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INDEX

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Am^rtran (B^xih

VOL. IV. - Nos. 1 and 2
May, 1922— August, 1922

NOTE — Words printed in capitals indicate titles of articles

f ncotpotrSt^^tOL Rtid^nptt^tbt intercuts of cb«6ren
1230 FIFTH AVENUE

Accidents. News Note. 22

Administration, see Legislation

Agriculture, see Rural

Alabama. 87, 107

Amend the Constitution. Editorial.
Owen R. Lovejoy. 68

Appel, Madeletne Hunt. The School-
Age Campaign in Massachu-
setts. 47
Enforcement of the Street
Trades Law in Boston. 104

Book Reviews. 62, 150

Boston (Massachusetts.) 104

Brevities:

Agricultural colony in Rome. 88

American Association of Social Workers. 30

American Medical Aid for Russia acknowl-
edges National Child Labor Committee
literature. 89

Apprentice school of agriculture in France. 88

Benefit concert, bazaar and dance for
National Child Labor Committee. 31

Benefit opera performance for National
Child Labor Committee. 32

Decision handed down by Compensation
Referee at Philadelphia. 88

Denmark considering boys and girls agri-
cultural extension work. 90

Dinner given in honor of Dr. S. Josephine
Baker. 30

Drexel Furniture Company recovers money
paid in taxes under Federal Child Labor
Law. 90

Finnish Parliament makes Child Labor
inquiry. 31

Fuller, Raymond G., appointed member of
special committee on rural school attend-
ance. 31

Gibbons, Charles E., presents paper at
National Education Association Conven-
tion. 88

New York State Charities Aid Association
observes fiftieth anniversary. 30

Pre-school laboratory organized by Iowa
Child Welfare Station. 88

Progressive Feminist Party of Chile advo-
cates ministry of Public Welfare and
Education. 89

Recreation Facts from the Year Book and
Annual Report of the Playground and
Recreation Association of America. 30

Report of Department of Pennsylvania
Public Instruction. 31

Resolution favoring child labor amendment
passed by General Federation of Women's
Clubs. 88

Sheppard-Towner Act principal work of
National League of Women Voters. 32

Shilladay, John R., appointed director of
National Association of Travelers Aid
Societies. 89

Swift, Wiley H., addresses Kiwanis Club
International. 89

Third Pan-American Congress of Child Wel-
fare. 29

U. S. Bureau of Education reports on trans-
portation of rural children to public
schools. 89

U. S. Department of Agriculture reports on
agricultural extension clubs. 89

Brown, Sara
Work in

Bush, Loraine
Alabama.

A., Juvenile Street
Iowa. 130

B., Street Trades in
107

Chicago (Illinois). 114

Child Health Demonstration. News

Note. 28
Childhood First and Last. Ray-
mond G. FuUer. 57
Child Labor Day in Coblenz. News

Note. 19
Child Labor in Oyster and Shrimp

Canning Communities. News

Note. 85
Child Labor in Serbia. News Note. 21
Child Labor National, Not Sectional.

News Note. 12
Child Labor Prohibitions for Industrial

Home Work. News Note. 78
Child Nature, the Law and the Courts.

News Note. 22
Children of Wage Earning Mothers.

News Note. 82
Children on the Stage. News Note. 16
Columbia Using "Rural Child Wel-
fare." News Note. 19
Coblenz. 19
Commonwealth Fund Health Program.

News Note. 78
Conferences. 11, 84

National Child Labor Committee.
10

National Child Labor Committee,
proceedings. 70, 97
Connecticut Study of Street

Trades. H. M. Diamond. 97
Constitutional Amendment. 68

Editorals and News Notes. 72, 88

Court Decisions, see Legislation.

Diamond, H. M., Connecticut Study
OF Street Trades. 97

Editorial Comment on Child Labor

Decision. 91
Editorials. 4, 68
Emplo3anent Certificate Conference.

News Note. 84
Enforcement of the Street Trades

Law in Boston. Madeleine H.

Appel. 104
Erie County (New York). 28

Factory Inspection in Jugo-Slavia.
News Note. 83

Federal Law Declared Unconstitu-
tional. News Note. 8

Fuller, Raymond G., Childhood First
— AND Last! 57
International Child Labor
Legislation. 34

Hall, George A., Notable Gain in
JNew York's Child Welfare
39
Health.

Editorials and News Notes. 27, 28,
78, 79

Health Examination of Working Chil-
en. News Note. 27

n' "^ ' Laws.

P126^'

Industrial Home Work of Children.
News Note. 76

International. See legislation.

International Child Labor Legis-
lation. Raymond G. Fuller. 34

Iowa. 130

Johnson , Ethel M . , Short comings in

Child Protection. 49
Joint Committee on Prevention of

Dehnquency. News Note. 24
Jugo-Slavia. 83
Juvenile Street Work in Iowa.

Sara A. Brown. 130

Legislation. 34, 39, 47, 49, 104

Editorials and News Notes. 22, 74,
76,78, 91.

Legislation in Other States. 15, 76
Legislation in Rhode Island. News

Note. 13
Legislation in Virginia. News Note. 74
Lovejoy, Owen R., Amend the Con-
stitution. Editorial. 68
The Unfinished Task. Editor-
ial. 4

Membership Notes. News Note. 16
Milbank Memorial Fund Demonstra-
tion. News Note. 79
Model Street Trades Law, A.
Wiley H. Swift. 126

National Child Labor Committee:

Purpose and Scope. 8
National Conference of Social Work.

News Note. 11
Negro Women in Tobbacco Factories.

News Note. 26
Next National Child Labor Conference.

News Note. 10

News Notes:

Child Health Demonstration. 28

Child Labor Day in Coblenz. 19

Child Labor National, Not Sectional. 12

Child Labor in Oyster and Shrimp-Canning

Communities. 85
Child Labor Prohibitions for Industrial

Home Work. 78
Child Labor in Serbia. 21
Child Nature, the Law and the Courts. 22
Children on the Stage. 16
Children of Wage-Earning Mothers. 82
Columbia Using "Rural Child Welfare". 19
Commonwealth Fund Health Program. 78
Employment-Certificate Conference. 84
Federal Law Declared Unconstitutional. 8
Factory Inspection in Jugo-Slavia. 83
Health Examination of Working Children. 27
Industrial Home Work of Children. 76
Joint Committee on Prevention of Delin-
quency. 24
Legislation in Other States. 15
Legislation in Other States. 76
Legislation in Rhode Island. 13
Legislation in Virginia. 74
Membership Notes. 16
Milbank Memorial Fund Demonstration. 79
National Conference of Social Work. 11

Negro Women in Tobacco Factories. 26
Next National Child Labor Conference. 10

Purpose and Scope of the National Child

Labor Committee. 8

Review of "Rural Child Welfare," A. 20

Review of "Rural Child Welfare," A. 80

Seventeenth National Conference on Child

Labor. 70

Study of Child Welfare Laws in Alabama. 87
Survey in Erie County, New York. 28
Text of Proposed Constitutional Amend-
ment. 72

New York Youths and Their Jobs.

53
Notable Gains in New York's

Child Welfare Laws. George

A. HaU. 39

Pennsylvania. 120

Purpose and Scope of the National

Child Labor Committee. News

Note. 8

Rhode Island. 13

"Rural Child Welfare" : Reviews. 20, 80
School-Age Campaign in Massachu-
setts, The. Madeleine H. Appel.
47

Serbia. 21

Seventeenth National Conference on

Child Labor. News Note. 70
Shortcomings in Child Protection.

Ethel M. Johnson. 49
Spice Shelf. 61
Stage. 16
Street Trades. 97, 104, 107, 114, 120,

126, 130
Street Trades in Alabama. Loraine

B. Bush. 107

Street Trades in Chicago. F. Zeta
Youmans. 114.

Street Trades in Pennsylvania.
Bruce Watson. 120

Study of Child Welfare Laws in Ala-
bama. News Note. 87

Survey in Erie County, New York.
News Note. 28

Swift, Wiley H., A Model Street
Trades Law. 126

Text of Proposed Constitutional
Amendment. News Note. 72

Unfinished Task, The. Editorial.
Owen R. Lovejoy. 4

Virginia. 74

Watson, Bruce. Street Trades in
Pennsylvania. 120

Youmans, F. Zeta. Street Trades
in Chicago. 114

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®I|[^ Ammran (Sl^xlh

Volume Four TVyf A V 1 O*! Issued Quarterly

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LEGISLATIVE
NUMBER

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PUBLISHED BY

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i:ncorporate& to promote tbe interests of cbilftren
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Entered as second-class matter, June 10, 1919, at the Post-office at New York, N. Y.,
under the Act of August 24, 1912.

Accepted for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in
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THIS NUMBER FIFTY CENTS

PRESS OF CLARENCE S. NATHAN, INC., NEW YORK.
► 27X

CONTENTS

PAGE

The Unfinished Task Owen R. Lovejoy 4

News From the Child Welfare Field:

Federal Law Declared Unconstitutional. „ 8

Purpose and Scope of the National Child Labor Committee 8

Next National Child Labor Conference 10

National Conference of Social Work. 11

Child Labor, National, Not Sectional 12

Legislation in Rhode Island 13

Legislation in Other States 15

Children on the Stage._ 16

Membership Notes - 16

Child Labor Day in Coblenz. 19

Columbia Using "Rural Child Welfare" 19

A Review of "Rural Child Welfare" 20

Child Labor in Serbia. 21

Child Nature, the Law and the Courts 22

'^ Joint Committee on Prevention of Dehnquency 24

Negro Women in Tobacco Factories — _ 26

Health Examination of Working Children 27

Child Health Demonstration 28

Survey in Erie County, New York 28

Brevities 29

International Child Labor Legislation Raymond G. Fuller 34

Notable Gains in New York's Child Welfare Laws George A, Hall 39

The School- Age Campaign in Massachusetts Madeleine Hunt Appel 47

Shortcomings in Child Protection Ethel M. Johnson 49

New York Youths and Their Job8..._ 53

Childhood First — and Last! Raymond G. Fuller 57

Spice Shelf _ 60

Book Reviews 62

THE UNFINISHED TASK

"Children are at work who should be in school or at play:
therefore let us outlaw their employment and keep them in school.
The evidence for this legislation is partly physiological, partly edu-
cational, partly social. The evidence is all in and the case has
long since been presented. There are no longer advocates of
child labor. There are merely obstructionists and those who
have not considered the evidence. There are children at work
in the cotton fields, sugar-beet fields, and other agricultural occu-
pations. There are unsettled questions about the employment of
adolescents from 14 to 18. The constitutionality of federal legis-
lation has still to be decided. But the central task for which the
National Child Labor Committee was created in 1904 — the con-
version of public opinion of the nation to the idea that children
under 14 should not be gainfully employed, may fairly be said to
have been accomplished. Children imder 14 are still employed,
but it is known to be an anachronism and one which can probably
be completely overcome only by the improvement of elementary
education and attention to child welfare in general." So writes
Dr. Edward T. Devine in his recent volume on ** Social Work."

The unfinished task of child labor reform — in spite of the
magnitude and importance of the past accomplishment — is far
more difficult and extensive than would appear from any brief and
casual survey.

Dr. Devine says that the evidence for child labor legislation
"is partly physiological, partly educational, partly social. The
evidence is all in and the case has long since been presented."
This is true enough — within limits. But the nature of the perti-
nent evidence regarding child labor is not sufficiently indicated by
the classification given. In part this evidence is psychological.
It has to do with the effects of child labor on personality and char-

The Unfinished Task 5

acter. It has to do with mental as well as physical development
and health. Of course it might be said that such evidence comes
under the heading ** social," but so does physiological and educa-
tional evidence. Effects on the individual are social effects, whether
they come in the form of injuries or deprivations — e.g., the depri-
vations of schooling or of play.

Only a beginning has yet been made in application of child
psychology to the definition and imderstanding of child labor.
Therefore it cannot truly be said that "the evidence is all in."

New evidence of a psychological nature is needed not only for
its strengthening of the cumulative case agamst child labor, but
because different kinds of evidence vary in appeal with different
people and, what is still more significant, vary in applicability with
different forms of child labor. It would be easy to exaggerate the
psychological approach to the child labor problem. In current
discussions of other social and economic problems it is often used
with scant regard for its true implications or its limitations. But
insofar as it yields, or can be made to yield, valid data leading to
valid conclusions, it is by no means negligible. No mode of ap-
proach, no kind of evidence, is negligible so long as child labor
continues to exist or people remain imconvinced of its existence.
We need to obtain and utilize any and every kind of evidence.

As Dr. Devine remarks, "There are no longer advocates of
child labor." But there are those who think that child labor is
over. There are even those whom no amount of evidence will
convince that child labor still flourishes — their opposition to reform
can be overcome only by the force of an enlightened public
opinion. But is not the present evidence sufficient to convince
the convincible, if it can be put before them in such a way that
they will really consider it? Yes, it is quite sufficient as evidence
against child labor in general, but the fact is that child labor is
not child labor in general. It takes particular forms. We have
always found a multitude of people who emphatically oppose child
labor in the abstract. People in the textile centers were sorry
for the slate pickers in the coal breakers. People in the coal
region were sorry for the child laborers of the tenements and the

6 The American Child

city dwellers were sorry for the little textile workers in New Eng-
land and the South. In fact when the evil could be regarded as
a great, national evil either without definite form or at least in
forms not familiar to the local community, there was plenty of moral
conviction against it.

No further evidence is needed to convince people of the evil
of child labor — ^that has been done. But what is child labor? In
the particular form of employment in factories under the age of
14, the public is pretty well convinced that that is child labor.
What about children in agriculture or in street trades? Here
there is less conviction — and less accomplishment — and less evi-
dence. Here the task is, in large measure, to change conviction.
Agriculture and street work are thought by very many people to
be good for children.

It all comes down to this: the public must be shown. Fact
and argument must be presented without stint, leaving no loop-
hole and no doubt. Tradition, custom, prejudice, ignorance,
skepticism, individualism, inertia must be overcome. Moneyed
power must be defeated. Regulation of street trades must meet
the opposition of most of the newspapers. Regulation of indus-
trialized agriculture must face the resistance of huge corporations.
Fictions, lies and specious argument must be met by facts, facts,
facts at every point, and the facts must have wide and constant
publicity. Meanwhile the financial and publicity resources of the
defenders of child labor — child labor even though they vehemently
deny that it is child labor — are such that the advantage is on their
side to the extent that any advantage accrues in the long nm to
the side that is not that of truth and htunanity.

So it appears that in gathering and presenting evidence relating
to child labor there must be regard not only for the different kinds
of evidence (physiological, psychological, educational, etc.) but for
the different kinds of child labor. Evidence against child labor
in general does not get protection for children exploited in the
moving picttures. Evidence against agricultural child labor in
general does not get protection for children exploited in tha beet
fields — ^but evidence against child labor in the beet fields may open

The Unfinished Task 7

the eyes of those who do not believe there is any such thing as
rural child labor. Conditions in the beet fields are striking
and sad enough to command attention when the facts are fully
brought out. But the beet workers are not the only child laborers
in agriculture whose protection waits on the gathering and presen-
tation of more evidence than the considerable amount that has
already been collected and disseminated — enough indeed to have
convinced a large body of thoughtful men and women that over-
work and exploitation of children in rural America constitutes a
challenging national evil.

No, the evidence about child labor is not yet all in: nor will
**the central task" of child labor reform be accomplished tmtil
child labor above the age of 14 as well as below, and in agriculture
as well as in industry, has finally been wiped off the map of America.
The "central task" is the complete abolition of child labor.

(^:>.-£^^UK^i'v^

Xj-cw/C FROM THE CHILD
iNnWO WELFARE FIELD

Federal Law Declared Unconstitutional

On May 15th, the United States Supreme Court handed down
a decision declaring the federal child labor tax law unconstitutional.
This decision places upon the membership the obligation to redouble
its efforts to bring the backward states up to the standards of the
invahd federal law — and beyond, for the federal law did not affect
children in agriculture or a host of other occupations, nor did it
impose an educational or physical requirement for employment cer-
tification.

In the next issue, we shall comment further on the situation
which arises in consequence of this decision of the Court.

Purpose and Scope of the National Child Labor Committee

The purpose and scope of the work of the National Child Labor
Committee may be summarized as follows:

1. To determine by means of accurate studies the extent and
the causes of child labor in manufacturing and commercial
industries and in agriculture.

2. To safeguard children against adverse conditions of labor in
agriculture and industry.

3. To cooperate with all other interested agencies, organizations
and institutions in the promotion of normal child develop-
ment by increasing and enlarging the opportunities for edu-
cation, for health and for recreation.

4. To assist in the fuller realization of these rights of childhood
through better laws and through more enhghtened practices
on the part of government, industries and parents.

News From the Child Welfare Field 9

5. To create and foster an intelligent public opinion which will
support these aims.

The central field of the work of the Committee is that of child
labor in industry and agriculture. The problems, however, which
it seeks to solve are complex and cannot be disassociated from general
welfare problems, especially in methods of attack or of approach.
For example, in considering child labor on the farm the Board recog-
nizes that no solution can be reached except as agriculture is made
profitable or rural life is made attractive and healthful. The ap-
proach to the solution of the farm child labor problem, therefore,
must be broad and varied.

The purpose of our child labor activities is to secure to the
child the opportunity for properly balanced, normal development.
The child labor problem cannot, therefore, be separated from the
educational: to protect the child without providing for his educa-
tion is impracticable. Neither can it be separated from matters
of hygiene, for industrial conditions are intimately related to the
problem of health conservation.

Recreation is important both as a substitute for labor, for many
parents put their children to work rather than have them idle on
the street, and as a preventive of delinquency among employed
children who do not know what to do with their free time. The
Committee is therefore concerned with the relation between juvenile
employment and delinquency for it finds that working children
contribute far more than their share to the ranks of delinquents.
Recreation for children must have some interest. If not employed
and not in school, proper provision must be made for their recrea-
tion.

There must of necessity be close study of the relations of child
labor to general welfare matters and an intimate cooperation with
other agencies dealing with the welfare of the child.

The Committee's ideal is to secure for each child an oppor-
tunity for normal development through helpful legislation and
properly directed and co-related educational, social and industrial
activities affecting children; but it believes that in working
towards this ideal it must continue to place the main emphasis
on problems in the field of child labor and take them as points of
departure.

10 The American Child

Next National Child Labor Conference

The Seventeenth National Conference on Child Labor will be
held in Providence, R. I., June 27, in connection with the Forty-
ninth Annual Meeting of the National Cbnference of Social Work.

