Child Labor & the Presbyterians

The writer's father, a Presbyterian clergyman, quit preaching to devote his life to pushing anto-child-labor legislation, in Washington, D.C. Paradoxically, the writer's own labors as a child were prodigious, involuntary and underpaid; he worked like a dog from the age of six onwards for no other compensation than a weekly allowance. He humorously relates some of his childhood chores. By the time he was fourteen, he was hopelessly addicted to work but had acquired ideas about money. He quit school, became an office boy for a newspaper, began to spend money and has been spending it ever since.

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