achieved a substantial gain or the ethical activity and perception of the people of Illinois. No one would now venture to argue in favor of employing young boys under ground in that state, while boys. of twelve years may still legally work in the coal mines of Kansas, and in all mines in Iowa, Missouri and North Carolina. In 1890, an ordinance of the City of Chicago prohibited the employment in manufacture or commerce of any child under the age of ten years "unless there be dependent upon such child any sick or infirm parent or adult relative." The legislature of 1891 prohibited the employment anywhere in the state of a child under thirteen years of age with the same startling proviso. In 1893, all employment of children under the age of fourteen years was prohibited in manufacture but permitted as before in commerce. In 1897, the minimum age for employment in commerce was raised to fourteen years and thus made uniform with the minimum already established for mining and manufacture. All exemptions were abolished. Tested by experience the administrative part of the statute proved weak and again comprehensive amendments were adopted in 1903. As the law now stands, a child under the age of sixteen years may not work after seven P. M. nor longer than eight hours in one day and forty-eight hours in one week. Nor may a child under the age of fourteen years be employed or permitted or suffered to work in mining, manufacture or commerce. These provisions are unspoiled by any exemptions whatever. Moreover, a child under the age of

fourteen years must attend whatever school he is in throughout the full term, comprising a fixed minimum of I10 days in the school year.

Illinois has thus faced, more boldly than any other American state, the fact that children to the age of sixteen years are different from adults and must be differently treated in industry. The new laws throw upon the community the burden of maintaining all those sick and disabled parents and dependent adult relatives whom, as late as 1890, the state entrusted to the precarious efforts of the children ten years old or less.

A significant measurement was immediately made of the resultant burden to the community. Miss Jane Addams, of Hull-House, asked the Chief Inspector of Factories to report to her the names and addresses of all children under fourteen years of age who had been employed under the more lax old law and were now deprived of employment by the enforcement of the more rigid new law, and whose mothers were widows. This was done. In the period between July 1st, when the law took effect, and October 26th, fourteen cases in Cook County, which embraces Chicago, and six cases in the rest of the state, had been found in which this form of hardship appeared to occur. The twenty families were investigated with the utmost care, in coöperation with the Bureau of Charities of Chicago. In the end, three families in Cook County and five in the remainder of the state proved to be in need of the equivalent of the wages which a fatherless child less than fourteen years of age had been earn

ing. The task remained of raising money to be used as scholarships for these children until they should reach the fourteenth birthday. The wages earned by the children were from two to four dollars a week; and they ranged in age from twelve years and six months to thirteen and a half years. The period for which the scholarship was needed varied, therefore, from six to eighteen months; and the total amount for each child varied between $104 and $200 distributed over a period of eighteen months. The necessary money was secured in coöperation with the Illinois Federation of Women's Clubs, and the payments are made weekly on Saturday, on presentation of the written statement of the principal of the public school that the child's attendance has been regular and satisfactory. This adequate volunteer aid, supplied by a few persons, shows once for all how slight is the basis for the widely expressed fear lest hardship be inflicted far and wide, by prolonging the period of childhood to the fourteenth birthday.

The results of this Illinois experiment in furnishing scholarships for children who had worked under the age of fourteen years and were deprived of wage-earning by the operation of the more stringent new law clearly demonstrate that children have not, to any considerable degree, been contributing to the support of their families. It is impossible that they should do so. The community must inevitably support in some way, well or ill, all its dependent members. But in the cruel belief that this burden could be placed upon the young chil

dren, thousands of them have, during the past thirty years, been deprived of the rights and privileges of childhood.

The state which accepts the plea of poverty and permits the children of the poorest citizens to labor prematurely, accepts the heritage of new poverty flowing from two sources; namely, on the one hand, the relaxed efforts of fathers of families to provide for them, and on the other hand the corruption of weak children by inappropriate occupations which involve temptation beyond the child's power of resistance, and the exhaustion of strong children by overwork. It is exactly the most conscientious and promising children who are worked into the grave or into nervous prostration, or into that saddest state of all, the moral fatigue which enables a man to sit idly about for years while his wife or his sister, or his children support him.

Hence it appears that there is need of shifting the accent of the current method of caring for dependent widows and children by public and private philanthropy. If the orphan child, by virtue of his future citizenship, has a claim to sustenance, education, freedom from exploitation (his labor being contraband), and a corresponding duty to go regularly to school, then there should be systematic harmonious provision for this. Such a child should not be left to the precarious provision of sporadic private charity. Why should such children not receive scholarships dependent upon regular attendance and good behavior, and provided out of the school-funds?

The Glass-Bottle Industry.-The urgent need for the present stringent law of Illinois can, perhaps, best be made clear by a somewhat detailed description of the children in one trade as it was found to exist ten years ago.

When the first factory law of Illinois was enacted, in 1893, it prohibited the employment of children under the age of fourteen years in factories and workshops. For children employed in the glassbottle works, this provision, until the present year, when the new law made this method more difficult, was successfully evaded by dissolute men and women who gathered in orphan and deserted children from the poorhouses of five counties adjacent to that in which stands the city of Alton, and from the orphan asylums in St. Louis, and made affidavits as "guardians" of the children that the lads were fourteen years of age when they were really from seven to ten. The "guardians" then proceeded to live upon the earnings of the children which were, in 1893, forty cents a day for small boys and sixty cents for larger ones. One "guardian" controlled the wages of several boys. In some cases the "guardians" and their wards lived in shanty-boats along the Mississippi river, drawing their floating habitations well up into the mud of the river bank for the winter, and floating away for the summer, when the glassworks closed. During this enforced holiday the "guardians" and the children lived precariously by fishing and berry-picking, the children profiting by the fact that the glass