The social work program runs from June 22d to 28th inclusive.
A large number of leading organizations will hold meetings in Provi-
dence either immediately prior to or during the week of the National
Social Work Conference Meeting. The Annual Meeting of the
Conference draws to itself not only the large membership of the
Conference, but members of a large number of organizations who
select the time of the annual meeting of the Conference as the
occasion for meetings of their organizations, and it is the presence of
hundreds of members of Kindred Groups which adds greatly to the
value of the annual meetings of the Conference. It is hoped that
the National Child Labor Committee's membership will be very
largely represented at Providence both at our own meeting and at
the other meetings of the week.

The Providence Committee on Arrangements for the meeting
of the National Conference of Social Work requests that those who
are planning to attend and who desire hotel accommodations write
as soon as possible for their hotel reservations to Mr. Arthur L.
Aldred, "Cladding's," Providence, R. I. The Committee is making
arrangements for the housing of delegates in private homes and
boarding houses, as well as in hotels. It is expected that, as usual,
convention passenger rates will apply on the railroads.

Following is the tentative program for the Providence meeting
on child labor:

General Topic: — Children in Street Trades.

I. Present and Future Tasks of the National Child Labor Com-
mittee Owen R. Lovejoy

II. Description and analysis of conditions in cities of ten states:
In Chicago

Miss Anne Davis
In Philadelphia

Mr. Henry Gideon
In Massachusetts

Mrs. Kenneth E. Appel
In Alabama

Mrs. Loraine B. Bush

News From the Child Welfare Field 11

In Syracuse, N. Y.

Mrs. Horace Eaton
In Cincinnati

Mr. Maurice B. Hexter
In Dallas

Mr. Elmer Scott
In Iowa and Michigan

Miss Sara A. Brown
In North CaroUna

Professor E. C. Lindeman
In Yonkers, N. Y.

Miss Anne Hill

III. (a) Regulation of Street Trades Wiley H. Swift

(h) General Discussion of a Street Trades City Ordinance or
State Law

National Conference of Social Work

The next annual meeting of the National Conference of Social
Work will be held in the city of Providence, Rhode Island, June 22d
to 29th. The Program Committee of the Conference in conjunction
with the program committees of the various divisions has done
everything possible to insure the formulation of a program of excep-
tional interest.

The subjects for General Session meetings are as follows:

1. The Changing Fundamentals of Social Work.
The Family as a Factor in Social Evolution.

2. Neglected Fundamentals in Children's Work.

(a) What Fundamentals Are Being Neglected?

(6) The Superficial Character of Child-caring Work as a Whole.

3. The Law-breaker and Needed Improvements in His Treatment.

4. Underlying Concepts in the World Movement for Health.

5. The Future of a Community in an Industrial Civilization.

(a) The Place of the Local Community in Organized Society.
(6) The Effect of Modern Industry on Community Life.

6. The Functions of Public and Private Agencies in the Social Work of
the Future.

7. Racial Diversities and Social Development.

In addition to these meetings, which are of interest to all mem-
bers of the Conference regardless of the specific field of social service
in which they are primarily interested, the Division on Children has
arranged for the following program:

12 The American Child

Section Meeting I

(a) The General Status of Child Protective Agencies Throughout the
United States.

(b) The Relationship Between the Functions of the Juvenile Court and
those of General Child-caring Agencies.

Section Meeting II

Joint Meeting with Inter-city Illegitimacy Conference.

(a) How far should the Courts guarantee support orders for children of

unmarried mothers?
(6) How can we expect mothers to keep their children?

Section Meeting III

The Spiritual Values of Childhood.

(a) The Religious Life of the Child.

(6) The Ethical Values at which Children Naturally Arrive.

Section Meeting IV

(a) What are the minimum quahfications for a good Juvenile Court?

lb) What are the minimum quahfications of a good training school for

dehnquent boys?
(c) What are the minimum qualifications of a good child-placing agency?

Section Meeting V

The School's ResponsibiKty for the Leisure Time of the Child.

It is anticipated that the attendance of members of the Con-
ference and others interested in social work will be exceptionally
large this year as Providence is ideally situated as a convention
city. There will be ample hotel and housing accommodations for all
who desire to attend. The hotel headquarters for the Conference
will be in the Hotel Biltmore. This hotel is now practically com-
pleted and will be one of the largest and finest hotels in New England.

Child Labor, National, Not Sectional

"Not only is labor obtained more cheaply in the southern
states but the hours of labor are longer and child labor is permitted."
So reads a recent editorial from the Bangor, Maine, Commercial. And
in the great textile strike in Rhode Island one of the reasons ad-
vanced for the lengthening of the working day and the reduction
of wages "is the necessity of meeting the competition of the southern
cotton mills where child labor is largely employed."

The National Child Labor Committee protests against this dis-
paragement of southern mills. In the following open letter to the

News From the Child Welfare Field 13

Bangor Commercial, under date of March 9, Owen R. Lovejoy,
General Secretary of the National Child Labor Committee, wrote:

''On this point permit me to say that under the Federal Tax
on Child Labor hours of labor of children in all mills are equalized
throughout the country. No children under 16 are allowed to work
in any textile mill for more than 8 hours a day, 48 hours a week,
or at night. Were it not for this federal law some parts of New
England would show a very unfavorable comparison with some
parts of the South. For example: In Alabama, Kentucky and
Tennessee children under 16 are prohibited by the state law from
working in mills more than 8 hours a day or 48 hours a week, while
in Maine such children may work 9 hours a day and 54 hours a
week. In New Hampshire they may work lOM hours a day and
54 hours a week, while in Rhode Island they may work 10 hours a
day and 54 hours a week. In Alabama a child under 16 cannot
receive an employment certificate unless he has completed the 4th
grade. Maine does a little better, requiring the completion of the
6th grade but Rhode Island offsets this advantage by requiring only
the 'ability to read and write English.*

"These higher standards in southern states have been estab-
lished since the enactment of the first Federal Child Labor Law
and in some instances against stubborn opposition. It would be
to the credit of New England if Maine and New Hampshire and
Rhode Island would establish similar standards rather than rely on
the federal government to drag them up to decent standards."

Legislation in Rhode Island

The Legislature of Rhode Island during its 1922 session devoted
considerable of its time to consideration of social legislation. Sev-
eral measures in this field were adopted by the Assembly.

Two bills having the support of the Consmners' League of
Rhode Island and the National Child Labor Committee were intro-
duced. One of these bills, providing for an 8-hour day and a 48-hour
week for children under 16 years of age, working in any factory,
manufacturing, mechanical, business, or mercantile establishment,
died in committee. The present law limits the work of such chil-
dren to 10 hours a day and 54 hours a week.

14 The American Child

For many weeks the State has been in the grip of the greatest
industrial strife of its history. The Assembly maintained the atti-
tude that it should enact no legislation that might give either side
an advantage in the present strife, or the stamp of approval, there-
fore it refused to endorse any measures affecting working hours or
working conditions even for children.

The other bill, providing that a child, to secure a work permit,
must be 14 years of age and be able to read and write simple English
sentences and have completed a course of study equivalent to six
yearly grades, was passed by both branches of the Assembly without
a dissenting vote. The old law provided that, to secure a work per-
mit, a child must be 14 years of age and be able to read and write
simple Enghsh sentences. Each permit-issuing officer was the judge
of the ability of the children who applied for such permits.

The most serious objection offered to the bill was that it was not
necessary, as most children going to work, it was said, have finished
the sixth grade. Those raising this objection, however, had no data
to prove their contention — no record of this kind is kept by the
Department of Education. This led to a study which showed facts
quite contrary to the expressed views of those who raised the objec-
tion. The study revealed that at least 45 per cent of the children
obtaining work permits in 1921 had not completed the sixth grade.
In one of the large manufacturing towns of the State 69 per cent,
and in another, 59 per cent of the children who secured permits had
not completed the sixth grade.

This new law means that children must stay in school until they
have completed the sixth grade or have become 16 years of age.
The latest figures on issuance of work permits pubHshed by the Com-
missioner of Education are for the year 1919. During that year
8,153 work permits were issued to children 14 and 15 years of age.
The school census gives 19,248 as the number of 14 and 15-year-old
children in the State in that year. Work permits then were issued
to 42.3 per cent of this age group.

The State Factory Inspector reports, for 1920, 7,243 and, for
1921, 4,815 children under 16 years of age working in estabhshments
inspected by him. Of this decrease he says: "The number of child-
ren employed is the smallest since the year 1900 and the percentage
of child labor is the lowest in the history of the department. The
large decrease in the number of children employed can, undoubtedly.

News From the Child Welfare Field 16

be largely attributed to the Federal Child Labor Law, which forbids
the employment of children under 16 years of age in manufacturing
establishments more than 8 hours a day or 48 hours a week."

Employers and truant officers, however, express their opinion
as being that this decrease of child employment is in a large measure
due to industrial inactivity and that once industry gets on its feet
there will be an increasing demand for child labor. This new state
law was enacted at a very opportune time.

A bill providing for the appointment of a Director of Mothers'
Aid and appropriating money to finance a study of dependency was
also endorsed by the Assembly. The object of the study is to learn
the approximate number of mothers who would be entitled to aid
and the size of the appropriation that would be necessary to carry
on such work. There is no mothers' pension law on the statute books
at present, but it is anticipated that the result of this study will be
the enactment of an intelligent legislation in 1923.

Legislation in Other States

A few important changes in child welfare legislation have been
effected during the recent state sessions. Virginia has raised its
compulsory school age and amended its child labor law to provide
for an adequate employment certificating system.

Kentucky has adopted several constructive educational meas-
ures, and enacted into law a bill to create a Kentucky Child Wel-
fare Commission to continue the work of the Children's Code Com-
mission. Other measures passed permit juvenile courts to appoint
volunteer probation officers, give the State Board of Charities and
Correction exclusive control over minors committed to Houses of
Reform, and make it a felony to desert a pregnant wife.

Maryland has established a new Bureau of Child Hygiene in
the State Department of Health and has passed a law giving the
State Board of Labor and Statistics authority to exercise vocational
supervision over mentally retarded children from 14 to 18 years
of age.

In Massachusetts child welfare legislation has made very little
progress. An effort to repeal the 48-hour law was defeated, but all
attempts to raise the compulsory gcbool age and to regulate the

16 The American Child

physical examinations required in employment certificates met the
same fate, as did an amendment to increase the penalty for illegal
employment of minors in dangerous trades.

In New Jersey, there was an unsuccessful attempt to put
through a statewide street trades law. The New Jersey mothers'
pension law was slightly amended.

In New York, the law regulating the age Hmit in specified
occupations was amended to prohibit delivery work to girls under
18. The provision governing the return of work permits was also
amended as well as the vacation permit and street-work permit
regulations. The truant officers may now enforce the child labor
law in addition to the newsboy law.

In Rhode Island, the educational requirements for the work
permit were raised to the completion of the sixth grade, and the
law providing for the appointment of a Director of Mothers' Aid
and appropriating money to finance a study of dependency was

Children on the Stage

Can the Pennsylvania child labor law prevent children from
acting, is a question which has recently been widely discussed at a
series of public hearings before the State Industrial Board. Accord-
ing to the terms of the Pennsylvania law, no child under 14 years
can be gainfully employed in any occupation, or under 16 after 8
P.M. The Department of Labor and Industry has declared its inten-
tion of enforcing this law as applying to children on the stage, but
leaves it in the hands of its Industrial Board to grant exemptions
to ''exceptional children."

Various state child welfare organizations and the National Child
Labor Committee are standing back of a rigid enforcement of the
child labor law. Theatrical managers, on the other hand, are bitterly
opposed, and urge the immediate adoption of a licensing system.
The matter is still unsettled.

Membership Notes

The Membership Department of the National Child Labor Com-
mittee takes this opportunity of acknowledging in the American

News From the Child Welfare Field 17

Child its appreciation of the service of all local committees and of
their individual members.

Among the recent receipts through local effort are:

Ridgewood, N. J., through Mrs. W. J. Berry, local treasurer, amounts

totaling nearly $100

Summit, N. J., through Mrs. H. B. Twombly, local treasurer, over 200

Short Hills, N. J., through Mrs. Stuart Hartshorn, local treasurer, over 200

Glen Ridge, N. J., through Mrs. William H. Sayre, local treasurer, over 100

Montclair, N. J., through Miss Laura Lewis, local treasurer, over 500

Dayton, Ohio, through Mr. H. B. Canby, local treasurer, almost 500

St. Paul, Minn., through Mr. A. G. Driscoll, local treasurer, over 400

Staten Island, N. Y., through A. J. Wadhams, local treasurer, almost.. 170

Detroit, Mich., through R. T. Cudmore, local treasurer, nearly.... 3,400

Forest C. Ensign, State University of Iowa, Iowa City, la.,
has been reappointed this year as local treasurer of Iowa City. In
addition to sending out a letter appeal, Mr. Ensign and his commit-
tee are planning ways of reaching his city in a more thorough way
than has before been attempted.

H. L. Sage, of Hackensack, N. J., is acting as local treasurer for
Hackensack.

Others who have recently accepted local treasurer appointments
are: Miss Helen Ammerman, New Bedford, Mass., Miss Mary
Taylor Blauvelt, Hartford, Conn., Mrs. Lawrence A. Tanzer, Chair-
man of Civics Education, Westchester Woman's Club, Mt. Vernon,
N. Y.

Dr. Herman L. Fairchild, University of Rochester, N. Y., a
member of the Committee and friend of long standing, has sent in a
list of 250 names of personal friends and acquaintances with the sug-
gestion that we appeal to these people for membership in his name.
Such personal contact is very valuable in our work. The Member-
ship Department will appreciate it if other members will follow
Dr. Fairchild's lead.

From the Kentucky branch of the National Child Labor Com-
mittee, through Mrs. Bernard Selligman, Treasurer, we have recently
received memberships totalling $431.

On April 1st the Membership Department enrolled its youngest
member — Margaret McClellan of Illinois — aged one day. A friend
of the organization sent Baby Margaret a membership in this Com-
mittee instead of flowers — a suggestion that we hope may establish
a precedent to other well-wishers of the National Child Labor
Conmiittee.

18 The American Child

In Michigan

As the May American Child goes to press, the gratifying
information comes from Michigan of the organization of member-
ship committees for the National Child Labor Committee in Detroit,
Kalamazoo County, Grand Rapids, Battle Creek, and Jackson. Plans
for similar organizations are under way in Saginaw County, Ann
Arbor, Albion, and Lansing.

Detroit leads the list with a report of $5,000 already secured
in pledges and subscriptions. The Detroit Committee is composed
of Mrs. H. J. Maxwell Grylls, serving as chairman; Richard T.
Cudmore, of the People's State Bank, as treasurer; Mrs. G. Leon
Haywood, assistant treasurer; Mrs. M. P. Cogswell, Mrs. L. Edwards
and Miss Phylissa Watts, secretaries; and an executive committee
composed of the leaders in every important woman's organization in
the city. This committee is reorganizing for permanent local and
state work, as well as for continuing to develop interest in the
membership of the National Coromittee.

The Grand Rapids membership work is sponsored by the Grand
Rapids Child Labor Association, Mrs. Joseph W. Roche, President,
through the appointment of a special committee on National Mem-
bership. The Kalamazoo County Branch of the National Child
Labor Committee is working for National membership subscriptions
with Mrs. S. Rudolph Light, chairman, Mrs. Anne B. Schanz, sec-
retary. Miss Lily Phelps, of Kalamazoo National Bank, treasurer,
Mrs. CaroHne Bartlett Crane, chairman of speakers' committee, and
Miss Trafford, chairman for township organization. Mrs. J. H.
Myers has been appointed chairman of the Jackson Branch and
Mrs. George D. Burch of the Battle Creek Branch.

The Kalamazoo, Michigan, branch of the National Child Labor
Committee, established last month, is out for a $2,000 quota in
memberships. Mrs. S. B. Light is chairman, Mrs. Anna Schanz,
secretary, and Miss Lily Phelps, treasurer.

Mrs. Edward J. Jeffries of Detroit is Michigan's State Chair-
man for the National Child Labor Committee. The Michigan State
Executive Committee will consist of the chairman from each city.

It is hoped that the slogan ''Ten thousand members in Michi-
gan" will not only result in that strength for the National work,
but in the strong public opinion needed to help the rural child sit-
uation in Michigan, and that the splendid example of Michigan's

News From the Child Welfare Field 19

organization for the National and state work, will be copied by
every state in the Union.

Child Labor Day in Coblenz

Child Labor Day in America was celebrated this year with much
spirit in Coblenz, Germany. The protagonists of the observance
were the A. F. G.

The National Child Labor Committee membership campaign,
beginning January 29th in Coblenz, was the inspiration of Captain
Milton A. Lowenberg, Q. M. C, American Forces in Germany.
When Captain Lowenberg, for long a member of this Committee,
received a National Child Labor Committee appeal beginning ''Child
Labor Day in 1922 will be what you make it," he decided to make it,
even in Germany. Inamediately he dispatched a cable to New York
asking the Committee to rush campaign hterature.

Through Captain Lowenberg's membership campaign, which in-
cluded publicity in the Amaroc News, the official newspaper of the
American Forces in Germany, booths and bulletin board displays,
over 200 officers, privates, nurses and doctors in the American unit
in Coblenz joined the Committee. Nearly $500 was subscribed in
memberships. This was the largest cash return made by any city
as a result of Child Labor Day observance.

Columbia Using "Rural ChUd Welfare"

Miss Mabel Carney, Professor of Rural Education in Teachers
College, Columbia University, writes as follows about ''Rural Child
Welfare," a report and discussion by the field staff of the National
Child Labor Committee:

"This is, in my judgment, a remarkable book on a vital
subject, and one which deserves the widest publicity and atten-
tion. We are already using it here abundantly and I assure you
that it will be a privilege to recommend it whenever possible."

Dr. Kenyon L. Butterfield, President of the Massachusetts
Agricultural College and of the American Country Life Association,
says :

"I am very much impressed with the scope and quality of

the report and congratulate you on it."

20 The Americcm Child

Professor Frank H. Hankins, head of the Department of Soci-
ology, Clark University, writes:

'The book is very attractively gotten up and its contents
are extraordinarily good. I think you are quite right in empha-
sizing the tremendous importance of play as the basis of the
physical, intellectual and moral development of children. It
is a natural and spontaneous expression of organic tendencies
and character traits and I believe, with you, it is absolutely
essential for normal development.

Professor E. C. Branson, head of the Department of Rural
Sociology, University of North CaroHna, has adopted ''Rural Child
Welfare" for use in his summer courses.

Nat T. Frame, Director of Agricultural Extension, West Vir-
ginia University, says: "We are hoping that a copy of 'Rural Child
Welfare^ will be read carefully by every extension worker, school
teacher. Farm Bureau member, and other country life leaders in
West Virginia."

Readers of the American Child may secure copies of "Rural
Child Welfare" at the special price of $2. Address National Child
Labor Committee, 105 East 22d Street, New York City. See inside
back cover of this issue of the American Child for a description
of the volume.

