The Brooklyn Eagle Defends Some Kinds of Child Labor

In this 1902 editorial, the Brooklyn Eagle describes the conditions that require some children to work for wages to support their families.

It is the impulsive thing to say that children should never be employed; that they should be kept at home during the tender years, and that their schooling should have priority over the formation of business habits. Theoretically this is right, but the needs of the poor are little known. Many of the children who are employed as helpers, messengers, cash boys and minor laborers in shops, foundries, factories, offices and as venders, are the mainstay of families that live, God knows how, for the one who should be the bread winner is an invalid, a cripple, a paralytic, and would be in the charity hospital or the almshouse were it not that the instinct of family unity is as strong and admirable among the humble as among the rich. If all children are to be released from employment we must immensely widen our charities to care for their parents.