Thoughtful and subdued in spirit, Hamilton strolled back to the night superintendent’s office, where he found the figures done at last and the completed schedule awaiting him.  He gratefully accepted the offer of a cup of coffee, from some which had just been sent in, and sat down beside the desk.

“I’ve been talking with the ‘crusader,’” he remarked.

The night superintendent looked up interestedly.

“What do you think of him?” he asked, a little sharply, Hamilton thought.

“I think there’s no question about his being sincere,” the boy answered, “but I can hardly believe that the figures he gives and the facts he talks about are true.”

“They’re true enough, I’m sorry to say,” said the older man, sighing, “but the ‘crusader’ usually isn’t fair to the South.  He blames the South for the cotton mill horrors, when, as a matter of fact, a very large proportion of the mills in which the worst conditions were found are owned by New England capitalists.  I’m a New Englander by birth myself, ‘naughty-two’ at Yale, but I’m able to see the mistakes of the North just the same.”

“I’ve always been taught that the North was more or less mixed up in it,” answered Hamilton.  “It was shown to me a long time ago that the slavery in the South wasn’t started by the plantation owners.  There were no Southern vessels in the slave trade, they were all New England skippers and New England bottoms.  The shame of the slave traffic belongs originally to the North.”

“And now a large share of the child labor, too,” the other agreed.  “But you’ve got to remember that it was the easy shiftlessness of the South that made such conditions possible.  I guess the blame is about even.”

“But is nothing being done on this child-labor business?” asked Hamilton.  “I tried to find that out from the ‘crusader’ but he didn’t answer.”

“Yes,” said the superintendent heartily, “a great deal is being done.  The Bureau of the Census has been of immense service, and other bureaus of the Department of Commerce and Labor are working on it, largely through information gathered for them by the census.  Then there have been thorough Congressional investigations, and the States are being checked up hard to insure that factory inspection shall be real, not nominal.  Don’t let the ‘crusader’ persuade you that everybody is asleep and that nothing is being done; the government is doing a good deal, although the country as a whole is unaware of it.”

“Yet it is increasing?”

“In spite of all that is done to prevent it, it is increasing,” the other said quietly, “that is the sad part.  If it could be thought of as a passing thing, it would be bad enough, but to know that every month hundreds of children die from enforced labor and that greater numbers fill their places, is a sad reflection on the industrial life of to-day.”

“Well, as the South progresses, that will probably take care of itself, won’t it?” queried the boy.