"Oh, surely it can't be as bad as that," protested Hamilton.
The objection only increased the "crusader's" vehemence.
"There don't any children have to work anywhere as they do here," he fairly shouted, "here where they rob the cradle for workers, where the little voices become sad and bitter 'most as soon as they can lisp, where the brightness o' childhood fades out before its time, an' where its only world is the mill, the shop, an' the fact'ry. Their tiny bones unset, they make them stand in one position all day long until you hear the children moanin' hour after hour, moanin' and no one hears, or hearin', cares.
"They send missionaries to China," cried the lad further, "but there's no child labor there; they try to reform the 'unspeakable Turk' but there's no atrocity upon the children there; they call the heathen lost, though in the worst an' wildes' tribes the children have a home an' lovin', if savage care; Russia cries shame on what goes on in our fact'ries here, an' even an Indian chief that they were showin' the sights of our great cities to, when asked what had surprised him most, answered, 'Little—children—workin'.'"
"You mean it is peculiar to America? That there is really more of it here than in Europe?" asked Hamilton incredulously.
"More? There's none there like there is here. An' it's gettin' worse all the time, worse this year than last year, worse last year than ten years ago. 'Child-labor,' somebody says, 'has about it no halo of antiquity. It is a thing of yesterday, a sudden toadstool in the infernal garden.' It is all our own," he laughed harshly, "let us be proud of it."
"How many children did you say?" asked Hamilton tersely, staggered and shocked by this statement of the facts of the case.
"Enough to sink the land in shame," the speaker declared. "There were a trifle over a hundred thousand children between the ages of six and fourteen workin' in the fact'ries of America last year. The figures showed that over half of 'em were workin' more'n eight hours a day, that a large percentage were workin' twelve to sixteen hours, an' twenty-two thousand of 'em are at night work."
As he said the last words, the "crusader" hurried away in response to a call from one of the men. He resumed his carrying in of the red-hot bottles from the benches where the men had been molding them, to the annealing oven, and for a time Hamilton watched him. The work was a fearful strain. Sitting where he was, Hamilton could see all the way to the annealing oven. Counting the number of steps the "crusader" had to take, Hamilton found the distance to be about one hundred feet, and watching another boy, who was working regularly, not intermittently as was the city lad's new acquaintance, he found that seventy-two trips an hour were made, making the distance covered in eight hours nearly twenty-two miles.
The red-hot bottles were carried in asbestos shovels, and these had to be kept fairly straight, imposing a terrific strain upon the back. In addition to this, the boys were compelled to face the furnace each time they came back, passing from the heat of the melting oven, in front of a draughty open door, to the heat of the annealing oven.