MODERN IRISH MISSIONARIES OF THE SPIRIT 
are now. The children were over tired. They were 
often asked to work at night. No wonder that they 
got injured in all sorts of ways. Their nutrition 
was sadly neglected. The ventilation was poor, the 
factories were damp and draughty, no provision was 
made for keeping dust out of the atmosphere, and 
the children sickened and died. That made no 
difference. They were only orphans, paupers’ 
children, whom nobody owned. “Rattle their bones 
over the stones” to a graveyard, and get a further 
supply. It was much cheaper to get further hands 
for the work than to supply safety mechanisms or 
to care for ventilation or for sanitary provision of 
any kind. In the mines the boys, though it was 
said also sometimes the girls, worked at nine and 
ten or even earlier. It was said that in some of the 
mines they were taken down on Monday morning 
and kept down until Saturday night. The parlia- 
mentary investigations made in the thirties of the 
nineteenth century disclosed almost incredible condi- 
tions in child labor in England. At that time the 
English were highly indignant over our colored 
slavery at the south as a disgrace to humanity. They 
had wage slavery of the awfulest kind for the chil. 
dren but also, owing to the miserable wages paid, 
for grownups, and knew almost nothing about it. 
They were seeing the mote and failing to see the 
beam. * 
"Our treatment of children in America was no better. Our Society for 
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was founded long before the Society 
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and actually the first conviction 
in New York for the maltreatment of a child was secured under the statute 
for the prevention of cruelty to animals—because the child Was an animal. 
357