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Now comes the question how far children should be asked to
contribute to the support of the community. In approaching it we must put aside the
considerations that now induce all humane and thoughtful political students to agitate for
the uncompromising abolition of child labor under our capitalist system. It is not the
least of the curses of that system that it will bequeath to future generations a mass of
legislation to prevent capitalists from "using up nine generations of men in one
generation," as they began by doing until they were restrained by law at the
suggestion of Robert Owen, the founder of English Socialism. Most of this legislation will
become an insufferable restraint upon freedom and variety of action when Capitalism goes
the way of Druidic human sacrifice (a much less slaughterous institution). There is every
reason why a child should not be allowed to work for commercial profit or for the support
of its parents at the expense of its own future; but there is no reason whatever why a
child should not do some work for its own sake and that of the community if it can be
shewn that both it and the community will be the better for it. |
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