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LABOUR AND CHILDHOOD
non-wage-earning child is compared with the wageearner, the percentage is as follows:
| Hours worked weekly. | Number of Boys. |
Fatigue. | Anæmia. | Severe Nerve Signs. |
Deformities. | Severe Heart Signs. |
| All schoolboys of districts (workers and non-workers) |
3,700 | — | 25 | 24 | 8 | 8 |
| Working 20 or less hours | 163 | 50 | 34 | 28 | 15 | 11 |
| Working 20-30 hours | 86 | 81 | 47 | 44 | 21 | 15 |
| Working over 30 hours | 95 | 83 | 45 | 50 | 22 | 20 |
These figures show the rapid deterioration of health that follow hard and monotonous labour in childhood. But as we are now concerned more especially with one effect of this labour—to wit, the mental effect of it—we will not linger over the general question. The interesting point in the Report to us at present is what follows.
"It may be suggested that these children are, to begin with, of an inferior type mentally and physically. But it was found that in two schools where the physique of the boys had been accurately noted, the children who went to do this kind of work were as follows:
