however, been all along an experimental one which has doubtless created a sentiment for a direct pension system without the intermediary of private agencies and a demand for a special statute has already made itself felt in that state.

In Kansas City the law going into operation in April, 1911, provided a pension for "the partial support of women whose husbands are dead or whose husbands are prisoners when such women are poor and are the mothers of children under the age of fourteen." The allowance to each of such women, according to the statute, must not exceed $10 when she has but one child under the age of fourteen, and if she has. more than one under the age of fourteen, not more than $10 a month for the first child and $5 a month for each of the other children under that age. According to According to this law, only partial support may be paid to the mother. On the other hand the law requires that the mother shall remain at home. These two requirements have had an unsatisfactory effect. As the support can only be partial, there must be other resources available in the family or the mother, while remaining at home, must seek to do tasks that are likely to be underpaid, and so engross her time with work that will provide the balance of support that the real purposes of the law, in providing satisfactory care for the children on the part of the mother, tend to be defeated. During September, 1912, thirty-nine families with one hundred and fourteen children under the age of fourteen, and thirty-six children over the age of fourteen, were on the pension rolls. The total payments for that month were $493, an average of $12.68 per family and $4.33 per child. In two important particulars the administration of the pension is similar in both San Francisco and Kansas City. There exists no public outdoor relief in either city, and the juvenile court is the central administrative agency both for determining what families shall be pensioned and what the amount of the pension shall be. If the provision for partial support had the effect of encouraging friends, employers, relatives and private agencies to do their part, it might be thought of as a salutary one, but in both of the cities other agencies seemed to step aside when the public pension plan had been begun. Kansas City's plan is

clearly one of inadequate relief. Since there is no public outdoor relief and no carefully worked out plan of co-operation with private agencies, the widows of Kansas City on the whole do not seem to be much better off than before the plan was undertaken. In a considerable number of instances, rather than to accept the conditions of the law they have preferred to go out to work and to continue their previous plan of taking care of their children.

In Milwaukee since April 1, 1912, the Juvenile Court has granted certain pensions to mothers who were suitable to keep their children, but who, under the old method, would have found it necessary to have them committetd to the Board of Trustees of the Home for Dependent Children. Up to September 1, thirty mothers with children had been aided, the total sum having been expended up to that time being $868. In the month of September, 1912, about $400 was expended for the aid of one hundred and ten children. Several of these women so aided were deserted wives, one a divorced woman and one the wife of a convict. The inadequacy of public as well as private relief in Milwaukee is generally admitted, and the inadequacy of the pension funds was explained by the statement that if considerable sums were provided for the needs of the families in question, the plan might be found to be illegal and thus lead to more serious complications. As in California, this plan has had the result of fostering a sentiment for pensions under a special statute, and a plank in the platform of the Republican party in its recent campaign gave voice to this demand.

In Colorado a law providing public pensions for dependent children was adopted in the election held November 5, 1912. Under this statute the Juvenile Court is to determine whether a pension is advisable and its amount. Since that time it has, however, been ruled that it was not mandatory for the commissioners to provide the appropriation on which the court. would order the pensions to be paid, and plans are now under way to develop some form of co-operation between the public. relief department and the court for carrying out the provisions of the statute.

St. Louis has passed an ordinance within the last six months providing for the

organization of a city board of children's guardians, part of whose task may be the boarding of dependent children with their mothers at public expense.

In Pennsylvania, under an amendment to the Juvenile Court Law passed in 1907, the juvenile courts in a few of the counties have granted allowances to mothers from county funds for the support of dependent children left in their care.

The most important experiment in pensioning mothers with dependent children has been undertaken in Illinois under an amendment to Section 7 of the Illinois Juvenile Court Law which reads as follows: "If the parent or parents of such dependent or neglected child are poor and unable to properly care for the said child, but are otherwise proper guardians, and it is for the welfare of such child to remain at home, the court may enter an order finding such facts and fixing the amount of money necessary to enable the parent or parents to properly care for such child, and thereupon it shall be the duty of the county board, through its county agent or otherwise, to pay such parent or parents at such time as said order may designate the amount so specified for the care of such dependent or neglected child until the further order of the court."

