been prosecuted. The records of the Federal courts, wherever the authorities have taken cognizance, are full of the records of cases which have been brought to trial. Many of the guilty parties have been prosecuted and are now behind prison bars. Others are awaiting trial, and many others have escaped because of the difficulty of getting people to testify against them. One of the most dangerous leaders in the traffic has recently forfeited handsome holdings of real estate in Chicago, which she had put up for her bond, and escaped to France. Although fleeing from the United States into France, which is also one of the countries co-operating in the abolition of the White Slave traffic, her passion for the business was so great that, when recently arrested in France, under a similar charge, she was found to have several young women from America in her clutches.

But as this law protects only immigrant girls, all of the cases brought have been in the interest of these foreign girls. Thus far no one has undertaken to prosecute the offenders against American-born girls. When the curtain is drawn back upon the iniquitous system in which they have been the victims, a new chamber of horrors will be opened to the public gaze. But, thank God, good will follow, as is always the case when the light is turned on. Already laws have been presented before a number of State Legislatures looking to the prosecution of those guilty of this inhuman traffic in native-born girls, and it will not be long before every State in the Union will have laws under which they can prosecute any man or woman guilty of this crime.

One of the great troubles in fighting this evil is the prejudice against fallen girls and the fact that because a woman is fallen seems to be just cause to convict her of every other crime in the decalogue, thus removing her from the pale of helpful sympathy which is extended to almost every other class of unfortunate beings. Even convicted murderers and kidnappers are treated with more intelligent sympathy. Every statement which she makes is at once considered to be untrue. So far has this prejudice gone that in the State of Missouri, in a decision by its Supreme Court, made some years ago, it was declared that a woman of immoral life was debarred from giving testimony in the courts of that State, as the fact of her immorality prevented her from being a credible witness. It declared at the same time that immorality did not in the same way unfit and debar a man. The difficulty of convicting a person under trial for such a crime as this largely increased because of this attitude of the public mind. The evidence must be so overwhelming against the person that all of the quibles and questions and flaws which is possible for the human mind to make, are answerable, and even then many will feel the guilty person has been unjustly punished, and that if the girl had really wanted to make her escape from her captors she could have done so.

The prosecuting of any other character of cases where the sex question does not enter is very much easier. Take the two last cases of kidnapping, which have interested the entire public and press of the country, as an example of what I mean. In the well-known Philadelphia case of 1908, in which an unusually bright boy of ten years was the victim, it was found that the kidnapper, a man, had taken the boy with him to lunch at several restaurants, had left him alone for hours in a vacant house, from the window of which he might at any moment have called to a passer-by and told him of his sad plight; had even sat several hours with him in the crowded Broad Street Station in Philadelphia, and yet, with all of these opportunities of making his trouble known, and escaping from the clutches of the man, the boy had taken advantage of none of them, but had sat silent and apparently a willing victim. In spite of these extenuating circumstances, it only took the jury a few moments to convict and send the guilty man to the penitentiary for a long period. Had the

boy been a girl, and had she not made any more effort than he did to escape from her captor, and had the fact been known that the man had taken advantage of her innocence not only to kidnap her, but also rob her of her virtue, it would have been absolutely impossible to convict him of kidnapping. A recent case prosecuted in Baltimore, of a similar character, with these added features, proves the truth of this statement, the child being a girl eleven years old. The man was given a sentence of twenty-one years only, and that upon the ground of the child being under the age of consent. Even this verdict was considered extreme by many who believed that the child was willing to go with him because she had written a letter to her father and mother, in which she had not complained of ill treatment. It was proven that the little girl was made to write the letter by the man, who took it out and mailed it himself, and who forced her to write just what he said. Had little Billy Whitla been a little girl, and it was proven that she had sat in a buggy and had taken candy and accepted favors, and had been perfectly happy, as a child might, with her captor, it would have been a very much more difficult case to prosecute than that when the victim was a boy. In one the sex question would almost certainly have been introduced to the further undoing of the punishment for the crime.

Such work as the Woman's World is doing, as well as the Ladies' Home Journal and other well-known magazines, in giving publicity to these facts, will be of inestimable value in the protection of youth. Soon it will be impossible for human ingenuity to devise schemes for undoing of girls that have not already been exposed by the daily papers and magazines, Ithus warning girls and their parents or guardians of the conditions under which they are placed.

Dr. Edgar S. Barney says: "Sixty years ago, in 1846, Horace Mann, our great educator, in his plea for the extension of public schools, said, that outside of the states of New England and a few small communities elsewhere, there was not a county or state maintaining a system of free education for its children. Thirty years ago, at the time of our Centenial Exposition' at Philadelphia, it might have been said that in not a single state in this country was there a school of secondary grade, wherein was taught the use and handling of tools. The first actual step in this direction was taken in the year 1879, and during this period, with the possible exception of electricity, no science had made greater progress than has that of education.