A Review of "Rural Child Welfare"

In The Survey for April 15th Miss Ruth Metzger writes of "Rural
Child Welfare" as follows:

"City people who have always looked upon country hfe as an
unmixed blessing for children are far from realizing the tremendous
handicaps of rural childhood in communities where the more aggres-
sive members have left the farms, or the tide of civilization has turned
aside to follow the good roads and the railways. The National Child
Labor Committee has done a bit of long needed investigation in the
cause of children on the farms, choosing West Virginia as its field of
activity. On account of the varied topography and soil this state
presents a range of problems fairly representative of rural conditions
all over the country. There are lonely mountain settlers who have
intermarried in their isolation until ten feebleminded children are
found in one home; there are farm communities where the f'our-H

News From the Child Welfare Field 21

clubs guided by state agents have brought families into co-operation
and made it possible for boys and girls to attend the state agricul-
tural college and spend part of their vacation in summer camps with
other children. Between these extremes are many more aspects of
farm life that need intelligent consideration by the people who form
or influence the laws relating to child welfare, and by the people who
actually Hve in rural districts.

"Under the direction of Edward N. Clopper, the author of Child
Labor in City Streets, seven men and women have made this scien-
tific study of the relations of the rural child to his home, school, com-
munity and state, and provided excellent and reHable material for
practical purposes; presenting it, at the same time, in such form
that a sympathetic picture is readily created by the reader. Laws
relating to marriage, taxation, schooling, labor and delinquency are
discussed, and the method of their enforcement with suggestions,
for improvement given. Lewis W. Hine's photographs dramatize
the story.

''Lack of mentality, lack of opportunity, lack of training, are
primarily at the root of the farm families^ misery. West Virginia is
making an effort to do effective work along all three lines, partly
through the Four-H clubs that help develop the head, the hand, the
heart and the health of the child, and partly through state laws.
But, as Mr. Clopper points out better days for the rural child are
coming only when its parents realize that it should get a square deal,
and at present this is not the case. 'Country people must bring
about the dawn themselves,' he says, 'and they can do it if they will
but look at the child's needs from the point of view of the child
instead of from their own and then take action, partly individual
and partly joint, that common sense dictates. They who would be
saved must save themselves.' It is high time that this conception
of the rights and importance of childhood penetrate to farm com-
munities where idleness and play are still synonymous."

Child Labor in Serbia

The following comes from Dr. Rudolph R. Reeder, of the Ameri-
can Commission to Serbia: Aside from ignorance in health matters
which our Commission is attempting to make headway against, the
main problems of childhood seem to be (1) a dearth of educational

22 The American Child

advantages, especially school houses and teachers, in which the girls
suffer more than the boys; (2) lack of play in practically all forms,
and (3) child labor. The last will be hard to do anything to alleviate
as this is an agricultural country with about 95 per cent a peasant
population. Children begin knitting and tending sheep when about
five years old and gradually emerge into illiterate field workers and
weavers. The women who work hardest have practically stopped
using their brains and few of them seem capable of learning to care
for a baby — hence a high infant mortality rate.

Child Nature, the Law and the Courts

In various issues of the American Child we have published
material showing the very large influence which the characteristic
instincts and impulses of childhood exert in the causation of indus-
trial accident. The psychological side of industrial accident to
boys and girls is pretty well established. Besides playfulness there
is curiosity and there is the general irresponsibility of children.
There is also adolescent awkwardness. Many other factors operate.
In the American Child for February we had occasion to report
a decision of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin involving the psy-
chology of childhood and, by adherence to legal tradition and tech-
nicality, setting aside the award of the State Industrial Commission
in the case of an injured minor.

We now have a decision* of the United States Supreme Court
that suggests this same issue between child nature and draconian
legalism. It seems that on the outskirts of lola, Kansas, there is
a tract of land about twenty acres in extent, upon which formerly
there stood a plant for the making of sulphuric acid and zinc spelter.
In 1910, the owner tore the building down but left a basement and
cellar, in which, in July, 1916, there lay a body of water, clear in
appearance but in fact dangerously poisoned by sulphuric acid and
zinc sulphate that had come in one way or another from the owner's
works. It appears that the owner knew of this water and of its
poison character. A family, travelling through that country, en-
camped at some distance from the tract of land containing the
poisoned pond. The children of this family, eight and eleven years

* United Zinc and Chemical Company, Petitioner, vs. Van Britt aud Susie
Britt. No. 164. October Term, 1921.

News From the Child Welfare Field 23

old, went upon the land and into the wat^r, were poisoned and died.
In the trial court, the next of kin of the children received a verdict
and judgment which was affinried by the Circuit Court of Appc^als
but reversed March 27, 1922, by the United States Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court, though recognizing the existence of the
srw^alled "humane doctrine'* in cases involving "attractive nuis-
ances,'' remarked that "infants have no greater right to go upon
other people's land than adults, and the mere fact that they are
infants imposes no duty upon landowners to expcict them and to
prepare for their safety." The Court declared that there existed
no explicit or implied invitation to enter upon the propcjrty. "In
the casfi at bar it is at least doubtful whether the water could be
sfjen from any place where the children lawfully were and there is
no evidence that it was that that led them to entfir the land. But
that is necessary to start the supposed duty. There can be no
general duty on the part of the landowner to keep his land safe
for children, or even free from hidden dangers, if he has not directly
or by implication invited or licensed them to come there. ... It
is suggested that the roads across the place were invitations. A
road is not an invitation to leave it ebewhere than at its end."

The decision was delivered by a six to three vote. Chief Jus-
tice Taft, Mr. Justice Day and Mr. Justice Clarke dissented, hold-
ing for the applicability of the "humane doctrine" in this case as
against the so-called "hard doctrine." Mr. Justice Clarke wrote
the dissenting opinion, in which he said:

"In 1873, in Railroad Company v. Stout, 17 Wall. 657, this court, in
a turntahle cane, in a unanimoun decision, etrongly approved the doctrine
that he who places upon his land, where children of tender years are likely
to go, a construction or agency, in its nature attractive, and therefore a
temptation, to such children, is culpably negligent if he does not take
reasonable care to keep them away, or to see that such dangerous thing
is so guarded that they will not be injured by it when following the instincts
and impulwjs of childhood, of which all mankind has notice. The court
also held that where the facts are such that different minrls may honestly
draw different conclusions from them, the case should go to the jury.

"Twenty years later the principle of this Btout casf; was elaborately
re-examined and unreservedly affirmed, again in a unanimotjs dwision in
Union Pacific Railway Company v. McDonald, 1.52 U. H, 202, In each of
these cases the contention that a child of tender years rniist be held to the
same understanding of the law with respect to property rights as an adult
and that therefore, under the circumstances of each, the child injured wa«

24 The American Child

a trespasser, was considered and emphatically rejected. The attractiveness
of the unguarded construction or agency, the temptation of it to children —
is an invitation to enter the premises that purges their technical trespass.
These have been regarded as leading cases on the subject for now almost
fifty years and have been widely followed by state and federal courts, —
by the latter so recently as 265 Fed .Rep. 192 and 271 Fed. Rep. 287. . . .
"Believing as I do that the doctrine of the Stout and McDonald cases,
giving weight to, and making allowance, as they do, for the instincts and
habitual conduct of children of tender years, is a sound doctrine, calculated
to make men more reasonably considerate of the safety of the children of
their neighbors, than will the harsh rule which makes trespassers of Uttle
children which the court is not substituting for it, I cannot share in setting
aside the verdict, of the jury in this case, approved by the judgments of
two courts, upon what is plainly a disputed question of fact and in thereby
overruling two decisions which have been accepted as leading authorities
for half a century, and I therefore dissent from the judgment and opinion
of the court."

The decision of the Supreme Court has a good deal of signifi-
cance for all who are concerned in securing for children the rights
of children. The rights of children, legal and other, are founded
ultimately on humanely natural instincts, impulses, desires, and needs.

Joint Committee on Prevention of Delinquency

The Commonwealth Fund of New York has recently announced
plans for a five-year, nation-wide demonstration of methods for the
prevention of delinquency. The New York School of Social Work,
the Public Education Association of New York operating through
a recently organized National Committee of Visiting Teachers, and
the National Committee for Mental Hygiene, together with the
newly created Joint Committee on Methods of Preventing Delin-
quency will cooperate in the demonstration.

The program is based upon the belief that maladjustment in
childhood is a predisposing cause of adult delinquency and that
dehnquency can be more successfully handled when first indications
of something wrong appear than later when the pattern is set.
Studies conducted by psychiatrists attached to courts and penal
institutions indicate that a majority of the individuals they examine
have from early childhood shown abnormalities of conduct which
are recognized as such by their families and their associates aiid the
evidence seems to show that in many ^uch cases early diagnosis

i m many si;

P1262

News From the Child Welfare Field 25

and treatment might have altogether prevented any serious wrong-
doing. Effort will, accordingly, be centered on the child of public
school age.

The New York School of Social Work has estabhshed a psychia-
tric clinic, known as the Bureau of Children's Guidance, under the
directorship of Dr. Bernard Glueck, to which problem children from
certain public schools in New York City are being sent for thorough
study and treatment. Students from the School of Social Work,
and the visiting teachers whom the Public Education Association
has placed in each school reached by the Bureau, will provide the
field service for the clinic.

The Commonwealth Fund has offered fifteen scholarships of
$1,200 each at the New York School of Social Work, which will be
awarded annually by a committee consisting of the directors of the
School of Social Work, the Commonwealth Fund, and the Bureau
of Children's Guidance, to persons desiring to fit themselves for
work as visiting teachers, probation officers, or psychiatric social
workers.

The National Committee on Visiting Teachers plans within the
next three years to place visiting teachers in at least 30 cities in
which this particular form of social service has not hitherto been
available. Two-thirds of the salaries of these teachers will be paid
over a period of three years by the Commonwealth Fund, and one-
third by the community making application. Choice of places for
the demonstration will be made and teachers will be chosen and
supervised by the National Committee on Visiting Teachers. Miss
Jane Culbert, staff executive of visiting teachers for the Public
Education Association, will be field representative of the Committee.

The third cooperating agency, the National Committee for
Mental Hygiene, has created a new division on the Prevention of
Delinquency, of which Dr. V. V. Anderson has been made director,
which will demonstrate the value of psychiatric clinics in juvenile
courts by sending out to courts requesting it, a traveUing clinic
staffed with a psychiatrist, a psychologist and a psychiatric social
worker. One clinic of this sort is already at work in the St. Louis
Juvenile Court. The psychiatric work in the Monmouth County
Demonstration of Child Welfare is also under the direction of this
Division.

The Joint Committee on Delinquency, imder the directorship

103397

26 The American Child

of Arthur W. Towne, has been formed to coordinate the activities
of the three agencies sharing in the program and to analyze and
pubhsh the results of their work and of other activities in the same
field. Miss Mabel Brown Ellis, formerly with the National Child
Labor Committee, is now a special representative with the Joint
Committee.

The Commonwealth Fund has made an initial appropriation
of $165,950 for the expenses of the first year and plans to carry on
the work for at least five years. It will not necessarily confine
itself to the program as here outlined, but may consider other con-
structive means of demonstrating the possibility of decreasing the
volume of adult delinquency by better understanding and wiser
treatment of the school child.

Negro Women in Tobacco Factories

In a study of eighty-five of the negro women working in the
tobacco factories of Virginia, made by Emma L. Shields of the
Women's Bureau of the Department of Labor, cases were found
where these women had gone to work between the ages of 8 and 12;
had rehandled tobacco (entailing breathing of quantities of dust and
moving heavy weights) for thirty years or more, going to work at
6:30 A.M. even in winter, and returning at 7 p.m., very often; worked
for considerable stretches 10 hours a day and 55 hours a week, and
got only $11 or $12 for all this drudgery.

Twenty-one of the eighty-five women had never gone to school,
twelve of them dropped out in the second grade, seven left in the
third, twenty-one went no further than the fourth grade, and only
three finished high school. In season, 72 per cent earned less than
$12, 19 per cent less than $9, and only one woman received over $16.
These women had been tobacco workers for periods ranging from
six months to forty-two years. Thirteen women had worked more
than thirty years. Over 42 per cent had been working since 12
years of age or younger. At the time of the study, 58 per cent were
working a 55-hour week, 38 per cent a 50-hour week. There was
also frequent overtime work so that the working week was often
much longer.

As for home conditions, 66 per cent had to take complete care
of their homes themselves; and 30 per cent attended to their homes

News From the Child Welfare Field 27

before and after work. Many of them are not only handicapped by
lack of funds but by their manifold duties of earning money, keeping
house and caring for the sick members of the family. The mothers
send their children to work just as soon as the law allows. Some of
the results of this sort of family life are simimed up by Miss Shields :
"Life in each generation was bounded on all sides by the same
influences. In the factory, nothing elevating or improving was
afforded the workers; home influences were no better, for the wages
were so low that the workers were forced to select the poorest of
homes in localities so undesirable and unhealthful that the environ-
ment naturally would react on the lives of the persons within it.
There thus resulted a class consciousness among those workers,
which was expressed in their suspicion of other groups, their con-
centration on their own interests and their maladjustment to the
communities in which they lived."

Health Examination of Working Children

The Massachusetts Department of Labor and Industries is pub-
lishing a form for use in the examination of children applying for
employment certificates. This form covers the main points given
in the one recommended by the Children's Bureau, but is much less
detailed. The Department recommends that school physicians as-
signed to examining children for health certificates use this schedule.
Copies will be furnished on application.

At the present time there is no standard form for this purpose
in use in the State. A few physicians have their own records; but
in the majority of instances no form is used, so no permanent record
is kept. It is important that the results of the examination should
be recorded and kept on file in the oflftce from which the employment
certificate is issued. By this means it is possible, when the child
returns for another certificate, to check the examination with the
result of the previous one, to ascertain whether defects noted at the
former time have been corrected, and to secure some information
as to the effect of the work on the child's health.

A standard form for all issuing oflSces is desirable, in order that
there may be greater uniformity in practice throughout the State,
and in order to insure that the examination made covers all the essen-
tial requirements. It is hoped that the use of the proposed schedule

28 The American Child

will assist in bringing about these results and will secure a more
thorough and careful examination of children applying for employ-
ment certificates than is the case at the present time. The Depart-
ment is also preparing a handbook explaining the procedure in issu-
ing employment and health certificates and badges for street trades.
This will contain a section on the health certification of working
children, with reproduction of the new forms.

Child Health Demonstration

The Child Health Demonstration, under the auspices of the
National Child Health Council, of which the National Child Labor
Committee is a member, is proceeding according to plans already
described in the American Child. The locality selected was Mans-
field, Ohio, with Richland County, of which Mansfield is the county
seat. The Council chose as director of the demonstration, Dr.
Walter H. Brown, who began work in October, 1921. The staff on
January 1, 1922, consisted of a statistician, a nurse, and a health
education director.

An Advisory Council, representing the leading professional, busi-
ness and labor groups in the commimity, has been formed, to assume
the community's responsibility for its part in this national experi-
ment. Among those who have joined forces in cordial support of
this undertaking are the Board of Health, the Medical Society, the
dentists, the various social agencies, the schools, the hospitals, and,
in fact, all agencies and organizations which can assist in an active
or advisory capacity. The appointment by the Board of Education
of a staff member of the demonstration as director of health education
in the public schools and similar close relationships with the county
educational authorities are examples of the excellent co-operation
developed so far.

One of the next important steps will be a fairly comprehensive
study of health conditions in the city and county.

Survey in Erie County, New York

That there should be better relations between the field repre-
sentatives of national organizations who serve the communities and
states of the nation has been a patent fact for some time but hitherto

News From the Child Welfare Field 29

little has been done about it. In recent years, however, there has
been a marked broadening and extension of the activities and con-
tacts of many national associations and agencies. This has made it
increasingly important, from the point of view of both the communi-
ties served and of state and national organizations, that this difficult
question of co-ordination in field work shall receive practical con-
sideration. The organizations composing the National Child Health
Council welcome particularly the interest of state and local repre-
sentatives in this problem, and believe that the whole matter should
be studied in the light of the community's own needs.

In Erie County, New York, at the instance of the National Child
Health Council, a step was recently taken toward the development
of a vahd plan of field co-ordination. Seven national and two state
agencies joined, in December, 1921, over a period of two weeks, in a
co-operative inquiry into conditions relating to child health. This
was undertaken upon the joint invitation of practically every public
and private agency interested in the health of children of Erie County
and with the friendly co-operation of the State Departments of
Health and Education. This study has been completed and a ten-
tative report of it has been prepared. It is primarily directed to the
purpose of assisting in the development of strong and correlated
efforts for meeting local problems relating to the health of children.
It was not intended as an exhaustive or even a thoroughly compre-
hensive survey. The fact that it was carried out with the successful
co-operation of the organizations participating in it is one of the
chief points of interest from the standpoint of national co-ordination.
It is a first step in plans for the development of the best methods of
relating national organizations to one another and to state agencies
in their service, in the interests of the local communities.

BREVITIES

Active preparations are under way for the meeting in Rio de
Janeiro, of the Third Pan-American Congress of Child Welfare, which
will take place August 27th to September 5, 1922, in connection with
the official program commemorating the centenary of Brazilian in-
dependence. It should be noted that the sessions of the First Brazil-

30 The American Child

ian Child Welfare Convention will be held conjointly with those of
the Pan-American Congress. — Bulletin of the Pan-American Unions
April, 1922.

Social service now has a professional organization in the American
Association of Social Workers, 130 East 22d Street. Since the
National Conference of Social Work in Milwaukee last spring the
members of this Association, formerly the National Social Workers
Exchange, have been developing a program similar in purpose to
that of the American Medical Association, the American Bar Asso-
ciation and the Engineering societies. Between fifteen and thirty
thousand people in the United States are engaged in some kind of
professional social service.

In the Year Book and Annual Report of the Playground and
Recreation Association of America appear some interesting "Recrea-
tion Facts," referring to the year 1921 : 502 cities report 4,584 centers
under paid leadership; the largest number since the Year Book has
been pubhshed. Eleven thousand and seventy-nine workers were
employed to direct play at these centers. Fifty-one cities report
playgrounds and recreation centers established for the first time.
Two hundred and forty-four cities report work supported entirely by
municipal funds. Fifty-three cities report playgrounds donated;
eighteen of this number placing the value of the property at $1,182,-
700. Nearly $9,000,000 was spent for recreation by 458 cities.

A large group of men and women prominent in social work and
pubHc affairs attended on April 25th a dinner given as a tribute to
Dr. S. Josephine Baker, who has headed the Bureau of Child Hygiene
in the New York City Department of Health since the creation of
the Bureau in 1908. Miss Lillian D. Wald concludes a sketch and
appreciation of Dr. Baker in The Survey with these words: "It is
pleasant to record the importance of the task accomplished and the
quality of the service rendered by Dr. Baker, and the recognition of
it at this time when her ardor is unabated and her vigor undiminished
— when we can hopefully anticipate twenty more years (at least) of
service to the children and through them a brighter future."

