“In Tuscola County a family of six was found living in a one-room shack with no windows.  Light and ventilation was secured through the open doors.  Little Charles, eight years of age, was left at home to take care of Dan, Annie and Pete, whose ages were five years, four years, and three months, respectively.  In addition, he cooked the noonday meal and brought it to his parents in the field.  The filth and choking odors of the shack made it almost unbearable, yet the baby was sleeping in a heap of rags piled up in a corner.”

Social philosophers of a certain school advocate the return to the land—­it is only in the overcrowded city, they claim, that the evils resulting from the large family are possible.  There is, according to this philosophy, no overcrowding, no over-population in the country, where in the open air and sunlight every child has an opportunity for health and growth.  This idyllic conception of American country life does not correspond with the picture presented by this investigator, who points out: 

“To promote the physical and mental development of the child, we forbid his employment in factories, shops and stores.  On the other hand, we are prone to believe that the right kind of farm-work is healthful and the best thing for children.  But for a child to crawl along the ground, weeding beets in the hot sun for fourteen hours a day—­the average workday—­is far from being the best thing.  The law of compensation is bound to work in some way, and the immediate result of this agricultural work is interference with school attendance.”

How closely related this form of child-slavery is to the over-large family, is definitely illustrated:  “In the one hundred and thirty-three families visited, there were six hundred children.  A conversation held with a ‘Rooshian-German’ woman is indicative of the size of most of the families:” 

“How many children have you?” inquired the investigator.

“Eight—­Julius, und Rose, und Martha, dey is mine; Gottlieb und Philip, und Frieda, dey is my husband’s;—­und Otto und Charlie—­dey are ours.”

Families with ten and twelve children were frequently found, while those of six and eight children are the general rule.  The advantage of a large family in the beet fields is that it does the most work.  In the one hundred thirty-three families interviewed, there were one hundred eighty-six children under the age of six years, ranging from eight weeks up; thirty-six children between the ages of six and eight, approximately twenty-five of whom had never been to school, and eleven over sixteen years of age who had never been to school.  One ten-year-old boy had never been to school because he was a mental defective; one child of nine was practically blinded by cataracts.  This child was found groping his way down the beet-rows pulling out weeds and feeling for the beet-plants—­in the glare of the sun he had lost all sense of light and dark.