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Yet excessive dustiness is only one of many causes of tuberculosis. It is primarily a disease of under-vitalization, due to underfeeding, overwork, congestion, and bad sanitary conditions. Dr. Hull and Dr. Hedger, in an investigation of certain poor districts of Chicago, named as conditions of employment tending to spread and increase consumption: low wages, high rents, and consequent crowding; excessive fatigue from long and irregular hours of work, and unsanitary conditions of the place of employment, such as deficient daylight and sunlight, foul air, and poor food. (117)

TABLE XXXI. CHILD LABOR IN THE UNITED STATES (1900). (118)

Having studied the effect of certain unhealthful conditions of labor in producing disease among adults, we turn to the consideration of the employment of children. Child-labor was one of the first causes of degeneration attacked by the English philanthropists of the nineteenth century, and at the beginning of the twentieth century in the United States it continues to be a conspicuous point of attack for social workers. Until very recently the discussion of the question has been based on inadequate information as to the facts, but in 1907, Bulletin 69 of the United States Census Bureau presented the essentials for a clear understanding of the extent and location of the evil. Table XXXI. shows the number of children, i.e. persons over ten and under sixteen years of age, engaged in gainful occupations in the United States in 1900.

It is apparent that by far the most important occupation for children is that of agricultural laborers. Of the 1,750,178 children at work, 60.2 per cent were on the farm, four-fifths of them assisting their parents. Since farm work for children is not generally regarded as injurious to health or morals and does not necessarily interfere with school attendance, attention should be fixed upon the occupations of the 688,207 children employed in other occupations. The distribution of this group by age and sex is shown in Table XXXII.

TABLE XXXII.
Breadwinners 10 to 15 years of age, exclusive to those employed in agricultural pursuits, in continental United States (1900). (119)

The evils of child-labor depend partly upon the age and sex of the child employed and partly upon the character of the occupation. About 45 per cent of these children were 15 years of age, and a majority of them boys; for such as these labor is not necessarily objectionable, except as it cuts them off from all but the most elementary education. If the occupation were an apprenticeship at a trade under healthful conditions, it might be equivalent in value to a year of formal school training at this period of life; but under the conditions of modern industry this is seldom the case.

There remain at least 377,381 children under 14, of whom 153,707 are girls, whose employment outside the home may be regarded as almost inevitably injurious. To these should be added the 124,779 girls between 15 and 16 to whom wage-earning employment is likely to be far more dangerous than to boys of the same age. Of the total number of girls at work, 42 per cent were servants and waitresses. The degree of injury from such employment depends upon a variety of conditions, but is on the whole probably less than that to which textile operatives (16.8 per cent) and textile-workers (10.7 per cent) are exposed. The boys under 16 are chiefly engaged as laborers, messengers, errand and office boys (9.2 per cent), textile-mill operatives (8.6 per cent), miners and quarrymen (5.9 per cent), and metal-workers (5.2 per cent).