The Fiftieth Anniversary of the New York State Charities Aid
Association will be observed by meetings in New York City May

News From the Child Welfare Field 31

11th and 12th. Colonel Homer Folks, Vice-Chairman of the National
Child Labor Committee, has been Secretary of the Association for
twenty-nine years.

Raymond G. Fuller, of the staff of the National Child Labor
Committee, has been appointed a member of the special committee
on rural school attendance. Department of Rural Education, Na-
tional Education Association.

An increase of 8 per cent in the average daily school attendance
throughout the State of Pennsylvania and of 3.67 per cent in regu-
larity of attendance as compared with the records of last year is
reported by the director of the attendance bureau of the Department
of Public Instruction. This is due to better enforcement of the com-
pulsory education laws. — Pittsburgh Press, March 26, 1922.

An inquiry into the conditions of labor for young workers from
15 to 18 years of age and the adequacy of existing provisions for
their physical, intellectual, and moral development, is to be made
by the Flemish Parliament. The object of the inquiry is to obtain
data with a view to legislative measures for the protection of young
persons. — Industrial and Labour Information, International Labour
Office, March 10, 1922.

A National Child Labor Committee benefit, including an artists'
concert, bazaar and tea in the afternoon and a dance with specialties
in the evening was arranged at the Carroll Club, New York City,
for April nineteenth. The Club was turned over to the Committee
for the entire day through the courtesy of Mrs. Evelyn Tobey,
Director. The artists giving their services for the afternoon's pro-
gram were: Miss Julia Arthur, in recitations; Madame Alma
Clayburgh, soprano; Miss Beatrice Herford, in monologues; Mr.
Bronislaw Huberman, violin; Miss Esther Rhoades, harp; Miss
Dorothy Smoller, dance; and Miss Laurette Taylor, with her lead-
ing man, Mr. Frank Thomas, in a *'One Word Sketch." At the
dance in the evening. Miss Smoller and Miss Rhoades appeared
again. Patronesses of the Concert and Dance were : Mrs. Schuyler
Warren, Chairman; Mrs. Harold Henderson, Mrs. Charles T.
Hirsch, Mrs. Outerbridge Horsey, Mrs. John D. Ryan, Mrs. EUsha
Walker, Mrs. C. B. Wyatt.

32 The American Child

A special matinee performance of "Aida" was given at the
Metropolitan Opera House, New York City, on Thursday, April 6,
as a benefit for the National Child Labor Committee. The title
role of the opera was sung by Claudia Muzio, Manuel Salazar sang
the role of Radames, Jeanne Gordon took the part of Amneris, and
Guiseppe De Luca sang Amonasro.

Immediate work for the Sheppard-Towner Act in every state of
the Union is to be the principal work on Child Welfare of the Na-
tional League of Women Voters in the coming year. State measures
which will be worked for in states which are ready for such action
will be in harmony with the recommendations of the "Minimum
Standards for Child Welfare" adopted by the Children's Bureau
Conference of 1919, with particular emphasis upon state school
attendance and child labor laws.

PRAYER

God though this life is but a wraith.
Although we know not what we use,

Although we grope with little faith,
Give me the heart to fight — and lose.

Ever insurgent let me be.

Make me more daring than devout;
From sleek contentment keep me free,

And fill me with a buoyant doubt.

Open my eyes to visions girt

With beauty, and with wonder lit —

But let me always see the dirt.
And all that spawn and die in it.

Open my ears to music; let

Me thrill with Spring's first flutes and drums —
But never let me dare forget

The bitter ballads of the slums.

From compromise and things half done,
Keep me, with stern and stubborn pride,

And when, at last, the fight is won,
God keep me still unsatisfied.

— Louis Uniermeyer.

OII|0 Amertratt (ElftlJi

A Journal of Constructive Democracy
Published Quarterly

Owen R. Lovejoy -------- Editor

Raymond G. Fuller ------- Managing Editor

Associate Editors
Clara Seeger Carpenter Harriet Bond Skidmore

Contributing Editors
Charles E. Gibbons Wiley H. Swift

Yearly subscription, four issues, two dollars. Single copies fifty cents.

Address:
NATIONAL CHILD LABOR COMMITTEE
105 East 22nd Street - - New York City

Contributors to this Issue

George A. Hall is executive secretary of the New York State Commission
to Examine Laws Relating to Child Welfare.

Ethel M. Johnson is Assistant Commissioner, Department of Labor and
Industries, C )mmonwealth of Massachusetts.

Madeleine Hunt Appel is acting secretary of the Massachusetts Child
Labor Committee.

Raymond G. Fuller, of the staff of the National Child Labor Committee,
is author of forthcoming books on "The Meaning of Child Labor" and "The
Right to Childhood."

INTERNATIONAL CHILD LABOR LEGISLATION

RAYMOND G. FULLER

The third general conference of the International Labor Organi-
zation of the League of Nations was held at Geneva last fall. We
have received the official texts of the draft conventions which were
adopted and bore reference to the employment of children. These
draft conventions will be submitted for ratification to the legislatures
of the several countries comprising the League of Nations, and will
come into force, as between the ratifying nations, at the day on
which the ratification of two member nations of the International
Labor Organization have been registered by the Secretary-General.

One of the most interesting and significant of the draft conven-
tions adopted at Geneva is that concerning the admission of children
to employment in agriculture.

Article I provides as follows: "Children under the age of four-
teen years may not be employed or work in any public or private
agricultural undertaking, or in any branch thereof, save outside the
hours of school attendance. If they are employed outside the hours
of school attendance, the employment shall not be such as to cause
prejudice to their attendance at school."

Articles II and III read: 'Tor the purpose of practical vocational
instruction the periods of the hours of school attendance may be so
arranged as to permit the employment of children on light agricul-
tural work and in particular on light work connected with the harvest
provided that such employment shall not reduce the total annual
period of school attendance to less than eight months."

'The provisions of Article I shall not apply to work done by
children in technical schools, provided that such work is approved
and supervised by public authority."

The Labor Conference also adopted several ''recommendations"
relating to agriculture. One of them is: "That each Member of the
International Labor Organization endeavor to develop vocational
agricultural education and in particular to make such education

International Child Labor Legislation 35

available to agricultural wage-earners on the same conditions as to
other persons engaged in agriculture."

The Conference further recommended :

"I. That the Members of the International Labor Organization
take steps to regulate the employment of children under the age
of 14 years in agricultural undertakings during the night in such
a way as to insure to them a period of rest compatible with their
physical necessities and consisting of not less than 10 consecutive
hours.

"II. That the Members of the International Labor Organization
take steps to regulate the employment of young persons between the
ages of 14 and 18 years in agricultural undertakings during the
night in such a way as to insure to them a period of rest compatible
with their physical necessities and consisting of not less than 9
consecutive hours.

Also — ''That each Member of the International Labor Organi-
zation take measures to insure to women wage-earners employed in
agricultural undertakings protection before and after childbirth sim-
ilar to that provided by the Draft Convention adopted by the Inter-
national Labor Conference at Washington for women employed in
industry and commerce, and that such measures should include the
right to a period of absence from work before and after childbirth
and to a grant of benefit during the said period, provided either out
of public funds or by means of a system of insurance."

A draft convention was adopted fixing the minimum age for the
admission of young persons to employment as trimmers or stokers
on vessels:

"Article I. For the purpose of this Convention, the term

Vessel' includes all ships and boats, of any nature whatsoever,

engaged in maritime navigation, whether publicly or privately

owned; it excludes ships of war.

"Article II. Young persons under the age of eighteen years

shall not be employed or work on vessels as trimmers or stokers.
"Article III. The provisions of Article II shall not apply:
(a) to work done by young persons on school-ships or train-
ing-ships, provided that such work is approved and supervised

by public authority;

(6) to the employment of young persons on vessels mainly

propelled by other means than steam;

36 The American Child

(c) to young persons of not less than sixteen years of age,
who if found physically fit after medical examination, may be
employed as trimmers or stokers on vessels exclusively engaged
in the costal trade of India and of Japan, subject to regulations
made after consultation with the most representative organiza-
tions of employers and workers in those countries.

^'Article IV. When a trimmer or stoker is required in a port
where young persons of less than eighteen years of age only are
available, such young persons may be employed, and in that
case it shall be necessary to engage two young persons in place
of the trimmer or stoker required. Such young persons shall be
at least sixteen years of age.

"Article V. In order to facilitate the enforcement of the
provisions of this Convention, every shipmaster shall be re-
quired to keep a register of all persons under the age of eighteen
years employed on board his vessel, or a list of them in the arti-
cles of agreement, and of the dates of their births."

Still another of the draft conventions adopted provides that:

''The employment of any child or young person under 18 years
of age on any vessel other than vessels upon which only members of
the same family are employed, shall be conditional on the production
of a medical certificate attesting fitness for such work, signed by a
doctor who shall be approved by the competent authority.

''The continued employment at sea of any such child or young
person shall be subject to the repetition of such medical examination
at intervals of not more than one year, and the production, after
each such examination, of a further medical certificate attesting fit-
ness for such work. Should a medical certificate expire in the course
of a voyage, it shall remain in force until the end of the said voyage.

"In urgent cases, the competent authority may allow a young
person below the age of 18 to embark without having undergone the
examination provided for in Articles II and III of this Convention,
always provided that such an examination shall be undergone at the
first port at which the vessel calls."

It will be remembered that, at the second International Labor
Conference, held at Genoa in 1920, a draft convention was adopted
providing that: "Children under the age of 14 years shall ilot be
employed or work on vessels other than vessels upon which only

International Child Labor Legislation 37

members of the same family are employed." This restriction was
not to apply to work done by children on school-ships or training-
ships if such work were approved and supervised by public authority.

In Washington in 1919, where the first International Labor Con-
ference was held, a draft convention was adopted applying to the
admission of children in industrial undertakings: ** Children under
the age of 14 years shall not be employed or work in any public or
private industrial undertaking, or in any branch thereof, other than
an undertaking in which only members of the same family are em-
ployed." The term "industrial undertaking" was lengthily defined
in the draft convention, which was published in full in the American
Child for November, 1919. Incorporated in the provisions of the
Convention were several special modifications applying separately
to Japan and to India.

The Washington Conference adopted a draft convention con-
cerning the night work of young persons employed in industry, pro-
viding that — ''Young persons under eighteen years of age shall not
be employed during the night in any public or private industrial
undertaking, or in any branch thereof, other than an undertaking in
which only members of the same family are employed, except as
hereinafter provided for.

"Young persons over the age of sixteen may be employed during
the night in the following industrial undertakings on work which by
reason of the nature of the process, is required to be carried on con-
tinuously day and night:

(a) Manufacture of iron and steel; processes in which re-
verberatory or regenerative furnaces are used, and galvanizing
of sheet metal or wire (except the pickling process).

(b) Glass works.

{d) Manufacture of raw sugar.
{e) Gold mining reduction work."
There was also a recommendation that, "in view of the danger
involved to the function of maternity and to the physical develop-
ment of children, women and young persons under the age of eighteen
years be excluded from employment" in certain enumerated processes
involving the danger of lead poisoning.

The following members of the League of Nations have passed
acts providing for the ratification of, or giving effect to, the Wash-

38 The American Child

ington draft convention fixing the minimum age for admission of chil-
dren to industrial employment : British Columbia, Belgium, Czecho-
slovakia, Great Britain, Greece, Roumania.

The Washington Convention relating to night work of young
persons has been adopted by: British Columbia, Belgium, Denmark,
Great Britain, Greece, Roumania.

Bills are known to have been introduced providing for the rati-
fication or giving effect to both of these Washington draft conven-
tions in Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Denmark, France, Italy,
Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland. Germany
has a bill fixing the minimum age in accordance with the draft con-
vention, and Poland a bill concerning night work of young persons.
Some of these countries have adopted one or both of these draft
conventions, but their action had not, at last accounts, been officially
reported to the office of the International Labor Organization.

Great Britain, Germany, Italy and Sweden have passed measures
ratifying or giving effect to the Genoa draft convention fixing the
minimum age for admission of children to employment at sea. Bills
designed to the same end have been introduced in France, Poland,
the Netherlands and India. (We are using the terms "bill" and
''introduced" in a generic sense to indicate the initial steps in the
various countries toward the formal and final ratifications of the
Conference.)

It should be noted that although the first International Labor
Conference was held in Washington and the International Labor
Office has an American correspondent (Mr. Ernest Greenwood, 618
Seventeenth Street, Washington), the United States is not a member
of the League of Nations and therefore, of course, does not participate
in the affairs of the International Labor Organization as a member
nation. Quite apart from the question of membership in the League
of Nations, if it is a question now, America's participation in inter-
national labor agreements is subject to serious limitations due to
our form of government — both constitutional and traditional limi-
tations. In all our agreements with other nations, we must act as a
nation; but in labor legislation we commonly, and for the most
part necessarily, act as separate states. We are not sure of the con-
stitutionality of the federal child labor law — and if it stands the test,
it sets up only a few standards for only a few occupations, going about
as far, however, as circumstances permit.

NOTABLE GAINS IN NEW YORK'S CHILD
WELFARE LAWS

GEORGE A. HALL

The record of the New York Legislature of 1922 was a significant
one with respect to child-welfare legislation as well as in other ways.
Two factors entered into the adoption of an unusual amount of
forward-looking legislation relating to children. First and foremost,
credit should be given to the continuous personal attention shown
by Governor Miller to legislation of this character. His unflagging
interest in constructive measures to improve the condition of the
children of the state, particularly those found under unfortunate
conditions, was an inspiration to the legislators and to all having to
do with these child-welfare bills. In his message to the legislature
early in January, Governor Miller in clear-cut and definite manner
outlined a specific program of such legislation, practically all of which
was passed.

Another factor entering into the enactment of important chil-
dren's laws at the recent session was the activity of the New York
State Commission to Examine Laws Relating to Child Welfare.*
Acting in close co-operation with the Governor, this Commission was
responsible for the drafting of some of the more important bills
enacted. Other measures drafted by officials or by groups connected
with work for children were adopted by the Commission as a part of
its program. Of the twelve bills fathered by this Commission of
which Senator Charles W. Walton is Chairman, all were passed by
the senate and five by both houses. The remainder were unfortu-
nately killed by the rules committee of the assembly during the
closing days of the session.

* The Children's Court Act

Perhaps the most important of the new laws, because of its far-
reaching effect, is the children's court act. This measure, drafted

*Copies of Preliminary Report of the Commission to the legislature of 1922,
may be obtained on application to the Executive Secretary, 137 East 22nd St.,
New York City.

40 The American Child

by the Child Welfare Commission, provides for the establishment of
county children's courts to hear cases of child offenders and neglect.

For years an increasing amount of dissatisfaction has been
noticeable among those especially concerned with helping delinquent
and neglected children because of the failure of the present court
machinery in up-state counties to meet adequately their needs.
Especially has this been true in the rural sections of the state where
such children are brought before local justices of the peace. At the
present time more than thirty-seven hundred of these courts have
the power to take children from their homes and conomit them as
pubHc charges.

While sometimes one finds among these officials men who show
a sympathetic and constructive interest in the children arraigned
before them, unfortunately such justices are the exception rather
than the rule. Official and private investigations have conclusively
indicated the unfitness of many of them to handle the dehcate situa-
tions involved in the trial of children charged with delinquency or
who lack proper guardianship. Most of these justices are untrained
in the law and lack the qualifications needed in officials upon whom
rests the responsibility of working out a plan for providing for some
neglected child or for one who has gone wrong less through any
fault of his own than through the failure of the community to meet
properly his natural desires for self expression.

Three counties of the State — Monroe, Ontario and Chautauqua
— became sufficiently aroused over the inadequacy of such a system
to obtain, through special legislation, authority to establish county
children's courts. Under these laws, while children may be arrested
and brought before a justice of peace or a police court justice as
before, he must at once transfer such cases to the county children's
court.

Both the Governor and the Child Welfare Commission recom-
mended the enactment of a law giving other counties the benefit of
similar children's courts. Indeed, such action was felt to be incum-
bent upon the legislature in view of the overwhelming vote last
November approving the constitutional amendment authorizing the
legislature to enact laws to permit the establishment of separate
children's courts with broad equity powers. The Commission bill,
which became a law (chapter 547 of the laws of 1922) provides, in
brief, that separate children's courts shall be established in all coun-

Notable Gains in New York's Child Welfare Laws 41

ties outside the city of New York, Buffalo and Syracuse, and also out-
side the counties now operating under special acts. A judge must
be chosen at the next general election as children's court judge unless
the board of supervisors certifies that the county judge will be able
to take over the added duties. The court is given jurisdiction over
all neglected and dehnquent children, and over adults who contribute
to the delinquency of children. It also is to have the same jurisdic-
tion as is now vested in county courts over bastardy proceedings, in
the appointment of guardians and in adoption proceedings. Complete
machinery is provided for setting up a separate children's court,
including the probation service so necessary to insure its success.
In general, the court is similar to the courts now in operation in the
three counties mentioned, but the bill provides additional highly
desirable powers and privileges not granted those courts.

As Governor Miller well stated in his message to the legislature
in January: "The vote on the constitutional amendment was an
expression of public disapproval of the present system or lack of
system of dealing with neglected and delinquent children. Juvenile
delinquency should be dealt with in accordance with the condition
and needs of the child, not under the penal law or in accordance with
the rules of criminal procedure." The enactment of the Commission
bill on the subject marks a long step forward in making possible
proper treatment of child offenders and neglected children in all por-
tions of the state.

Changes in Poor Relief System

An important change also was made in the law governing the
administration of mothers' allowances. Since 1915 such allowances
have been administered generally by county boards of child welfare.
At the present time such boards grant these allowances in forty-seven
counties, but in Dutchess and Suffolk counties they are adminis-
tered through boards of child welfare handled under special statute
and in Westchester county they are handled under special statute
through its department of public welfare as a part of its child-caring
work. Boards of child welfare appointed in eleven counties are
unable to grant allowances for lack of appropriations, and in one
county no board has been appointed.

Information submitted to the Child Welfare Commission indi-

42 The American Child

cated that there was a growing demand in favor of unifying the care
of various classes of children in need of public aid. Instead of admin-
istering relief to the poor through county superintendents of the poor
and town overseers of the poor, mothers' allowances through boards
of child welfare and other forms of public aid through still different
agencies, it was felt that these lines of similar activity should be
combined under one agency. Especially was this feeling strong on
the part of county boards of supervisors which provide funds for
these agencies. A merger of these interests has already been tried
out in two counties — Dutchess and Suffolk — where a new type of
child welfare board assumes the care of all dependent, neglected,
delinquent and defective children in need of public assistance, out-
side of the courts.