When we come to examine the meaning of the term "dependent children," we find that this designation does not mean the same thing in every state. In certain states it includes a considerable number of those that in other states would be classed wayward, while in most of the states the term "dependent children" includes neglected children as well as dependent. This lack of clear distinctions between neglected, wayward and dependent has led the country at large to believe that the commitment of a dependent child to institutions was mainly because of poverty. That there are children in institutions or in the care of child caring agencies because of poverty alone is unquestionably true, but the number is much smaller than is generally supposed and should be clearly determined before developing new legislation in any given state to meet what seems like a new evil.

The number of commitments made during the six months ending June 30, 1911, namely, the six months just preceding the enactment of the Funds to Parents Act.

was smaller by one hundred and twentyfive than the number of commitments of dependent children in the same months a year later, a period in which the granting of pensions was the most active. The increase of commitments during the later year was not due to the existence of the funds to parents, but to other local causes. On the other hand, it is entirely clear that the existence of the pension funds did not materially, if at all, decrease the number of commitments. On November 1 the number of families on the pay roll of the county because of pensions was five hundred and three, containing one thousand seven hundred dependent children. The amount expended for pensions during this month was $11,713, an average expenditure of $6.89 per child and $23.28 per family. The maximum pension up to December 1 was $10 a month per child, and the total paid to any family rarely exceeded $40 a month. Under this plan, the small families without other resources had the harder time to get along, and during the month of October ten per cent of the families were found to be receiving a maximum under the rules of the court, which, however, proved to be inadequate for the needs. These the court asked private societies, whose plans were more flexible for aiding families so circumstanced, to take over, and a considerable number of such families have been referred to the United Charities and other private organizations and aided by them.

To assist the court in determining what mothers should be pensioned, a Case Committee was organized from representatives of private societies. The committee's recommendations have been of great help to the judge in deciding what families should be pensioned, and he has been largely guided by them in his decision, both as to whether the pension should be granted and as to its amount. With the helpful co-operation of the judge, chief probation officer and his deputy, an inquiry was made into the circumstances of one hundred mothers who had been pensioned. Not only was the adequacy of relief considered, but the health, schooling and work of the children, the mother's health, worth and fitness to care for them, and the probation officer's work in the supervision of the members of the family and their budgets. From an intimate

acquaintance with the work of this Case Committee for a period of six weeks and from a patient hearing of the presenta tion of cases by the various probation officers, the writer did not acquire much confidence in the kind of investigation that the probation officers made nor in the kind of supervision that most of them gave to the families under their care. While most of the children were attending school regularly, some of the probation officers were unaware as to whether they were in school or not. Other children were out of school or were going irregularly without the probation officer's knowledge of these facts. In only fourteen families were wholesome results apparent from the supervision while in eighty they were lacking. In two other instances the probation officer was of the right type but it was too early in the supervision of those families to discover results.

1. The situations are so diverse in different states that it is hazardous for one state to copy the plans of another state without having studied the latter's individual needs. In fact, local conditions are so different in different parts of the same state that it would be hazardous to have a state law which did not take account of different local conditions.

2. Adequate relief plans have been more successfully learned by private than by public agencies so far. In the limited mothers' pension plans now in vogue, adequacy has not always played a part. This foreshadows that it will take some time before adequate pensions are the rule, and agencies without experience in relief matters will but slowly learn what adequacy means.

3. The creation of new administrative machinery without doing anything with the old often leads to conflicting policies and authorities. The duplication of investigation in Chicago was an illustration of this difficulty. The public relief officers have the care of most families who are in distress and they will not be displaced by the developing of new machinery for pensions. It is therefore necessary to work in co-operation rather than in antagonism with these agencies, and the question of the need of a new group becomes a pressing one.

4. The special work for which the juvenile court has been developed is so important that it is extremely hazardous to add to its judicial functions the pensioning and supervision of mothers with dependent children. A study of the pension administration of the various juvenile courts does not give one that confidence in its success which would justify a further extension of this method. If widows' pensions are needed in our various states, some other agency than the juvenile court should be charged with their administration.

5. Thirty-four of the one hundred cases examined in Chicago seemed to have been due to the fact of the existence of a pension fund. The passage of new laws for the pensioning of widows who are in need will inevitably create a new class of dependents in our communities.

