In the United States to-day, in spite of all your so-called labor legislation, there are three millions of child laborers.** In twelve years their numbers have been doubled.
And in passing I will ask you managers of society why you did not make public the census figures of 1910?
And I will answer for you, that you were afraid.

The figures of misery would have precipitated the revolution that even now is gathering.
* Robert Hunter, in 1906, in a book entitled "Poverty," pointed out that at that time there were ten millions in the United States living in poverty.
** In the United States Census of 1900 (the last census the figures of which were made public), the number of child laborers was placed at 1,752,187.
"But to return to my indictment.

If modern man's producing power is a thousand times greater than that of the cave-man, why then, in the United States to-day, are there fifteen million people who are not properly sheltered and properly fed?
Why then, in the United States to-day, are there three million child laborers?
It is a true indictment.
The capitalist class has mismanaged.

In face of the facts that modern man lives more wretchedly than the cave-man, and that his producing power is a thousand times greater than that of the cave-man, no other conclusion is possible than that the capitalist class has mismanaged, that you have mismanaged, my masters, that you have criminally and selfishly mismanaged.

And on this count you cannot answer me here to-night, face to face, any more than can your whole class answer the million and a half of revolutionists in the United States.