Governor Miller, in the message previously mentioned, urged
attention to this subject in the following language: ''Our laws deal-
ing with dependent children are in a chaotic condition. There are
1,238 town, county and city officials having jurisdiction over chil-
dren. More than 20,000 children come in one way or another under
the jurisdiction of the poor law officials each year. The powers and
duties of such officials are not clearly defined."

The Commission was a unit in favor of combining under one
agency at least a portion of the duties relating to dependent children.
Conferences with officials of existing county child-welfare boards,
poor law officials and other interested agencies, showed much differ-
ence of opinion with respect to how far it was wise to go at this time
towards unifying the county care of all dependent children and with
respect to the agency which should assume these duties.

After extensive consideration of the entire subject, the Commis-
sion determined that it would be unwise at present to set up a new
agency for this work, and therefore recommended that the county
boards of child welfare be given additional powers which should
include the duties now exercised by poor law officials in relation to
the care of dependent children who become pubhc charges, and also
the authority to receive children who may be committed by the court.
The Commission regards the enactment of this bill (chapter 546 of
the laws of 1922) as a first step in the logical unification of all such
activities in each county. While a permissive statute, in harmony
with the recommendation of the Governor, it is befieved that the
law offers an effective opportunity for trying out the new plan.

Notable Gains in New York's Child Welfare Laws 43

Deaf and Dumb Children

Both Governor Miller and the Child Welfare Commission were
impressed with the anomalous situation found in the existing law
governing the granting of public aid to deaf and dumb children and
therefore recommended remedial legislation on this subject. Under
provisions of the education law, prior to the last session of the Legis-
lature, deaf and dumb children otherwise eligible could be educated
in institutions at state expense only after reaching the age of twelve.
Those under twelve years of age, if they were to be given the advan-
tages of such educational facilities as their condition required, in one
of the private institutions established for that purpose, must be granted
their appointment as county charges by local poor law officials. This
distinction appeared to the Commission manifestly an unnecessary
discrimination and a more just arrangement seemed to be that deaf
and dumb children should be made as the blind children now are —
the specific beneficiaries of the state for educational purposes with-
out regard to age. A bill was drafted in harmony with the views of
the state department of education and the state board of charities,
and approved by the Commission (chapter 327 of the laws of 1922).
It provides that hereafter deaf and dumb children five years of age
and upward shall be eligible for appointment as state pupils at state
expense in one of the institutions authorized by law for the deaf and
dumb.

Issuance of Employment Papers

It will be recalled that the legislature of 1921 transferred the
duty of issuing employment certificates to children from local health
officers to the school authorities, and provided detailed procedure to
govern the manner in which this work should be done. In the ad-
ministration of this law by school officials, certain defects were found
which needed to be corrected. The department of labor also pointed
out provisions which in its opinion miHtated against efficient inspec-
tion work by that department. After conference between oflScials
of the state departments interested, and with representatives of pri-
vate organizations particularly concerned with this subject, amend-
ments were adopted to correct these defects which will, it is beheved,
materially aid in making the law work more smoothly.

Under the new law (chapter 464 of the laws of 1922), the present
procedure for issuing employment certificates is changed, so that all

44 The American Child

the preliminaries for obtaining an employment certificate must be
met before the child goes to the prospective employer for a pledge of
employment and only the bare issuance of the certificate remains to
be done.

A new employment certificate for agricultural work only may
be issued in the name of the child instead of in the name of the em-
ployer and may be used for successive employers, each of whom is
required to endorse on the back of the certificate the beginning and
ending of the term of employment and the character of work per-
formed by such minor. A similar new provision applies to vacation
certificates which are limited to a period of not more than five months.

Other Measures Passed

Considering bills affecting children introduced from other sources,
the administration measure to safeguard motherhood and protect the
health of infants and children is of outstanding importance (chapter
402 of the laws of 1922). This bill, frankly advocated by Governor
Miller as an offset to a similar proposal which was drawn to en-
able New York State to participate in the benefits of the Sheppard-
Towner federal maternity aid law, was prepared to authorize the
state department of health to conduct an extensive campaign on
this subject independent of federal funds and supervision. The law
appropriates $130,000 which, with the $30,000 previously granted in
the budget of the state department of health for child hygiene pur-
poses, will place at the disposal of the health department the same
amount of money which might have accrued through participation
in the Sheppard-Towner law. The present bureau of child hygiene
in the department of health is merged in a new division of maternity,
infancy, and child hygiene. Among its powers and duties the law
provides that the division shall exercise the following:

Making surveys and studies of local conditions influencing

the health of mothers and children.

Advising localities as to providing adequate care of mothers

and infants, and children to whom such care is not otherwise

available.

Holding health consultations for mothers and children in

the rural districts in co-operation with local health officers and

other physicians.

l*5^Sik.<i

Notable Gains in New York^s Child Welfare Laws 45

Instructing local public health nurses in the hygiene of
maternity and infancy.

Making available to mothers through instruction by physi-
cians, nurses and pubhcations, information concerning the hy-
giene of maternity and infancy.

Supervision and training of midwives.
Prevention of blindness in infancy.

The care and rehabilitation of crippled children not other-
wise provided for.

PubHc instruction by means of moving pictures, and lectures
and other methods regarding preventable conditions affecting
infant and maternity deaths.

Several other bills relating to young persons became law, of
which space will only permit a brief description. In 1921 the domes-
tic relations law was amended in spite of opposition from many
agencies to permit under certain conditions the superintendent of a
hospital in whose care an illegitimate child has been given by its
mother for purposes of adoption, to give consent to the adoption of
such a child. This provision was further amended by the last legis-
lature (chapter 628 of the laws of 1922) to provide additional limita-
tions under which such work may be done and to require reports to
the state board of charities. While the new law is a slight improve-
ment, in the opinion of many persons interested in this work, it is
felt that it does not get at the root of the evil, the eradication of
which would mean the complete repeal of the provision granting
hospital superintendents such authority.

A bill amending the prison law (chapter 645 of the laws of 1922)
provides that a child born to an inmate of a prison shall not be re-
turned to the institution in which the mother is confined unless it be
a reformatory, and the officer in charge may upon proper proof being
furnished by the father or other relative of their ability to care for
and maintain the child, give such child into the care and custody of
the father or other relative; otherwise such officer shall place the
child in charge of the proper poor law officer.

Another amendment to the domestic relations law affects mar-
riages of persons under eighteen years of age. Heretofore if an action
to annul a marriage on this ground was instituted, the court had
no other recourse but to order such marriage annulled. The new
amendment (chapter 313 of the laws of 1922) provides that the annul-

46 The American Child

ment shall be in the discretion of the court, which shall take into
consideration all the facts and circumstances surrounding such
marriage.

A number of other laws were also enacted affecting children in
relation to penal and civil proceedings in courts.

Among the Child Welfare Commission bills which failed of enact-
ment were the following:

A bill, introduced at the request of the New York Child
Labor Committee, to restrict to forty-eight hours a week the
employment of minors sixteen to eighteen years of age.

A bill, introduced at the request of the New York Child
Labor Committee, to authorize local school superintendents to
retain in school until their sixteenth birthday, fifteen-year-old
children who have not completed an eight-year elementary
school course.

Two bills, introduced at the request of the state depart-
ment of education, to provide courses of study for training ap-
prentices and establishing the necessary machinery therefor.

A bill to repeal various provisions in various laws, legalizing
the binding out of children under indentures.

Two measures to permit granting allowances to mothers
where fathers are physically disabled or have been in a state
prison under a minimum sentence of at least two years.
Another measure authorizing boards of child welfare to grant
an allowance to the lawful guardian of children of a mother otherwise
eligible who are not within care or custody of mother by reason of
her death, insanity, or temporary illness, was approved by the legis-
lature but vetoed by the Governor.

In preparation for the legislative session of 1923, the Child Wel-
fare Commission is making a careful study of the laws relating to
children to see what further constructive changes may be desirable
in order to make them protect better the interests of children, and
also to rewrite, wherever deemed necessary, certain of the laws or
parts thereof with a view to simplifying their language, eliminating
obsolete or duplicate material and generally clarifying the provisions.

The tragedy of all great cities is the tragedy of the child-life of the slums.-
— Robert W. Mackenna, in "The Adventures of Life." •

THE SCHOOL^AGE CAMPAIGN IN
MASSACHUSETTS

MADELEINE HUNT APPEL

The campaign to raise the age for compulsory school attendance
from fourteen to sixteen in Massachusetts was renewed during the
present session of the Legislature by a number of organizations,
including the Massachusetts Child Labor Committee. As a result
of the interest which has been aroused in the question the audi-
torium of the State House was well filled when House Bill No. 611 was
heard before the Committee on Education on February twenty-first.

The proponents presented a mass of material in support of the
measure. Because of their age and meagre education the openings
for children who leave school at fourteen are limited for the most
part to unskilled jobs with little or no future. Moreover, they drift
from one position to another often with weeks of unemployment
intervening. A study made by the Massachusetts Child Labor
Committee of the working history of 324 Boston children shows
that one-half of the terminated jobs had been held for less than
three months.

This drifting existence is not the best kind of life for adolescent
boys and girls, who are especially in need of the stabilizing influence
of the school. A study of the Boston court records of fourteen and
fifteen-year-old children for 1920 revealed the fact that there was
proportionately six times as much delinquence among children who
had left school as among children who were still in school.

Material was also presented to show the effects upon health of
allowing children to enter industry at the critical age of adolescence.
According to a governm.ent report the death rate for cotton-mill
operatives between fifteen and nineteen is 80 per cent to 95 per cent
greater than for non-operatives. This is especially significant in
view of the fact that 39 per cent of Massachusetts' 43,000 working
children are employed in textile mills. Medical experts appointed
by the Children's Bureau state that because of the physiological and

48 The American Child

psychological readjustments which make special demands upon the
vitality of the child during adolescence, ''it is of paramount import-
ance that he should be protected . . . from the physical and ner-
vous strain which entrance into industry inevitably entails."

The Arkwright Club, the textile manufacturers* organization,
opposed the measure vigorously, claiming that the industry was in
a serious condition. Data subsequently given out by the Labor
Bureau, however, show that the earnings of Fall River mills were
at the rate of 11 per cent per annum during the first part of the
current year. The counsel for the Associated Industries admitted
that industry could adjust itself to the change, but thought that it
should not be made until the schools were equipped to offer courses
suited to the needs of these children. This idea was expressed also
by several school men, although 71 per cent of the superintendents
who replied to a questionnaire favored the measure, 55 per cent
unqualifiedly and 16 per cent with reservations. Readjustments
in the school system must necessarily follow rather than precede
such legislation.

Others opposed the bill because of the insufficiency of school
buildings and the increased expense to local communities, but in-
formation secured by the Massachusetts Child Labor Committee
showed that the legislation would not necessitate any new buildings
in 69 per cent of the cities and towns of the state and that in an
additional 14 per cent the building cost would be less than $25,000.
For the annual support of the schools the increase in cost would be
less than 6 per cent. The former United States Commissioner of
Education writes in a recent article that "doubling the total of all
expenditures for pubhc schools (in Massachusetts) in 1920 would have
added one dollar only in ten to the total of all taxes for that year,"
so a 6 per cent increase in the tax rate would be almost negligible.

The Committee on Education was divided upon the bill, but
finally rendered an adverse report on March 29, with six of the
committee members dissenting.

Nations, like individuals, live not by bread alone.— Henry C. Wallace.

"A nation is a host of men united by some God-begotten mood, some .hope
of liberty or dream of power or beauty or justice or brotherhood."

SHORTCOMINGS IN CHILD PROTECTION

ETHEL M. JOHNSON

Massachusetts holds a prominent place in labor legislation, and
especially in legislation for the protection of women and children.
Our child labor law has in the past been a model for other states.
Both in the enactment and in the enforcement of such measures,
Massachusetts holds an enviable rank. Much, however, remains to
be done. There are many conditions which require correction. We
have children as young as those in the Western beet fields working in
our own onion and tobacco fields. In many of our cities and towns,
the street trades regulations are not well enforced. We have a high
accident rate among our working children, and an exceedingly high
morbidity and mortality rate among juvenile operatives in our textile
mills.

We are falHng behind some of the more progressive states in our
age standards for working children. We have already fallen behind
in our educational standards. Up to a few years ago we permitted
boys and girls of fourteen to leave school for work if they could meet
the fourth grade requirements in reading, writing and spelling. That
is barely literacy. And at the present time our requirements in this
respect are only ability to meet the tests for completion of the sixth
grade. A number of states make the eighth grade the minimum
requirement. We have within the last year or two established con-
tinuation schools throughout the state for working children fourteen
to sixteen years of age. In several states, however, including New
York, continuation school attendance is required of all working chil-
dren up to the age of eighteen years, and for eight hours a week, in
comparison to our four hour minimum.

We deceive ourselves if we think that industry, to any appreciable
extent, can offer training to the thousands of children that it annually
receives. The apprenticeship system, where work and education were
combined, where the work meant real vocational training, belongs to
a period of the past. We are now in a highly developed era, an era
of the machine, when the demand is not for the craftsman, but for
the workman, who supplies, not so much brain and skill as labor
power. Children are wanted, not as novices to learn a trade, but as

50 The American Child

so many nimble fingers to perform one monotonous process over and
over again, or as so many arms and legs to carry and trot. Of the
children under sixteen who go to work, nearly nine-tenths enter
occupations that have little or no educational value. Of the forty
thousand child workers between fourteen and sixteen years of age in
this State, over one-third are employed in textile mills at such simple
processes as sweeping, doffing, or as general helpers. The next largest
group work for stores, wrapping bundles, delivering goods, or running
errands. Job shifting is very frequent among the younger workers.
A study made by the Children's Bureau showed that in Boston ap-
proximately one-half of the children of this age change their positions
every six months, or oftener.

Here in Massachusetts we endeavor to safeguard the child four-
teen to sixteen years of age who is about to enter industry, by requir-
ing him to meet certain minimum standards as to age, education and
physical fitness. He must, before he is permitted to leave school to
go to work, secure an employment certificate. He must present proof
that he is at least fourteen years of age, and that he has attended
school for 130 days since his thirteenth birthday. He must prove
that he can meet the requirements for completion of the sixth grade.
He must present an employer's pledge or promise to employ him in
a specific occupation in accordance with the provisions of the child
labor law. In addition, he must present a certificate signed by a
physician, stating that the physician has thoroughly examined him,
and that in his opinion the child is in sufficiently sound health and
physically able to perform the work for which he is applying.

We try to protect the child after he has entered industry by
restricting the occupations and processes at which he may be em-
ployed. There is a long list of employments prohibited for minors
under sixteen years of age. In general, these are employments which
have distinct health or accident or moral hazards. We try to protect
the working children by regulating the hours and other conditions of
their employment. We say that children under sixteen, with certain
exceptions, may not work more than eight hours in any one day, or
more than forty-eight hours a week, or more than six days a week,
or before half past six o'clock in the morning or after six o'clock in
the evening.

There are, however, practical difficulties and limitations in afford-
ing this intended protection. First, with respect to the protection

Shortcomings in Child Protection 51

given to the child about to enter industry. The examination, which
is to determine whether the child is well enough and strong enough
to go to work and to engage in a particular kind of work, in the great
majority of instances fails to accomplish this purpose; because if
any examination is made, it is apt to be so superficial as to be of little
value. An investigation of the methods employed in examining chil-
dren for health certificates in the different cities and towns through-
out the state was made in 1919 by the former Board of Labor and
Industries. This study showed that to a large extent the work was
hastily and carelessly performed; that in many instances no exami-
nation was made, the certificate being signed after a casual inspec-
tion, and sometimes without even this formality. Under the present
law, it is very difficult to secure more satisfactory results, because
any physician may sign the certificate; for there is no one who may
be held responsible, no one to whom standards may be presented or
suggestions made.

The intent of this requirement for health certificates is to prevent
children who are physically unfit from going into industry at all, and
to see that those who do go to work do not enter occupations which
will mean an injury to their health. This implies that the physician
making the examination should know something about the physical
demands of the occupation in question, and whether the condition
and physique of the child is such as to make it safe for him to engage
in it. It means, or should mean, that the child who is defective physi-
cally should not be employed; that the child with any suggestion of
tubercular tendency will not be permitted to work in dusty trades;
that the child with defective vision will not be certified for work
involving eye strain; or the child with a weak heart for work requir-
ing lifting or running up and down stairs.

As this work is now performed, very few children are excluded
from industry because of defects. In some of the large industrial
cities, as shown by the study referred to, out of the thousands of
children applying for health certificates, practically none were judged
to be physically unfit for work. On the other hand, there is the evi-
dence from the draft, the very large proportion of young men and
boys from the industrial centers who were rejected because of physi-
cal unfitness. It would be unfair to ascribe the responsibility for this
situation mainly to industry, as is sometimes done. To a consider-
able extent, the result is due to the fact that there were no adequate

52 The American Child

safeguards provided when these boys, as children, entered industry.
Some probably had defects which should have excluded them from
industry altogether; some started to work at too early an age ; some
were permitted to enter occupations for which they were physically
unfitted; and still others, with defects of a correctable nature, were
allowed to go to work without having those defects corrected so that
their effect, combined with the strain of industry, weakened and
broke them down.

It is difficult to provide the needed protection to children before
they enter industry. It is even more difficult to protect them after
they have entered industry. Because of the practical impossibility
of frequent inspections with a limited staff of inspectors, it is possible
for unscrupulous employers in remote sections of the State to permit
children to work on dangerous machines or at forbidden occupations.
It is an easy thing for a child to shift from a permitted to a prohibited
process in the same establishment, particularly if the processses are
at all similar. It is difficult to confine children to the supposedly
safe areas in industry. Young children are naturally irresponsible
and careless. With all the safeguards which we try to place around
young children in industry, there were last year 818 children, four-
teen to sixteen years of age, who suffered some form of industrial
injury involving loss of time from employment. In five instances
the injury resulted fatally, and in thirteen instances it meant some
form of handicap for life.

Some of the most serious accidents that occur to children are
due, not to the fault of the employef", but directly to the lack of re-
sponsibiUty on the part of the child, and indirectly to the lack of
responsibility on the part of society that permits children to be in
industry at so immature an age. In many instances, young boys
get hurt by trying to operate a machine which is near their work;
although they are not supposed to touch it. A little boy last year
was crushed to death by a freight elevator; he was not employed on
the elevator, he was not supposed to operate it or work on it, but he
worked near where it was; he tried to operate it and he lost his life.
A little girl employed in a factory, legally employed at a safe per-
mitted process, climbed on a bench to reach for something; her hair
was caught on the shafting overhead, and she was scalped. In such
instances, who is to blame, the child, the employer, or society that
can afford no better protection for its children?

