, but also of the ignorance of their parents. The capitalists, with their money, hinder introduction of humanitarian laws, while parents in their ignorance are to blame for accepting low pay as family supporters and for that 3reason are obliged to send their children to factories.

In many states as in Alabama, there is no obligatory school attendance. Workers' children grow up without learning to read or write.

The brutality of capitalism forces these small children to grow up in ignorance, just like their parents did, and the coming generation will.

A very appalling sight it is to watch the children to go to the factories. In shabby, worn out clothes, covered with strands of wool or cotton. Their wearers, little slaves, hardly able to carry their emaciated bodies to the martyrdom called factory or mill, and one day when they die, in their place arrives another candidate for death -- because there is an abundance of children.

In this suffering procession very often are seen mothers leading four and five year old children to help them at their work in the factory to receive $1.20 per week. Only death can liberate them from burdens of work. If they lose their limbs, they are free from work but are lifelong beggars.

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Because it is impossible for these children to attend school, it is only natural that they have no idea about many things taught in school, for instance, patriotism.

The authoress wanted to find out about the patriotic feeling of some children who were just building a house of mud. When the house was ready, the lady put a small American flag on it and asked the children what that flag meant.

One child answered instantly: "That is a sign that measles are in the house." (It is customary to hang out a flag on the house where there is a contagious disease.)

Asked at what age children are taken to work by the factory, one child answered: "At any age from one to forty." A small boy stated it more poetically: "Any age, from knee high to a grasshopper, until you reach the sky."

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All these children are our children because they are children of workers. They are branches of a big proletarian tree. Any tree must perish if its branches are destroyed. Proletarians cannot prosper if their children are ruined - their future generation.

We must spread the teachings of Socialism to the hut of the poorest; then we will make happy these little unhappy beings.

Socialism will give back to the little ones all that soulless capitalism took away from them. Socialism is a true friend of children. It will give them the tender love and care of parents. It will give to them a child's gayety, sunshine, flowers and play. It will give to any child occasion to develop soul and body for the child's benefit and that of his surroundings.