"Just as the advent of railroads about 1825 foreshadowed the new engineering courses in the colleges, so the constantly changing conditions of industry, new inventions, improvements and the like have brought about a change in the educational needs of the present time. Our mode of living is entirely different from that of three decades ago. Many things that we have today were unknown then and our methods of manufacturing with automatic and multiple operation machinery were until recently unknown. Along with these changes have come changes in our educational needs. "The old apprenticeship system has practically become a 'dead letter.' New sociological conditions render its revival, even if desirable, an impossibility, and, with all of its narrowing effects and disadvantages, we cannot regret that it has nearly passed. We should not look abroad to meet the demand for skilled labor. Our only solution of the problem is to turn to the schools and introduce in them thorough, practical courses leading to a vocation; courses which shall include not only the use and the manipulation of tools, but which shall combine there with those subjects which will lead to industrial intelligence, to a knowledge of materials, of the principles of mechanics, the commercial value of time, and the economics of the cost of production.

"Statistics gathered from various sources, especially in Massachusetts, show that great numbers of boys leave school by the time they are fourteen years of age, when the state releases its wards from further obligation of attendance and, as most of the skilled trades do not admit boys until they are sixteen years of age, these boys between fourteen and sixteen drift into the ranks of unskilled labor as errand boys, messengers, teamsters and ordinary laborers. An occasional bright fellow will come to the front, but most of them reach a dead level of from twelve to fifteen dollars a week, and stop there.

"In New York approximately thirty-seven per cent of the population is engaged in mechanical and industrial work, about the same per cent in business, nineteen per cent in domestic service, and five per cent in the learned profession. There are many schools, as you know, for the five per cent in the learned profession (and there are none too many), but, aside from the engineering schools of college grade, there are few for the thirty-seven per cent engaged in mechanical and industrial work.

"It is cause for serious regret that so many of our boys leave the elementary schools before completing them, and that so few enter the high school and there continue for any

length of time. Such, however, is the case in New York City and, no doubt, in most other places.

"Give a boy a school course with a well-defined end in view, let him feel and know that, when he has finished his schooling, he will be prepared to enter a vocation with a fair prospect of advancement, where his progress will be commensurate with his worth, let him feel the relationship between his mathematics, science, drawing and shop work, and he will continue at school both of his own choice and at the wish of his parents. This is not merely a theory, because, at our Institute, we have definitely shown that the problem of 'school mortality,' that is, the leaving of school by the children before the course is finished, may not only be greatly reduced, but almost eliminated. As an illustration, two years ago we admitted a class of one hundred and twenty. Today there are eighty-eight in the graduating class. The number that voluntarily withdraw in any year is only eight per cent. The others are requested to withdraw because of failure to keep up with the work or because we see that they have little or no mechanical aptitude. And most of the eight per cent that voluntarily withdraw leave for such reasons as sickness in the family, death or removal from the city, conditions entirely beyond the control of the boys. And so I maintain that if we give the boys a vocational training, one with a definite object in view, where they can see a prospect of completing their course and fitting themselves for definite work, they will continue at the school.

"A great deal, of course, depends upon the teachers, especially the teachers in mechanical departments. However contrary it may be to theory, we have found it advisable to engage for our shop and technical teachers, men who have had practical experience as foremen and superintendents, men of a good elementary, or, if possible, a high school education. We have found that it is easier for such a man to successfully conduct a shop class and to instruct young men in shop methods, than for the experienced pedagogical, academic teacher to become an expert mechanic. That has sometimes been questioned, but even in New York, within the past two years the public school authorities have begun to realize that situation, and have taken some twelve or fifteen of our graduates into their schools as teachers of manual training, wood work, bent iron work and drawing. That they are making good progress and giving satisfaction has been frequently attested by Dr. Haney, the director of manual training.

"A word should be said in regard to the attitude of trades unions. In the early days of the agitation for industrial, trade and technical schools, the trades unions, as you know, were bitterly hostile. On the basis of supply and demand, they said that the wages of the working men would be decreased and that no school could prepare a boy to enter a trade. In this latter respect they were not altogether wrong, not because the principle of the school was wrong, but because in the process of the school's evolution not sufficient time had elapsed for its full development. A better feeling, however, is growing among trades unions. They are beginning to understand that schools can prepare boys for the trades; they are beginning to understand that it is not the

function of the school to turn out 'scab' workmen, that the market will not be flooded with inefficient labor, and that their wages will not be adversely affected. The statistics prepared under the direction of Prof. Charles R. Richards, of Cooper Union, and printed in the Annual Report of the Bureau of Labor of New York, just issued, show conclusively the growing tendency on the part of labor organizations to recognize the schools and to work in harmony with them. I was told quite recently, although I have not had time to verify it, that the Pattern Makers' Union in New York, which was the one most antagonistic to technical, industrial and trade school work, has within the past few months recognized that it must work in harmony with the schools, and that they advise their apprentices to attend evening classes. I, myself, was told by one of the business agents-'walking delegates' that his organization was beginning to understand that it must work in harmony with the schools if it is to attract to the union a class of educated, broad-minded men who will become leaders in the organization and help to lift it to a plane of higher intelligence and efficiency.

