breeding and compensate for the misfortune of being a superfluous child.
In recognizing the great need of education, we have failed to recognize
the greater need of inborn health and character. "If it were necessary
to choose between the task of getting children educated and getting them
well born and healthy," writes Havelock Ellis, "it would be better to
abandon education. There have been many great peoples who never dreamed
of national systems of education; there have been no great peoples
without the art of producing healthy and vigorous children. The matter
becomes of peculiar importance in great industrial states, like
England, the United States and Germany, because in such states, a tacit
conspiracy tends to grow up to subordinate national ends to individual
ends, and practically to work for the deterioration of the race."(8)

Much less can education solve the great problem of child labor. Rather,
under the conditions prevailing in modern society, child labor and the
failure of the public schools to educate are both indices of a more
deeply rooted evil. Both bespeak THE UNDERVALUATION OF THE CHILD. This
undervaluation, this cheapening of child life, is to speak crudely but
frankly the direct result of overproduction. "Restriction of output" is
an immediate necessity if we wish to regain control of the real values,
so that unimpeded, unhindered, and without danger of inner corruption,
humanity may protect its own health and powers.

(1) I am indebted to the National Child Labor Committee for
these statistics, as well as for many of the facts that
follow.

(2) "People Who Go to Beets" Pamphlet No. 299, National
Child Labor Committee.