NEW YORK YOUTHS AND THEIR JOBS

"Our Boys" is the title of a report prepared by Howard B.
Burdge for the New York State MiUtary Training Commission and
having the sub-title; ''A study of the 245,000 sixteen, seventeen and
eighteen-year-old employed boys of the State of New York." The
report embodies a variety of data obtained in connection with putting
into force the Military Training Law.

The estimated population of boys of these ages (December 3,
1918) is 364,000. The majority are out of school. ThQ following
general statistics are taken from the chapter entitled ''Findings and
Conclusions" :

1. Six-sevenths of all sixteen, seventeen and eighteen-year-old boys in
New York State are out of school.

2. Three-fourths of the sixteen-year-old boys are out of school.

3. Seven-eighths of the seventeen-year-old boys are out of school.

4. Fifteen-sixteenths of the eighteen-year-old boys are out of school.

5. Of every seven boys still in school four are sixteen years old, two are
seventeen and one is eighteen

6. About 54 per cent of these boys live in Greater New York.

7. 74,8 per cent Uve in the cities of the State.

8. 77.7 per cent live in places over 5,000 population having a superinten-
dent of schools.

9. Only 16.3 per cent live in strictly rural communities.

The report deals mainly with the employed group. We quote
the following summary statements concerning the working boys six-
teen, seventeen and eighteen years of age :

NATIONALITY

1. In Greater New York sixty per cent have both parents foreign born,
ten per cent one parent foreign born and thirty per cent both parents
American born.

2. In Greater New York twenty per cent of the boys are foreign born.

3. About ten per cent of the boys outside of Greater New York are foieign
born.

4. In general the foreign population is greater in the larger cities, although
there is no direct correlation between the population of individual cities
and the per cent of foreign population.

5. The type of foreign population varies greatly in the smaller cities.

6. In Greater New York the foreign population is very cosmopolitan.

7. Only three per cent of the employed farm boys are foreign born.

8. With the exception of the English, Scotch and Canadians over ninety
per cent of the foreign parents are of the same nationality. The Italians
record of over ninety-three per cent is the highest.

54 The American Child

GUARDIANSHIP

1. Only four boys out of five claim the father as guardian.

2. Only 73.7 per cent of American boys with American parents as com-
pared with 84.7 per cent of foreign boys with foreign parents claim the
father as a guardian. Where one parent is foreign born the record is
80.9 per cent.

3. Twice as many fathers as mothers were reported dead.

4. In some communities only seventy per cent of the boys claim the father
as a guardian.

5. Five per cent of the boys have neither a father nor a mother as a guar-
dian.

FAMILIES

1. About half of these boys come from famiHes of four, five and six children.

2. Foreign families are larger than American families.

3. More Americans than foreigners have extremely large and extremely
small famiUes.

PERSISTENCE IN SCHOOL

1. Over sixty-five per cent remained in school one or more years beyond
the compulsory age limit.

2. Over thirty per cent left on or before reaching the legal age for leaving
school.

3. About six per cent left illegally.

4. In Greater New York sixty-eight per cent of American born boys with
American parents and sixty-four per cent of foreign born boys with
foreign parents remain one or more years beyond the legal age for
leaving school.

5. In the other cities seventy-two per cent of American boys with Amer-
ican parents and sixty-one per cent of foreign boys with foreign parents
remain one or more years beyond the legal age for leaving school.

6. The per cent of American boys who are still in school is greater than
the per cent of foreign boys in every one of a random selection of
eighteen large cities.

AGE LEAVING SCHOOL

Regardless of the size of the community, nationahty, parentage, guar-
dianship, and rank in family:

1. About thirty per cent left school before fifteen.

2. About thirty-eight per cent left school between fifteen and sixteen.

3. About twenty-six per cent left school between sixteen and seventeen.

4. The twenty-five per centile boy left school at about 14.8 years of age.

5. The median boy left school at about 15.5 years of age.

6. The seventy-five per centile boy left school at about 16.2 years of age.

LAST GRADES COMPLETED

1. The twenty-five per centile boy completed about 7.4 grades.

2. The median boy completed about 8.3 grades.

3. The seventy-five per centile boy completed about 8.8 grades.

4. The grades completed by the median boy vary from 8.3 in Greater
New York to 7.7 in the farm boy group.

5. Sixty-two per cent of the Greater New York boys completed the eighth
grade as compared with forty-two per cent of the employed farm
boys.

6. Greater New York sends fewer of these boys through the first year of
the high school than any of the other city and village groups.

New York Youths and Their Jobs 55

LAST GRADES COMFhETED— Continued

7. The average rate of progress per grade per year varies from 92,2 per
cent of a grade completed each year in Greater New York to only 82.8
per cent in the farm boy group.

8. Oldest boys make sHghtly better progress in school than their younger
brothers.

9. American born boys with two foreign parents show a higher rate of
progress than foreign born boys with foreign parents.

10. American boys with foreign parents in many nationality groups have a
higher rate of progress in school than American born boys with Amer-
ican parents.

11. The type of foreign population rather than the per cent of foreign pop-
ulation influences the average rate of progress per grade per year in
various communities.

12. In the larger nationahty groups where both the boys and parents are
foreign born the Scotch, Scandinavians and Russian Jews have an
average rate of progress of over ninety-one per cent and the Italians of
only eighty per cent. Where the boys are born in America and both
parents are foreign born the Scotch, Scandinavians, Russian Jews
Germans and Austro-Hungarians, all have an average rate of progress
of about ninety-five per cent while the ItaUans have an average of
88.7 per cent.

13. American born boys with foreign parents have a higher average rate
of progress per grade per year than foreign born boys with foreign par-
ents and in many cases they excel the records of American boys with
American parents.

REASONS FOR LEAVING SCHOOL

1. The vast majority of these boys left school because "they wanted to go
to work" and not because they were obliged to.

2. Less than fifteen per cent reported that they were obhged to go to
work.

3. In New York City thirty per cent gave grade graduation as a reason
for leaving.

KIND OF SCHOOL LAST ATTENDED

1. About ninety per cent of the boys received their education in the public
schools.

SHOP WORK DONE IN SCHOOL

1. Relatively few boys received any training in State-aided vocational
schools.

BEST AND LEAST LIKED STUDIES

1. Mathematics is the best Hked study.

2. Enghsh is the least liked study. .

3. The maximum hkes and disUkes for different subjects vary widely m
the different grades.

4. Likes and dislikes are not influenced by foreign birth.

MONEY EARNED WHILE IN SCHOOL

1. The majority of boys earn Httle money while in school.

NIGHT SCHOOL ENROLLMENT

1. Less than ten per cent attend night school.

2. Over sixty per cent state that they do not wish to attend.

3. Less than three per cent of foreign born boys attend night school.

56 The American Child

WAGES

1. The twenty-five per centile boys received between twelve and fifteen
dollars per week.

2. The median boy received between fifteen and eighteen dollars per week.

3. The seventy-five per centile boy received between nineteen and twenty-
two doUars per week.

OBTAINING EMPLOYMENT

1. Less than two per cent of the boys are assisted by schools, churches
and employment agencies in getting employment.

2. About one-fourth get their jobs through friends and acquaintances.

3. About three-fourths get them by applying.

LENGTH OF TIME ON LAST JOB

1. Over forty per cent spent less than four and one-half months on their
last job.

2. About sixty per cent spent less than seven and one-half months on
their last job.

WHY THEY LIKED THEIR JOBS

1. About one-fifth liked their jobs because it was easy.

2. About one-fourth liked their job because it was interesting.

3. About ten per cent did not like them and would soon change employment.

CARE USED IN HIRING BOYS

1. No systematic effort is made to fit the boy to his job.

MONEY SAVED

1. In Greater New York forty per cent did not save any money and only
ten per cent saved in banks.

2. Outside of Greater New York about twenty-five per cent saved no
money and twenty per cent saved in banks.

3. About fifty per cent of all boys bought Liberty Bonds and War Savings
Stamps.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO FAMILY SUPPORT

1. The per cent contributing nothing toward family support varies from
10.5 m Greater New York to 19.6 in villages over 5,000 population.

2. In Greater New York 77.4 per cent contributed ten or more dollars
per week as compared with only 59.6 per cent in the villages over 5,000.

3. The median contribution in each city and village group falls between
ten and fifteen dollars per week.

4. Foreign born boys contribute more than American born boys.

OCCUPATIONS

There is a distinct correlation between

1. Fathers' and boys' occupations.

2. Fathers' and boys' desired occupations.

3. Boys' present and desired occupations.

4. Last grade completed and type of occupation.

5. There is no more correlation in the eighteen year old group than in the
sixteen year old group in the four items above.

6. Most boys leaving school on or before completing the eighth grade
enter and desire to enter the industrial trades and occupations.

7. Most boys who complete one or more years in the high school enter
and desire to enter professional, clerical and retail business occupations.

8. There is httle correlation between boys' present and desired occtipa,-
tions and best and least liked studies.

CHILDHOOD FIRST-AND LAST!

RAYMOND G. FULLER

The trouble with most of our courses and textbooks in child psy-
chology is their suffusion with practical aims — childhood is tempor-
ary, childhood is formative, childhood is of little or no importance on
its own account. Our knowledge of child nature, seemingly, is worth
while only as it serves some purpose ulterior to childhood itself. We
study child nature with reference to numerous social and educational
problems, almost forgetting the child. We have a child psychology
applied to schooling, a child psychology applied to morals and de-
linquency, a child psychology applied to play and recreation, and
are beginning to have one applied to work and child labor, but we
fail of a child psychology applied to childhood.

Our child psychologies are over-professionalized — designed not
so much to illumine the realm of childhood as to throw light on our
own tasks; not so much to enable us to help children to be children
in the present, as to help us get them by the period of childhood
safely and with profit, as we say, to themselves and to society. The
purpose and spirit of these child psychologies is utilitarian and prac-
tical, rather than appreciative and reverential.

Take, for instance, what we call "educational psychology." To
a large extent it is merely pedagogy and school management. It
simpUfies and eases the tasks of teachers and administrators, and
promotes efficiency of instruction and discipline. It employs the
new knowledge of child nature to lubricate the old machinery of
education. It shows how to run the educational mill, how to induce
pupils to learn their lessons, how to make scholastic ends meet at
examination and promotion time. It places the schools first and the
child afterward.

The reform of educational psychology and even of the schools
has begun. Writers Hke John Dewey and innovators like Marietta
Johnson are exerting a constantly widening influence on schoolmen
and laymen. Theirs is an educational psychology that would fit the

58 The American Child

schools to child nature. It is one that conduces to a truly sympa-
thetic understanding of children as they are — one that recognizes the
fact that the condition of being really and truly a child is the great
educational desideratum. Being a child is much more significant,
educationally, than becoming an adult. The former involves and
includes the latter.

What is true of our child psychologies, as such, is likewise true
of our general attitude, as child-welfare workers, toward childhood.
We are inclined to look upon childhood as a problem to be solved
rather than an object of service. Children require so much looking
after, lest they come to harm or make trouble, and in order that they
may be properly trained and educated! It's a nuisance, really.
Child welfare is thought of as a means to an end, rather than an end
in itself. It constitutes a job — and parenthetically, furnishes jobs.
No doubt our child-welfare work is socially necessary. No doubt the
spirit of social service on which we pride ourselves is admirable.
But perhaps our welfare work is quite as necessary to the child as it
is to society, and perhaps we could do with a little more of the spirit
of child service. Perhaps, unawares, we are neglecting the child,
neglecting him in our philosophy of child-welfare work, insofar as
we have such a philosophy.

Child-welfare work should be carried on in accordance with the
behavioristic philosophy. The essential element in this philosophy
is the idea that, in order to know the needs of man, we must know
how he is dynamically constituted — and so also of the child. It
regards human needs from the standpoint of human nature and recog-
nizes that at any given moment the individual possesses humanly
natural needs corresponding to inner impulsions, hungers and desires
which are neither good nor bad in themselves and which have a
rightful and necessary expression in one form or another, whether
the form be right or otherwise.

While the science of behavioristic psychology studies these
humanly natural needs, their origin, and their relation to growth,
development, and the integration of personality, behavioristic phil-
osophy is concerned only with the fact that these needs exist and the
fact, further, that the individual is always, so to speak, in a state of
behavior. It is concerned not with the future of the individual but
rather with his needs in the present as a behaving organism. It
treats these needs with respect, and assumes that complete living

Childhood First — and Last! 59

today is the best guarantee of complete living tomorrow. The future
is more or less incidental. The welfare of the adult is a by-product
of the welfare of the child.

The spirit of behavioristic philosophy is opposed to repression,
prohibition and negation; it would keep human nature always active
and busy and provide abundant opportunity for its expression in
forms wholesome and beneficial. It would substitute doing for not
doing, doing this for not doing that, and, never forgetting that the
normal life is a life of behavior, would give thought not to the "bad-
ness'' of human nature but to the goodness of the environmental
medium in which human nature expresses itself, in which behavior
takes place, and in which character and conduct, happiness and wel-
fare, are determined.

The present is the most important period or moment in any
human life. It is really the only important time. It sums up all the
past of the race and of the individual; it is the starting point of all
the future. Needs change in consequence of the constant interaction
between heredity and environment; but life is continuous, and there
must be at no time any neglect of present needs. Normality and full-
ness of development depend on a constant condition of complete and
wholesome living in the present.

The glory of the child is his childhood and the proper object
of child welfare work is the welfare of the child. This may seem
a truism, but if it be, it is one whose meaning we are far from accept-
ing in practice. Always to maintain the child's welfare does, indeed,
require more knowledge than we yet possess but it also requires a
different conception of purpose on our own part. Our so-called
problems of child welfare — child labor and juvenile delinquency,
etc., — are really consequences of our failure to deal adequately with
the one problem of child welfare. This failure determines not only
our forms and divisions of child welfare work, but also to a large
extent our spirit and attitude. Child welfare work is in the same
position, practically and theoretically, as social work generally,
which a recent writer describes as Society's "salvage and repair
service." There is need of salvage and repair service, surely, but
the conception of neither social work nor child welfare work should
be so limited. Child welfare work, in spirit and application, should
be liberated from its own failures, or — shall we say? — from Society's
failures.

A Good Reason

Mother — 'There were two apples in the cupboard, Tommy,
and now there is only one. How's that?''

Tommy (who sees no way of escape) — "Well, ma, it was so dark
in there I didn't see the other."

— School and Home.

Humor in school publicity: e.g., a boy whose reason for staying
out of school was ''sickness":

"Who's sick? Your father?"

"No!"

"Your mother!"

"No!"

"Who, then!"

"The Truant Officer."

— Public Service.

Walter, the Little News Seller

If Walter, age 11, had been given any kind of physical examina-
tion before he began work as a paper carrier he would not have been
allowed even to "try it out." He is frail, undernourished, under size,
and extremely nervous. His route required him to rise between 4:30
and 5:00 a.m., go to the corner half a mile distant, get the pack of
about 100 papers left by the street car, and deliver them to his
patrons before six o'clock.

On Saturday he had to spend a couple of hours collecting, and
if he made all his collections and no one moved away without paying,
he would clear $3.00 for a week's work. If a patron failed to receive

Spice Shelf 61

his paper before 7 a.m., he was instructed to telephone the office of
the circulating manager; and a special messenger was dispatched
with the precious paper, and twenty-five cents per copy was deducted
from Walter's account.

Several things went badly the first week of the child's experience
as a "wage earner," or rather as a merchant, so that on Saturday he
had less than $1.00 left for his week's work. During the two weeks
following the circulating manager's office was besieged with irate
patrons who had not received their papers. Three, five, six, seven
in number, day after day. Poor Httle Walter's account was closed
and he had to give up, owing the paper many precious dollars.

An older boy then took the route and in a few days found the
offending billy-goat that had made regular rounds gathering papers
for his own use. Walter's mother says, "Never again for Walter."

America suffers today from ignorance more than any other single tyranny.
Our children may have knowledge of the facts necessary for individual living.
Our youth may acquire professional training of high degree. Their minds,
however, have not been focused upon those truths which are so essential to a
democratic community. Positive lack of knowledge of American conditions is
chiefly responsible for the continuation of some evils. Failure to be inteUigent
upon public issues accounts for much of our weakness. The people need
knowledge. — Marion Le Roy Burton, President, University of Michigan.

One of the first points to be made clear to the minds of the public is that
physical disease offers fewer obstacles to a national efficiency than do defects
or disorders of mentality. It is not intended to slight the importance of physi-
cal examinations, especially when made in youth for the purpose of controlling
disease tendencies at their beginning, nor to minimize the social significance of
tuberculosis and especially of syphilis, which is so prone to disable the nervous
system. The health of the country has gained enormously by granting arbi-
trary powers in these matters to boards of health, and the public is firmly con-
vinced of the value of the policy. But the physical diseases are neither so
widespread nor so disastrous to character as mental impairments, and yet
the public persists in seeing in them the chief medical obstacles to prosperity.
Psychological obstacles are not so manifest, and it will be some time before
psychologists or alienists are given the confidence and authority accorded to
workers in general hygiene. Yet a recognition that mental health is the best
assurance of national security and power must come to the country which hopes
to be prosperous and happy. — Dr. Pearce Bailey, in Mental Hygiene, April, 1917.

Juvenile Delinquency. Henry H. Goddard. New York: Dodd, Mead
& Co.

There is no longer any need for hit or miss guesswork procedure in hand-
ling problems of juvenile delinquency, is the opinion of the Director of the
Ohio Bureau of Juvenile Research in his "Juvenile Delinquency." On the
contrary, he believes that scientific handling of such cases is entirely possible.
This book is written on the premise that juvenile delinquency is largely erad-
icable, and the experiences of the Ohio Bureau are used throughout to prove
this point.

H. B. S.

Quicksands of Youth. Franklin Chase Hoyt. New York: Charles Scrib-
ner's Sons.

"Quicksands of Youth" presents, in narrative form, a number of incidents
from the records of the New York City Children's Court. These very readable
sketches are bound together with appropriate comment. Chapter headings are
as follows: "The Spirit of the Children's Court," "A Recruit for Law and
Order," "Citizens in the Making," "Twenty Months After," "The Gang in
Embryo," "In Quest of Change and Adventure," "Sometimes We Smile," "Sore
Let and Hindered," and "When the Call Comes to Them."

The volume has no scientific purpose but is designed simply to stimulate
popular interest in the problems of delinquency and neglect. All of the stories
told in it are based upon actual occurrences.

H. L. S.

Motion Pictures in a Typical City. Rev. J. J. Phelan, M.A., Ph.D. Toledo,
Ohio: Little Book Press.

