Child-labor is to be found here in some of its worst phases, as
fostering ignorance and stunting physical development. With
the grown men of the county there is little variety in work:
thirteen hundred are farmers, and two hundred are laborers,
teamsters, etc., including twenty-four artisans, ten merchants,
twenty-one preachers, and four teachers. This narrowness of
life reaches its maximum among the women: thirteen hundred
and fifty of these are farm laborers, one hundred are servants
and washerwomen, leaving sixty-five housewives, eight teach-
ers, and six seamstresses.
Among this people there is no leisure class. We often forget
that in the United States over half the youth and adults are not
in the world earning incomes, but are making homes, learn-
ing of the world, or resting after the heat of the strife. But
here ninety-six per cent are toiling; no one with leisure to turn
the bare and cheerless cabin into a home, no old folks to sit
beside the fire and hand down traditions of the past; little of
careless happy childhood and dreaming youth. The dull mo-
notony of daily toil is broken only by the gayety of the
thoughtless and the Saturday trip to town.
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