But
every city has its own share of this child labor in the homes, although
in some of the smaller places, civic associations and municipalities
have taken the matter in hand with considerable success. Even that is
but a drop in the ocean."
"Your 'crusader' will have to lead his crusade then, it seems," the boy
suggested.
"Poor lad!" sighed the superintendent.
"Why?" asked Hamilton.
"He will never lead that crusade," the older man replied pensively.
"Why not?"
The man tapped his chest significantly.
"He is incurably ill," he said, "partly glass-blowers' disease from
breathing the particles of glass dust. Men don't mind it so much, but it
is fatal to children when the lungs are not yet strong. We keep the
'crusader' here in order to help him as much as we can, although he
gives a lot of trouble in the works with his revolutionary theories. I
haven't the heart to send him away; he couldn't get other work, and
being all alone in the world, he might starve."
"You mean--"
"That he will not live six months. That army of boys of which he speaks
so often will never go on the march, the banners he has designed for it
will wave over no other battalions than those he has seen in dreams, and
the drums will sound the final 'taps' for him before they roll for the
advance.
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