A 1908 magazine article by A. J. McKelway arguing against child labor, focusing on Southern U.S. cotton mills. It traces the history of child labor from eighteenth-century England and the British factory acts, and cites British physical-degeneration evidence after the Boer War. It then uses census figures to show high illiteracy among mill children, discusses the effect on family life, and reviews child labor laws state by state in the South. It has no weaving content; it is background on labor conditions in the textile industry.