of cotton I recently had the opportunity of passing behind the carefully guarded portals of two factories in Alabama where my interest in the protection of the children was unknown.In spite of the practical immunity of the mill men from danger of prosecution due to the inefficiency of the law it was interesting to note the care with which the children had been taught to answer any inquiries that might be made concerning their ages.Out of at least a score of children evidently under the legal age limit twelve Nike Shoes Australia in a mill employing some three hundred operatives only one child was found who was not over twelve. This child confided to a little girl who was in my party the information that she was ten years old and she looked younger still. I asked a little boy who could not have been over nine or ten years old how old he was. He replied with a wink and a roguish laugh Coach Outlet Store Online that he was most fourteen and Coach Outlet Store Online then ran off to tell the other children that the stranger wanted to know his age.In another mill employing some two hundred hands the proportion of children under legal age was even larger and there was a larger percentage of girls but not a child was found who was not over twelve. The conclusion was irresistible either that all these children had been taught to lie concerning their ages or that here was a most striking illustration of the effect of child labor in stunting physical development.These two mills may fairly be taken as typical of the average suburban cotton factory in the South. In the rear of one of the factories the houses of the operatives were built around three sides of an open square or plaza some two hundred and fifty feet wide with a beautiful woodland crowning the bluff of the river in the rear and great open fields on either side. The houses are fairly comfortable and neat in appearance though needing paint. Here no one need dread the much advertised peril of the streets and slums for the children out of the mill. The children playing in this open square and on these streets would be under the restrictions of the mill authorities and could have no other companions than those very children with whom they are constantly thrown in the mill.Two conclusions must be reached by the careful observer of such conditions:That the surroundings of these families are better than Coach Outlet Store Online those of the same class of people in the rural districts andthat the condition of the children now found at Christian Louboutin Outlet work eleven hours a day many of them under the legal age limit would be vastly improved and the chances of their becoming effective in the civic life of the state increased a thousand fold if they might spend their childhood in the fresh air of the playground of the open square instead of imprisoned in the unhealthy atmosphere of the factory.DIFFICULTIESINTHEWAYOFSECURINGEFFECTIVELEGISLATION.In spite of the Nike Air Max 90 fact that the laws prohibiting child labor in this group of states fail to meet many of the requirements of adequate legislation upon the subject the effort to secure their enactment has in every instance met with tremendous opposition on the part of the mill men.In Alabama the opponents of legislation again and again succeeded in stifling in committee the bills aimed at improving Nike Air Max the condition of the children in the factories and it required the united efforts of the press the ministers' unions of the leading cities the women's clubs and other civic organizations to arouse public opinion to such an extent as to make its voice heard in the walls of the capitol. Apathy of the General Public.An outline of the difficulties encountered in this state it is believed will present with some fullness the difficulties that have attended the attempt Christian Louboutin Outlet to secure effective legislation in the other Southern States.Every attempt to secure social betterment finds a common obstacle in the apathy and indifference of the public mind toward its Nike Australia program of reform. In the South however this general difficulty has been accentuated