In the supposedly enlightened eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, parental indifference, child neglect, and raw cruelty appeared ...among Europeans of all classes.... In mid-nineteenth- century France, families abandoned their children at the rate of thirty-three thousand a year.... It took sixty years after the criminalization of cruelty to animals for cruelty to children to be made punishable under English law.... Industrialized America added brutalizing child labor to the oppressions of the young.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The poor, stupid, free American citizen! Free to starve, free to tramp the highways of this great country, he enjoys universal suf...frage, and by that right, he has forged chains around his limbs. The reward that he receives is stringent labor laws prohibiting the right of boycott, of picketing, of everything, except the right to be robbed of the fruits of his labor.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Ants are so much like human beings as to be an embarrassment. They farm fungi, raise aphids as livestock, launch armies into war, ...use chemical sprays to alarm and confuse enemies, capture slaves, engage in child labor, exchange information ceaselessly. They do everything but watch television.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... it must be obvious that in the agitation preceding the enactment of [protective] laws the zeal of the reformers would be secon...d to the zeal of the highly paid night-workers who are anxious to hold their trade against an invasion of skilled women. To this sort of interference with her working life the modern woman can have but one attitude: I am not a child.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Amid attempts to protect elephants from ivory poachers and dolphins from tuna nets, the rights of children go remarkably unremarke...d.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I wish to say that, in so far as I can, I hope to promote the enactment of further legislation of this character. There's not...hing else one can say about me--I'm superfluous, in a word. A supernumerary--that's all. Nature evidently didn't count on my appearance, and consequently treated me as an unexpected, uninvited guest.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I could make out a good case for specially protecting men. It is time some attention was paid to vital statistics. More boys are b...orn than girls, yet more girls survive. There are always more widows than widowers, there are two million more women than men. In other words, woman's survival rate is greater than man's, and women are getting stronger all the time. If either sex needs protection, it would seem to be the men.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The child's personality is a product of slow gradual growth. His nervous system matures by stages and natural sequences. He sits b...efore he stands; he babbles before he talks; he fabricates before he tells the truth; he draws a circle before he draws a square; he is selfish before he is altruistic; he is dependent on others before he achieves dependence on self. All of his abilities, including his morals, are subject to laws of growth. The task of child care is not to force him into a predetermined pattern but to guide his growth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Some day the workers will take possession of your city hall, and when we do, no child will be sacrificed on the altar of profit!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Reverend Samuel Peters ... exaggerated the Blue Laws, but they did include "Capital Lawes" providing a death penalty for any c...hild over sixteen who was found guilty of cursing or striking his natural parents; a death penalty for an incorrigible son; a law forbidding smoking except in a room in a private house; another law declaring smoking illegal except on a journey five miles away from home,...LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »