Quoth the library website: Illustration shows a large ghoul wearing a dark shroud labeled 'Necessity', holding a whip, leading a small child out of a home where an unemployed parent is slumped over a table in 'the background; over the door is a sign that reads 'Lead Kindly Light', and outside the doorway two children are walking toward a factory and a sign that states 'Machinery Operated by Children - Men Need Not Apply'.

“NEXT! From the Cradle to the Mill” Cartoon by Art Young for Puck, April 10, 1912, via Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2011649137/.

Note the big shadowy black ghoul labeled “NECESSITY” leading a young girl out of a dark, impoverished room toward a factory on the right, where two other children are facing a sign at the entrance that reads, “Machinery Operated by Children” and “MEN NEED NOT APPLY.” The image of the little girl clutching her doll as she is forced to leave behind her book, paper, toys, and other small items on the floor usually a part of childhood flourishing makes this brutal uprooting from her home appear unnatural.

What’s more, the preference of the factory for cheaper children over more expensive men characterizes the practice of child labor as a vicious circle. If men are not welcome at the factory, if the lifeless woman at the table is unemployed, and if the children are not in school, the family will not be able to improve its lot, no matter how hard the children toil. This point is underlined by the cartoon’s subtitle, “From the Cradle to the Mill,” a play on the common phrase, “from the cradle to the grave.”