"Motion Pictures in a Typical City* is a social survey of motion pictures
as a form of commercialized amusement in Toledo. The writer has attempted
to gather together and present all available social data on the subject. He
leaves the reader to make his own interpretations. Although the survey is
local, it may serve as a guide to other cities in approaching their own problems
of a similar nature.

H. L. S.
62

Book Reviews 63

Child Welfare- from the Social Point of View. Nora Milnes, B.Sc. New
York: E. P. Button & Co.

This book by the Director of the Edinburgh School of Social Study is a
deeply analytical study of child welfare. It begins with an exhaustive intro-
ductory chapter showing that child welfare should be regarded as one of the
studies of appHed economics, and follows up this premise through chapters in
which the subject is carefully scrutinized from every point of view.

It is an earnest, thoughtful, and conscientious work which may well be
recommended to everyone who has a serious interest in the study of child wel-
fare.

H. B. S.

Workers' Education. Arthur Gleason. New York: Bureau of Industrial
Research.

Workers' Education is the name given to the movement to provide educa-
tional opportunities for workers which shall be financed and controlled entirely
by workers' organizations. It has a specific aim: ''The liberation of the work-
ing class, individually and collectively." In quahty it is "scientific and cul-
tural, propagandist and civic, industrial and social."

A significant pamphlet has just been published by the Bureau of Industrial
Research, describing the aims and methods of Workers' Education and the
various developments of this idea in America; a few foreign examples, also,
are included.

G. H. F.

Junior Wage Earners. Anna Y. Reed, Ph.D., assisted by Wilson Woelpper.
New York: The Macmillan Company.

This book will be welcomed by many people who are interested in the
practically new field of junior vocational guidance. It is a carefully worked
out statement of the aim, policy and methods of the Junior Division of the
United States Emplo>Tnent SerA-ice, which was created to meet the serious
problem of the replacement in school or in industry of the young war workers.
Miss Reed was the head of this Division and is, therefore, most competent to
tell of their efforts to deal with the situation and their experiences in so doing.

H. B. S.

Nutrition and Growth in Children. WiUiam R. P. Emerson, M.D. New
York: D. Appleton and Company.

Dr. Emerson presents a comprehensive and detailed nutrition program
that has attracted wide attention throughout the country. After thirteen
years devoted to the study and treatment of malnourished children in nutrition

64 The American Child

classes he has found that the real causes of mahiutrition can be determined.
When these causes have been removed the child responds to the strong force
in nature that makes for recovery, and returns to health in a remarkably short
time. He has arrived at five chief causal factors which are in order of their
importance: physical defects, especially obstructions in breathing; lack of
home control; overfatigue; improper diet and faulty food habits; and faulty
health habits. This book presents an excellent working program covering
methods of deaUng with each of these five principal causes, — methods of diag-
nosis and identification, of removal of physical defects, of measured feeding, of
control of physical, mental and social activities to prevent overfatigue: also
prescribing the work of nutrition classes and clinics for treatment of malnu-
trition cases.

This book should especially recommend itself to parents.

J. H.

The Child and His School. Gertrude Hartman. E. P. Button & Co.

This book consists, for the most part, of selections from the writings of
well-known educational psychologists. Quotations from John Dewey pre-
dominate. The selections are so joined as to constitute a logical discussion of
the bases of education and the educative process. A considerable portion of
the volume is devoted to method in connection with the fundamental subjects
of the present curriculum. The sub-title of Miss Hartman's book is, "An In-
terpretation of Elementary Education as a Social Process." The volume con-
tains the gist of much of the best educational literature produced by the first-
rate thinkers in this field.

The Plat Movement in the United States. Clarence E. Rainwater. Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press.

A scholarly history, this book fills an important place. Emphasizes the
community idea in play and recreation.

Social Work. Edward T. Devine. New York: The Macmillan Company.

Historical, descriptive, philosophical, readable. The book deserves and
will receive a wide reading.

The Wonder World We Live In. Adam Gowans Whyte. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf.

- It is a book of science simply but not patronizingly written for children—
and grown-ups have been known to read it with pleasure and profit. Prof-jsely
illustrated.

Volume Four ATT/^TTCTT 10'>'> Issued Quarterly

Number Two /V U Vr U O 1 , 1 7^X Price $2 per Year

^;bn^r- ^^'^'^''^

SEVENTEENTH NATIONAL CONFERENCE
ON CHILD LABOR:

STREET TRADES REPORTS

EDITORIAL COMMENT
ON CHILD LABOR DECISION:

THE NEED OF AN AMENDMENT

PUBLISHED BY

■Natuinal (Eljtlli SCabnr Qlnmmittef

tncorporatefc to promote tbe interests of cbilfcren
105 East 22d Street, New York City

Entered as second-class matter, June 10. 1919, at the Post-ofHce at New York, N. Y.,
under the Act of August 24, 1912.

Accepted for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in
Section 1103, Act of October 3, 1917, authorized on July 10, 1918.

THIS NUMBER HFTY CENTS

PRESS OF CLARENCE S. NATHAN, INC., NEW YORK.
►271

CONTENTS

PAGE

Amend the Constitution- Owen R. Lovejoy 68

News Feom the Child Welfare Field:

Seventeenth National Conference on Child Labor 70

Text of Proposed Constitutional Amendment 72

Legislation in Virginia. 74

Legislation in Other States 76

Industrial Home Work of Children __ 76

Child Labor Prohibitions for Industrial Home Work 78

Commonwealth Fund Health Program 78

Milbank Memorial Fund Demonstration 79

A Review of "Rural Child Welfare" 80

Children of Wage-Earning Mothers 82

Factory Inspection in Jugo-Slavia..._ _ 83

Employment- Certificate Conference 84

Child Labor in Oyster and Shrimp-Canning Communities.- 85

Study of Child Welfare Laws in Alabama 87

Brevities 88

Editorial Comment on Child Labor Decision - 91

Seventeenth National Conference on Child Labor:

Connecticut Study of Street Trades H. M. Diamond 97

Enforcement of the Street Trades Law in Boston,

Madeleine H. Appel 104

Street Trades in Alabama Loraine B. Bush 107

Street Trades in Chicago F. Zeta Youmans 114

Street Trades in Pennsylvania Bruce Watson 120

A Model Street Trades Law...... Wiley H. Sv/ift 126

Juvenile Street Work in Iowa Sara A. Brown 130

Book Reviews 150

AMEND THE CONSTITUTION

The children of America are America's children, to protect
at home as well as abroad. This nation cannot adequately pro-
tect and develop itself without seeing to it that its boys and girls
are given a fair chance for safety from exploitation and for devel-
opment through education.

Those conditions making for child welfare and for national
welfare do not obtain while the states — ^many of them — are recal-
citrant in matters of child labor legislation, and the federal gov-
ernment is impotent to set up and maintain suitable minimum
standards under the Constitution as it stands.

Twice, the people of this country, through their representa-
tives in Congress, have sought to express their wish and will in
the form of a federal child labor law, and twice their humane and
patriotic purpose has fallen to naught by reason of constitutional
limitations as set forth in decisions of the United States Supreme
Court.

It has been published to the world that the United States of
America cannot protect its children in industry. There have been
two attempts and two failures, leaving little likelihood of effective
action by reliance on existing constitutional powers. Moreover,
any action would necessarily be indirect, for never, under the
present Constitution, has there been any possibility of federal
legislation dealing with child labor as child labor.

A nation that cannot protect its own children from industrial
exploitation should be ashamed of itself. It should at least have
the power to do so, even though it use the power only to make
up the deficiencies of state action and to set up a minimum stand-
ard of national decency which no state shall be allowed to abrogate.

Amend the Constitution 69

This power will give us respect in the eyes of our fellow nations,
and to our citizens at home it will give confidence that children
actually can and will be protected in whatever part of the country
they may live. It is a form of democratic insurance. There is
no democracy in permitting backward localities to use up child-
hood. We might as well speak of a democracy of robbery, of
murder.

The laws of twenty-eight states, in one respect or another,
are below the very reasonable standards fixed by the two federal
acts. Now that the second federal act has been declared invaUd,
Georgia children 12 years of age may be worked ten hours a day,
and children 143^^ all night long. In North Carolina children of
12 may be worked 11 hours a day during school vacations, and
children of 14 the same long work day the entire year. Important
mining states fall below the sixteen-year age limit for employment
in mines. Other shortcomings of existing state laws could be
mentioned. Reports coming in indicate that a host of children
are now going to work who would have been kept out of^child
labor if the federal act had remained in force.

Federal protection must be restored to these boys and girls.
We need to bear in mind, not only that some states have so far
failed to measure up to the federal standards, but that there is
no telling when, if left to themselves, some states that have as
high or higher standards, will slip back. It may turn out that a
constitutional amendment will be all the federal protection neces-
sary ; or in other words, that the states, knowing that Congress can
do the job, will themselves give full protection to America's child-
ren. If they do, legislation by Congress will not be needed; but
in any case, Congress should have the power to act.

(^^KJbs ^-SoJvv^l>^^N

v?iiyy*».) ,-■../-., *ii)r %.^^i^.

NEWS

FROM THE CHILD
WELFARE FIELD

Seventeenth National Conference on Child Labor

Cheerful determination to go on and finish the task of child
labor reform marked the discussion and plan-making at the Seven-
teenth National Conference on Child Labor, held at Providence,
Tuesday afternoon, July 27th. The decision in which the United
States Supreme Court had declared the federal child labor law un-
constitutional was treated with due seriousness, but with no sign
of pessimism. Resentment against the Supreme Court was declared
by several speakers to be unjustified and improper, and nobody dis-
sented from that view.

The decision, as Professor Samuel McCune Lindsay of Colum-
bia, the presiding officer, pointed out, was made by warm friends
of child labor reform. There is no occasion for seeking to put a
curb on the Supreme Court as a way out of the constitutional diffi-
culties. Rather, it is up to the people, if they want federal action
against child labor, to clear away these difficulties by amending the
Constitution.

Owen R. Love joy, general secretary of the National Child
Labor Committee, made public the tentative draft of an amendment
prepared by the National Committee. This draft amendment,
now somewhat modified in phraseology, exhibits several points of
special interest. It applies only to child labor. It attempts to
safeguard the states from any interference with, or substitution for,
the administration machinery which they have already built up in
the welfare field. That machinery sliould be preserved and devel-
oped, not weakened. In the third place, the draft amendment
leaves the states free to go, in child labor matters, as much farther
than the federal government as they may choose The standards
which the federal government may incorporate into law are to rep-
resent a minimum of national decency — an irreducible barrier against
exploitation and neglect of children.

It was strikingly set forth by Mr. Lovejoy and others that the
federal law of the past three years, like the one before it, did not
affect a great proportion of the child laborers in America. When it

News From the Child Welfare Field 71

went into operation, its age, hour and night work standards reached
perhaps 300,000 boys and girls. It did not reach children in agri-
culture, street trades, the movies, tenement homework, or stores.
Public recognition of the fact that a rural child labor problem does
exist will be slow in coming, but conditions that investigation is
disclosing in the great onion fields and beet-sugar areas will open
the closed mind. The federal law did not require an educational
or physical qualification for going to work. Federal legislation may
or may not go farther next time than it did in 1916 or 1919, but in
any case, the greater part of the task of child protection in respect
to labor is up to the states. The National Child Labor Committee,
though it has entered into an active campaign for a federal amend-
ment, will not diminish in any way its present efforts to improve
state laws and administration.

The problem of federal action dominated the Child I^abor
Conference, but the program, as originally planned before the
decision of the Supreme Court was handed down, had to do prin-
cipally with children in street trades. It is noteworthy that in
reports given by investigators and students from eight states, a
similar, almost identical, set of facts was presented in each case.
Street trading seems to carry with it the same hazards and conse-
quences in all the larger cities of the country — unhealthful condi-
tions, retardation in school, a definite push toward deUnquency,
smaU earnings, and these wasted. Apparently the regulation of
street trading is still an unsolved problem. Law enforcement is
especially poor in connection with street occupations, largely be-
cause public opinion is especially lenient with child labor in city
streets.

Participants in the program, besides Professor Lindsay and
Mr. Lovejoy, were Bruce M. Watson, managing director, Public
Education and Child Labor Association of Pennsylvania; Mrs.
Madeleine H. Appel, secretary, Massachusetts Child Labor Com-
mittee; Herbert M. Diamond, assistant director, Wall Street Divi-
sion, New York University; Mrs. Loraine B. Bush, State Child
Welfare Department, Alabama; Miss F. Zeta Youmans, officer of
Juvenile Occupations Department, Juvenile Protective Association,
Chicago; Ebner Scott, director of the Civic Federation of Dallas,
Texas; Wiley H, Swift, special agent on law and administration,
National Child Labor Committee. Most of the addressee and

72 The American Child

papers appear in this number of the American Child; it is hoped
to make good the omissions in the next number.

At the meetings of The National Conference of Social Work,
much attention was given to the subject of child labor. Hardly a
day passed without some discussion of the problems raised by the
decision of the Supreme Court. Not only the problems of federal
action, but other child labor problems were brought forward. Her-
bert Hoover, friend of children, opened his address with forceful
words on this subject.

"Clearly," he said, ''if economic waste is reprehensible, waste
of child life, whether viewed economically or in terms of common
and universal betterment, is a blight that, in its measure, is more
deplorable than war itseK."

Miss Grace Abbott, chief of the U. S. Children's Bureau, said:
"State standards have been raised in many states since the first
federal child labor law was enacted, but the reasons for a federal
minimum are substantially the same today as they were in 1916.
In some states children may work at what is regarded in most of
the states of the United States and of Europe a dangerously young
age; in some, night work is not prohibited for young persons; in
some, they may still work excessive hours. With the end of the
war there have developed two conflicting viewpoints with reference
to activities of the Federal Government. There is a new apprecia-
tion of the fact that there is a level in the care of children below
which no state of the United States can with safety to the nation
be allowed to go, and, on the other hand, the doctrine of state's
right has found some new adherents in irritation at many of the forms
in which federal regulation appeared during the war. In general,
there is agreement that either the idea of a federal minimum must
be abandoned, or the Constitution must be amended so as to give
Congress the power to legislate in this field."

Text of Proposed Constitutional Amendment

Senator Medill McCormick of Illinois, introduced in the United
States Senate on July 26th, the following joint resolution:

^'Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United
States of America in Congress assembled {two-thirds of each House

News From the Child Welfare Field 73

concurring therein), That the following article is proposed as an
Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which, when
ratified by the legislatures of three-fourths of the several states,
shall be vaHd to all intents and purposes as a part of the Consti-
tution :

"Article — . The Congress shall have power to hmit or pro-
hibit the labor of persons under eighteen years of age, and power is
also reserved to the several states to limit or prohibit such labor
in any way which does not lessen any limitation of such labor or
the extent of any prohibition thereof by Congress. The power vested
in the Congress by this article shall be additional to and not a limi-
tation on the powers elsewhere vested in the Congress by the Con-
stitution with respect to such labor/'

This is Senate Joint Resolution No. 232. It has been referred
to the Committee on the Judiciary, the membership of which is as
follows: Senator Knute Nelson of Minnesota, Chairman; Senators
William P. Dillingham, of Vermont; Frank B. Brandegee, of Con-
necticut; William E. Borah, of Idaho; Albert B. Cummins, of
Iowa; LeBaron B. Colt, of Rhode Island; Thomas Sterling, of
South Dakota; George W. Norris, of Nebraska; Richard P. Ernst,
of Kentucky; Samuel M. Shortridge, of California; Charles A.
Culberson, of Texas; Lee S. Overman, of North Carolina; James
A. Reed, of Missouri; Henry F. Ashurst, of Arizona; John K.
Shields, of Tennessee; Thomas J. Walsh, of Montana.

It is hoped that all readers of the American Child will com-
municate with Senator McCormick, with the Chairman of the
Judiciary Committee, and with other Senators, in support of this
resolution. Especially is it desired that you write or wire the
Senators from your own state.

The McCormick resolution follows the wording of the draft
amendment agreed upon after several successive meetings of the
Permanent Conference for the Abohtion of Child Labor, which
was formed in Washington in May, after the decision of the Supreme
Court declaring unconstitutional the federal child labor tax law,
by representatives of numerous labor and civic organizations inter-
ested in child welfare. The following are among the organizations
represented in the Permanent Conference: General Federation of
Women's Clubs; National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teach-

74 The American Child

ers Association; National Organization for Public Health Nursing;
National Women's Trade Union League; Service Bureau; Na-
tional Council of Catholic Women; National Council of Women;
National Women's Relief Society; National Board of the Y. W.
C. A.; National Council of Jewish Women; American Associa-
tion of University Women; International Committee Y. M. C. A.;
Children's Bureau, Department of Labor; Women's Bureau, De-
partment of Labor; American Association of Labor Legislation;
Federal Council Churches of Christ in America; The Pubhc Edu-
cation and Child Labor Association of Pennsylvania; American
Federation of Labor; and the National Child Labor Committee.

The steering and cooperating committee consists of Samuel
Gompers, Mrs. Florence Kelley, Miss Matilda Lindsay, Frank Mor-
rison, Mrs. Maud Wood Park, Matthew WoU, Mrs. Glen Swiggert,
WilHam Green, Miss Grace Abbott, Thomas F. McMahon, George
W. Perkins, Congressman John L Nolan, John J. Manning, William
H. Johnston, Mrs. Thomas G. Winter and Owen R. Love joy.

Legislation in Virginia

The child welfare laws recently passed in Virginia, which went
into effect June 1, are an example of the wise type of social legis-
lation which can result from an awakened interest on the part of a
group in the state. Much credit is due to the Children's Code
Commission — of which Judge Ricks is the chairman — which studied
the existing laws and drafted the bills proposed to the last legisla-
tive session. Mr. Wiley H. Swift, representative of the National
Child Labor Committee, cooperated with Judge H. Ricks, Mrs.
Louis Brownlow, and Miss Adele Clark, state president of the
League of Women Voters, in backing the child welfare bills and
securing their success.

Important legislation relating to juvenile courts, the State
Board of Public Welfare, child-placing and child-caring institutions
and agencies, maternity hospitals, nurseries for children under six
years, industrial schools, reformatories, recreation centers, and
compulsory education, was passed, as well as amendments to the
child labor laws. The Sheppard-Towner Bill was accepted.

A children's bureau was created within the State Board of

P1262

News From the Child Welfare Field 75

Public Welfare and local boards were provided for each county of
the state.

Juvenile court bills were all passed in excellent shape. The
Juvenile Court procedure bill provides for chancery proceeding,
instead of the old semi-criminal procedure, which previously existed.
A new bill extends the juvenile and domestic relation courts system
to the counties of the state, giving them practically the same juris-
diction now exercised by those courts in cities. The plan is to have
a special justice of the peace appointed by the judge of the circuit
court.

The most important amendment to the child labor law extends
the 14-year age limit to include all gainful occupations except agri-
culture, thereby affecting a large number of children.