6. The widow with dependent children should be aided in such a way that if she is suitable to have her children with her, poverty alone may not deprive her of them, nor should the community expect the mother of these children to give an unusual portion of her week to work outside of the home. On these fundamentals, all who are interested in the preservation of family ties are agreed. What we are not agreed on is that some new adminising out these purposes, or, if they have trative provisions must be made for carrybeen made, that the work will necessarily be well done in public hands. It would seem better that the existing public and private agencies for home assistance should be adapted, standardized and used to meet the present needs. When in addition to these, suitable preventive measures have been instituted for searching out the causes of widowhood, for the prevention of industrial accidents and death, and for the protection of the living so that there may be fewer widows and dependent children, a large part of the dependence in our cities and states will have been met. If, however, social and economic conditions upon careful inquiry are found to be such that large groups of families are left in poverty or destitution, it were better that a plan of social insurance be adopted than that these families should, group by group, be added as dependents to our communities.

I

DO say, Jim, we ought to be getting a piano for Katie pretty soon, for she's turned thirteen and all the girls are learning music."

"And I wish, mamma, that you would get it in your head that you christened me Katherine, and not 'Kate," interjected that young miss.

"Well, Katie, or Katherine, and I love you just the same under either name, if your ma wants a piano it's up to her to find out how we are going to pay for it and keep the roof over our heads at the same time," replied Jim Haskins James

was his name on the company's payroll, but at home and with his friends he was just big, good-hearted Jim.

"Lots of folks who don't make as much money as you do, Jim, have music taught to their children," insisted Mrs. Haskins.

"All right, ma, go as far as you like, but keep out of debt. I'm going to play with the kids now."

Just then Henry, age five, and Jennie, two years his junior, executed a bold attack on the paper their daddy was reading and chorused:

"Play train, daddy." Down on the floor dropped their daddy, which was a signal for Jack, seven, and Mary, nine, to come bounding over from the little desk, where they had been making the prettiest pictures in water colors-that is, they thought they were the prettiest, and daddy and mamma agreed.

Jimmy, who with his eleven years years and and lis father's name, was the pride of the family, closed up the big illustrated Bible and appointed himself conductor.

Daddie was the train; the chairs were the stations, and Mary and Jack and Johnnie piled on, while Henry assumed the responsibility of engineer.

As engineer he could ride all the time. From station to station big Jim Haskins crawled on hands and knees until a pair of overworked knees decided that it was bedtime for the little passengers. Tucking the children in their beds followed good-night kisses and hugs and prayers. Then Jim Haskins and his wife settled down to the paper and the mending.

Next morning after breakfast Jim started off to work; the older children to school. Henry and Jennie ran to the corner with their big dad, tugging helpfully at his dinner pail.

"Good-bye, kiddies," Jim, kissing them, said. "Meet me tonight."

CHAPTER II.

"Hoist away, old sport!" grinned big Jim Haskins, the most daring structural ironworker on the twenty-story building then pushing its head through the clouds.

The little engine tooted twice and Jim was on his way to the top. Sitting lazily on the iron beam drawing him skyward, Jim made ready to grip his hold at the nineteenth story to be ready for the sudden stop one floor farther up. Below him walked tiny ant-like men; horses and trolley cars looked like toys.

But there was a sudden stop at the eighteenth story. It caught him unawares and he fell, tumbling down past horrified workmen, down to the paveinent, a battered mass of flesh and bone.

"Ma'am," the policeman at the Haskins' door got out in a broken tone, "Jim has been hurted purty badly."

"Oh, I must go down to him. Henry, you take Jennie over to Mrs. Brown's house and wait while I go to see papa," cried Mrs. Haskins, while she took the baby out of its cradle to carry it to Mrs. Brown.

"Well. madam, Jim was hurted too bad; you see, he fell and he's-er-they had to take him to the morgue," blurted out the policeman.

"Oh, my God! Jim's dead!" and she fell fainting to the floor, tightly clutching the baby in her arms. The other children screamed, unknowing of the tragedy that had just entered their young lives.

Three days later Jim Haskins was buried. The company didn't have to pay the widow any compensation, because there was a servant's liability law, or something of that kind, though poor Widow Haskins couldn't understand it.

In just two months the savings had been eaten up and the rent was due again. Widow Haskins couldn't keep her seven little ones in the same comfortable, healthy way they had been used to. The landlord thought they had better find more "suitable" quarters.

"I have hunted for a cheap house all over," confided the widow to a sympathetic neighbor, "and the best I could do for $10 a month is a three-room flat in the tenement down on Blank street."

"But that is such a dirty and unsanitary place," objected the neighbor.

"Yes, I know," said the widow, "but Katie and I have figured it out and $10 a month is the most we can pay for rent; it'll take more than Katie and I can earn to pay that and have enough for food and clothes."

Katie got a job at a factory. She had to say she was fourteen to get in, but the