"Another organization in New York, the Association of Stationary Steam Engineers, has in its constitution an article to the effect that educational work shall be recognized. I know this of my own knowledge, because that association has met regularly in our rooms for two years. The old feeling of hostility is dying out, and when our industrial schools are supported by public funds, so that they belong to members as well to to non-members of labor organizations, the antagonism will gradually disappear.

"Up to the present time private institutions have led the may in industrial education. It is only very recently that any public school movement has been set on foot. New York is behind the times in some ways (perhaps we should say, conservative), but it is only within the past sixteen or eighteen months that anything definite has been done on the part of the state towards the promotion of industrial education. "The Hebrew Technical Institute was started twenty-six years ago. Its course is three years long. Pupils are admitted at the age of thirteen years, although the average age is fourteen. The average age at graduation is a little over seventeen. The requirement is that the boy shall have completed the 'Seven B' grade of the New York public schools, that is within one year of graduation from an elementary school. We give a simple examination in arithmetic through interest, elementary English, history and geography.

"All boys pursue the same course for the first two years and specialize in the third. About 'one-third of the time is devoted to the several academic subjects, English and mathematics, one-sixth to science, one-sixth to drawing and onethird to shop work in wood and metal. At the beginning of the third year the boy specializes, so that he devotes about one-half of his time to a special vocation such as machine work, tool making, instrument making, pattern making, mechanical drawing, architectural drawing or wood carving, and the other half of the time is devoted to his English, mathematics, drawing, and shop work in other departments. "The aim in mathematics is as practical as possible. Shop problems are constantly introduced. Non-essentials in algebra and geometry are omitted. Our aim is to take the more advanced scholar through the principal problems of plain trigonometry. The English subjects bear directly upon the work in hand. Our shop work is made as practical as possible. When an article such as a drill, or reamer or a cutter is made, hardened, tempered and ground, we expect that it will be fit for use in the shop.

"We place first-class instruments and tools in the hands of the boys and we expect fairly accurate results. We are opposed to the policy, so often employed, of merely showing a switch-board or a volt-meter to the student and of not al

lowing him to handle it for fear it will be broken. We have never had a serious accident; no finger has been lost, no bones broken. We have never had a boy drop an expensive piece of apparatus on the floor. The boys will sometimes, of course, blow out a fuse on a switch-board or strip two or three teeth from a gear wheel in an engine lathe, but such accidents we expect and, in the main, the students make their own repairs. "We expect that ultimately our students will become foremen and superintendents, although they start only as advanced apprentices. In this respect we have not been disappointed. Forty-two per cent of the boys who have been out of our school ten years or more are foremen, superintendents, manufacturers or proprietors, owning their own business.

"Seventy-five per cent of our boys are employed in industries allied to the subjects taught them at the school.

"The per capita cost of our school, exclusive of interest on a mortgage, the printing of the annual report for the directors, and two or three such items, which are not properly school expense, is $115 a year. It has varied between this amount and $105 for the last five years. The average cost of our plant and equipment is $450 per student, there being about three hundred students in the school. We have not purchased expensive or useless machinery or equipment. Our purchases have been made only as the need has been felt.

"Our institute, though Hebrew in name, is non-sectarian. We have Jew and Gentile working side by side with never a thought of race or creed. In our evening school for men, fifty-five per cent are non-Jews.

"That labor is dignifying, and that a good education and a good tråde are conducive to honesty and right living, is shown in the fact that, out of 900 graduates, there is not a black sheep among them.

That the graduates and the students appreciate the school is shown in the fact that out of the three hundred boys in the school, thiry-six are relatives of other boys in the school or of graduates, and that seventy-one per cent have been recommended by other boys or by graduates. I want to read a paragraph from a letter received from a boy just before I left New York. He tells me how he has been getting on since he left school last May. He obtained a situation with the New York Telephone Company, starting at a salary of $8.10 a week to do the 'forming' of switch-board cables. Afterward, he was put on piece work at which he made $6.00 the first week. Now, however, he is making $15.21 a week. 'It will be impossible for me,' he writes, 'to make more than ten cables a week and make them good. I have a name for making good cables and I am going to advance in reputation the same as I am doing in my pay.'

"My friends, that is the spirit of the boys of the Technical Institute. They strive to advance, not alone for themselves, but for the reputation of their school.

"I left New York en route to Pittsburg, to visit the Carnegie Technical Schools and their director, Dr. Hammerschlag, who is one of our boys. I was with him two days in that great institution.

"On arriving in Chicago, I was met at the station by two of our prosperous boys, who a few years ago were very poor. One is now an instructor in the Lane Technical School, the other is with the Gould Storage Battery Company, occupying a high position. One had to receive assistance a few years ago, so that he might continue at school; the other worked in a grocery store Saturdays to pay his car fare to and from school. I have been entertained royally by them, but I take it, my friends, that it is not for me alone, it is for the school they love. No institution can have a greater asset than the loyalty and the love of its graduates.