Another important change raises the age limit for street trading
to 14 years for boys and 18 for girls (with the exemption of boys
12 to 16 outside school hours), and prohibits night work in street
trading — a much needed provision. It also makes street permits
necessary for boys 12 to 16 bootblacking, selling newspapers or
running errands.

Boys 16 and girls 18 are forbidden to work in cigar stores,
theatres, concert halls, pool rooms, restaurants, steam laundries, or
passenger or freight elevators.

Hours are reduced from a 48- to a 44-hour week under 16 in
all gainful occupations except agriculture. A general exemption is
made in the cases of children 12 to 16 in canneries when schools
are not in session.

Compulsory school attendance is raised from 8 to 12 during
ten weeks each year to 8 to 14 during entire school year, with exemp-
tion if the child has completed the elementary course of study or
is regularly and legally employed.

The mothers' pension act is extended to include female guar-
dians and mothers whose husbands are insane, in prison, physically
incapacitated, divorced or charged with desertion, the amount
being left to the discretion of the supervisors of the county or the
governing body of the city.

The new child labor laws, together with the acts regulating
child welfare and compulsory education, put Virginia among the
more advanced states in this kind of legislation, and form a splendid
basis for future protection of children.

76 The American Child

Legislation in Other States

Important child welfare legislation in Louisiana has met with
defeat, although several bills in the interest of working children
are still pending. A bill regulating street trades, night work, and
street permits was reported unfavorably in the House on June 6th.

However, a bill has been passed providing that parish school
boards shall have authority to organize and maintain special classes
or schools for mentally, morally, and physically deficient children
whose needs cannot be properly cared for in the regular public
schools.

An appropriation of $12,129 out of the State Treasury has been
proposed for the promotion of maternity and infancy in Louisiana;
no action has yet been taken.

A bill relative to an appointment of a commission of seven by
the governor, to be known as Commission on Laws of Minors, to
review laws of Maryland relating to minors and report with recom-
mendations to the next General Assembly, in 1924, was introduced
for the first time in March and referred to the Committee on Judiciary.

Both Houses in Massachusetts have adopted a resolution in
favor of a Constitutional Amendment giving Congress the power
to regulate hours of labor for women and minors. ''By reason of
lack of uniformity in laws of several states respecting hours of labor,
the General Court of Massachusetts petitions that Congress pro-
pose a Constitutional Amendment."

Industrial Home Work of Children

Industrial home work in a state with no system of regulation
means child labor at ages and under conditions prohibited for fac-
tory employment, according to a report just issued by the U. S.
Department of Labor through the Children's Bureau. The report
is entitled :' 'Industrial Home Work of Children," and gives the
results of a study made in three Rhode Island cities. At the time
of the study, none of the labor laws of that state appHed to work
done in homes.

It was found that at least 5,000 children under 16 years of age
had done home work in the course of a year, that over 7 per cent
of all the children 5 to 15 years of age, inclusive, in the three cities,

News From the Child Welfare Field 77

had been engaged in such work during that period, and that 3.5
per cent had worked for 30 days or more. Of these 2,338 children
who had worked at least one month out of the year and had received
compensation, 4 per cent were under 6 years of age and 46 per cent
were under the age of 11.

The standards set up by the State of Rhode Island for school
children and children working in factories were violated in the case
of home-working children, the report states, in four respects: Child-
ren of school age remained at home occasionally or for extended
periods to do home work, contrary to the compulsory school-attend-
ance law of the state; children under the age of 14 were engaged
at home in kinds of work which the law prohibited them from doing
in factories; children under the age of 16 who worked in factories
did overtime work at home contrary to the spirit of the law limiting
hours of labor; and children injured in the course of home work
did not receive compensation under the workmen's compensation
law. Injuries, especially accidents from machines installed in the
homes, in addition to eye strain and fatigue reacting upon school
work, were frequent.

Twenty-one industries, among which the jewelry industry led,
were represented by the 258 manufacturing establishments distrib-
uting home work in the district of the study; 153 establishments
were covered by the inquiry. The principal kinds of work included
carding snaps, stringing tags, drawing threads from lace, linking and
wiring rosary beads, setting stones in jewelry, and assembling mili-
tary buttons.

Four-fifths of the 956 children who reported earnings could not
make, at the rates paid, so much as 10 cents an hour working at
top speed; half could not make 5 cents. Of the families reporting
total yearly earnings from home work, almost nine-tenths earned
less than $100 and nearly three-fifths earned less than $25. These
earnings in nearly all cases represented compensation for the
work of more than one person; in over two-thirds of the families
included in the study, at least three persons had engaged in home
work.

A possible danger to the health of the community was found
in the fact that large numbers of families reported doing home
work while members of the family were ill with infectious diseases.
In some cases the sick persons took part in the work.

78 The American Child

The testimony of manufacturers using the home-work system
indicates, the report states, that industrial home work in this dis-
trict could be abolished with few business losses.

Child Labor Prohibitions for Industrial Home Work

The following regulations governing Industrial Home Work,
submitted for a final public hearing at Philadelphia on May 4,
1922, were adopted by the Industrial Board May 9, 1922, to become
ejffective September 1, 1922.

1. Minors under 14 shall not be employed in Industrial Home work.

2. No minor under 16 may be employed for more than 51 hours a
week, nor more than 9 hours a day, nor before 6 o'clock in the morning
nor after 8 o'clock in the evening.

3. Every minor between 14 and 16 years of age must attend, for the
equivalent of not less than 8 hours each week, a continuation school in
the school district where said minor is employed.

4. These 8 hours shall be reckoned in the 51 hours a week permitted
above.

5. Minors between 14 and 16 shall not work without an employment
certificate, which certificate must be kept on file by the employer.

6. General employment certificates are required where children under
16 are employed all the time.

7. Vocation employment certificates are required where minors under
16 work at any time except when they are required to attend school.

8. Employment certificates may be issued only by the District Super-
intendent, Supervising Principal, or Secretary of the Board of School
Directors, or other school ofl&cial, deputized in writing by any of the other
school officials authorized by law to issue such certificates.

9. No minor under 16, who has not completed the work of the 6th
grade in pubHc schools, shall be entitled to an employment certificate.

10. Before an employment certificate be issued, the prospective em-
ployer must make a statement in writing that he expects to give employ-
ment to a minor applying for such certificate.

11. Employers must acknowledge, in writing, to the issuing officer,
receipt of an employment certificate within 3 days after beginning of
minor's employment.

12. Upon termination of employment, the employer must return the
employment certificate to the issuing school official.

Commonwealth Fund Health Program

The Conmionwealth Fund has decided to finance a thorough
child health program in three typical cities for a period of five

News From the Child Welfare Field 79

years. The general qualifications of the first city to be selected
are that it should be from 15,000 to 25,000 in population, with
an infant mortality of approximately 100 per 1,000 live births, or
greater.

The program will comprise safe-guarding the health of the
mother-to-be, laying a good health foundation for children in the
early sensitive and formative period of their growth, health super-
vision, and the formation of the essential health habits in school
children. The responsibility for carrying out this comprehensive
child health program is placed upon the American Child Hygiene
Association and the Child Health Organization of America.

A joint committee will have charge of all general policies and
plans. Mr. Barry C. Smith of the Commonwealth Fund was
elected chairman of this committee, Dr. Philip Van Ingen of the
American Child Hygiene Association, treasurer, and Mr. Courtenay
Dinwiddie of the National Child Health Council, executive secre-
tary. The opening of an office at 532 Seventeenth Street, North
West, Washington, D. C, was authorized. Active work will begin
at once.

After careful consideration the committee has decided that the
first city to be assisted in developing a thorough program for child
health will be selected from the upper half of the Mississippi Valley
region. Two other cities are to be selected in other sections of the
country after work has been well started in the first.

Milbank Memorial Fund Demonstration

Plans for the selection of three localities in which health demon-
strations will be conducted under the Milbank Memorial Fund
Demonstration, are now well under way. The localities will include :

A rural county, selected from a group of counties ranging

in population from 45,000 to 75,000.

A second-class city, the selection to be determined by the

degree of participation assured by the local authorities

and private agencies.

A district with a population of at least 100,000 in a large

metropolitan city, if there is a demand for it.

The counties and cities will be located in New York State.

80 The American Child

The selection of the rural county and the small city will depend
largely on the results of two studies now being undertaken. A
statistical study of these communities is being made under the
direction of Commissioner Herman M. Biggs of the State Depart-
ment of Health, and under the immediate supervision of Miss
Jessamine S. Whitney, statistician of the National Tuberculosis
Association. The direction of the social study of the communities is
in the hands of Mr. Homer Folks, Secretary of the State Charities
Aid Association, under direct supervision of George J. Nelback,
Secretary of the Committee on Tuberculosis and Public Health.

A Review of "Rural Child Welfare"

In The New Republic of June 21, Dorothy Canfield Fisher writes
of "Rural Child Welfare" as follows:

''Every day's mail brings to me, as member of a State Board
of Education, two or three letters from conscientious women, asking
me how they can make themselves useful in 'doing something for
the schools and for school children.' From now on I shall always
begin my answer by advising them to read and to study this admir-
able book, quite as instructive, suggestive and stimulating for
country dwellers in Vermont or Minnesota or Indiana, as for those
in West Virginia, about whom it is written.

"It is a satisfaction to have such an excellent model to place
in the hands of people, willing and ready to do what they can to
enrich and protect child life, but wholly uninformed as to facts,
and what is more serious, wholly untrained in methods of determin-
ing facts. The scientific spirit of exact thoroughness which ani-
mates the book will be a tonic revelation to hazy-minded people of
good intentions, who cannot fail to profit by such an example of
how to investigate a situation intelKgently before attempting to
cope with it, of how to state your problem clearly, coherently
and completely before trying to solve it.

"This book does better than provide a good recipe for this sort
of work; it takes its readers out into the kitchen and lets them
stand by to watch the whole progress of putting the recipe into
execution; the materials used and the conditions of work being
exactly what any country-dweller has to handle.

"This does not mean that the conditions found in West-Vir-

News From the CUM Welfare Field 81

ginia, and so accurately and sympathetically set down in this book,
are exactly reproduced in Vermont, Minnesota or Indiana. On the
contrary, every reader will find occasional pages on which he can
make the relieved comment, 'Well, it's not so bad as that, here,'
(and yet, even at that, let him not be too sure till he has covered
with the thoroughness of this investigation even a very small dis-
trict of the state he thinks he knows intimately). Nor does it
mean that every reader will agree with every conclusion reached by
the careful, thoughtful investigators of West Virginia. Personally
I do not at all agree, either in theory or practice, with their sweep-
ing, unqualified endorsement of school-consolidation as the only way
to improve rural primary schools.

''But, though the reader like myself may never have set foot
in West Virginia, he will not find a page in the book over which he
can slide comfortably without being stung into doing some think-
ing. He will find a recognition and statement there of many a
problem of American rural child-life, which until now he, along with
all other American country-dwellers, has blandly ignored because of
its familiarity. A good example of this is the plain, truthful, un-
exaggerated statement of the practically universal failure of the
present truant system to get rural children regularly to school.
Everybody who has ever lived in the country knows that it does
not work, and never has worked, and never can work, till some-
thing is done about it. We all know, too, that it fails because of
the network of close personal relations in country life. But we
have all looked the other way, and kept a profound silence on this
failure as one of the explanations for the astounding amount of
illiteracy revealed by the recent army census. City dwellers (aknost
without exception educational and statistical experts are city dwellers)
have not guessed at what was hidden by our silence, but it is at
last shown up in this book. Personally I am once more unable to
agree with the recommendations of these investigators, about the
best way to solve this difficulty. I do not think that a different
law, or a different set of officials ever go far towards solving any
difficulty unless public opinion is changed, and I think it perfectly
possible to change public opinion about this matter. But the book
has done something of very great value in pulling this difficulty out
of the dark corner where we have kept it hidden, and holding it
up so that it can no longer be ignored.

82 The American Child

"Another good example of what this volume does, is its treat-
ment of play. Country people have ignored the necessity to provide
play and recreation for country children quite as systematically as
the failures of the truant laws; and much more honestly, for as a
rule they have had no notion that there was anything there to
ignore. No chapter of this very useful book will be more useful
than the one on Rural Recreation. The country-dwelling citizens
and local and state officials who, it is to be hoped, will read this
report, will find perhaps more new food for thought in that chapter
and in the suggestions about play, than in any other part of this
reasonable, practical, intelligent and humane volume. '^

Children of Wage-Earning Mothers

Gainful emplo3Tnent of mothers of young children frequently
means that the children receive inadequate care during the day, or
no care at all, according to a report entitled, "Children of Wage-
Earning Mothers, A Study of a Selected Group in Chicago," just
made pubfic by the U. S. Department of Labor through the Child-
ren's Bureau. Other conditions found include retarded school
progress of the children, over-fatigue and ill-health of the mothers
— with consequent loss to the children — and in some instances over-
work by children who had the responsibility for household tasks
beyond their strength.

The report presents the results of a study of 843 families of
working mothers, in which were 2,066 children under the age of
14 years. The group included families known to the Chicago
United Charities and to the day nurseries, and included also a
special group of 212 colored families. It was found that the prob-
lem of the emplojnnent of mothers had to do with both normal
and broken families. Where the father was a member of the family
group and worked regularly his earnings were, in the great majority
of cases, inadequate for the family support.

The school-attendance records of a group of 742 children were
obtained, and these compared unfavorably with the attendance of
all the children enrolled in nine selected schools in workers' neigh-
borhoods. A large amount of retardation was found among the
children of wage-earning mothers, over one-third of whom were
below the standard grade for their age.

News From the Child Welfare Field 83

Factory Inspection in Jugo-Slavia

The International Labour Review quotes the following points as
worthy of note from the first annual report of the Labour Inspection
Department of Jugo-Slavia.

Only twelve industrial inspection officials were at work during
1920. During this year 1,138 undertakings, employing 36,027 per-
sons, were inspected; 279 of these undertakings were commercial
and 850 industrial; 397 used mechanical power and the rest were
entirely dependent on man-power. The age-distribution of the
36,027 persons employed in the above-mentioned undertakings was
as follows:

Male workers

36 under 12 years of age

1,791 between 12 and 16 years of age
26,486 above 16 years of age

Female workers

37 under 12 years of age

1,127 between 12 and 16 years of age
6,550 above 16 years of age

These numbers, however, do not correctly represent the total
number of workers in the country, since industrial inspection is not
yet carried on in every district; even in areas where it has begun,
it has proved impossible to visit all undertakings on account of the
inadequacy of the available staff. It may be anticipated that com-
plete statistical returns will be presented in 1922.

Before the war it was not specially advantageous to employers
to engage either unmarried or married persons, since each worker
was paid according to ability. These conditions have been changed
in an important respect. A basic wage is now paid, to which bonuses
are added according to the responsibilities of the worker for wife
children, parents, etc. It is therefore cheaper for the employer to
engage unmarried persons, and married workers are being dismissed
and replaced by unmarried ones. It is obvious that this produces
an intolerable, situation, which calls for relief at the earliest possible
moment; the number of married persons who are unemployed
increases daily.

84 The American Child

Complaints of the illegal employment of young persons and
women are very common, and the regulations on hours of work are
being disregarded; in southern Serbia, in particular, the daily hours
of work still amount to more than 14.

Employment-Certificate Conference

The increasing interest which schools are taking in the children
who leave their classrooms at an early age to go to work was evi-
denced by the inclusion in the National Education Association pro-
gram this 3^ear for the first time of a section on ''Standards and Prob-
lems of Employment-Certificate Issuance." The meetings were held
under the joint auspices of the National Education Association and
the Children's Bureau. In opening the conference Miss Grace
Abbott, Chief of the Children's Bureau, emphasized the fact that
the age, education and physical standards of a child labor law can
be uniformly enforced only if every child is required to have a cer-
tificate, and if certificates are issued only upon reliable evidence that
the child is legally qualified to work.

A paper by Miss Anne S. Davis on the ''Organization and Pro-
cedure of the Local Issuing Office," brought out very clearly the
advantages of having certificate issuance closely correlated, as it is
in Chicago, with the vocational guidance and placement work, the
attendance department, the industrial studies division, and the
factory inspection department. She spoke in some detail of the
careful medical examination which is given every applicant. Twenty
to thirty per cent of the children are refused certificates because of
defects; the greatest number for malnutrition. By referring ttiem
to clinics or sending them to Arden Shore camp, which is main-
tained for the purpose, defective conditions are corrected and health
is built up. Dr. Wade Wright of Boston brought out the necessity
of having this work done by competent physicians, appointed for
the purpose. The examination is important, he believes, not only
to exclude children from occupations for which they are not fitted,
but as a check upon the school medical inspection work, and as a
basis of comparison with the findings of subsequent examinations
to determine the effects of early employment.

News From the Child Welfare Field 85

Miss Edith Campbell of CincinDati, discussed the bearing
which work permits have upon school problems, and stressed the
need for reorganizing grade work to meet the needs of retarded
children.

Mr. Taylor Frey of Wisconsin described the State Employment
Certificate System, controlled by the State Industrial Commission,
which has the power of refusing to allow children to work for unde-
sirable employers.

Dr. E. J. Licklsy summarized conditions in California, and
Miss Jeanie Minor of New York and Miss Esther Lee Ryder of
Alabama discussed the enforcement of the educational and age
standard in issuing employment certificates.

At the close of the conference a resolution was passed request-
ing the Children's Bureau to call a similar meeting at some future
date, and asking that a discussion of the control of street trading
be included in the program.

Child Labor in Oyster and Shrimp-Canning Communities

A report made public by the U. S. Department of Labor through
the Children's Bureau described child labor in the oyster and shrimp-
canning industry during the period between the first and second
Federal child labor laws, when no Federal regulation of child labor
existed. Special significance attaches to the report in view of the
decision of the U. S. Supreme Court, rendered on May 15, which
held the Federal Child Labor Tax Law unconstitutional and thus
leaves the children again without the protection of a Federal law.
The report, entitled ''Child Labor and the Work of Mothers in
Oyster and Shrimp -Canning Communities on the Gulf Coast," calls
attention to the very young ages of many of the children employed,
the detrimental conditions under which they worked, the poor
school facilities, the marked retardation in school, and the employ-
ment of mothers of young children.

The work of both the children and their parents was subject
to all the irregularities of the canning industry, the report states.
Since the work depended on the catch, it began any time between
3 and 7 o'clock in the morning, and lasted a few hours, a whole day,
or sometimes on into the evening. Of the 544 working children

86 The American Child

under 16 years of age included in the study, more than three-fifths
worked whenever the factory was open. The others worked only
occasionally or before and after school and on Saturdays. The
majority of the children — 334 of the 544 who worked — were under
the age of 14 years, the minimum fixed by both of the Federal laws.
Some were as young as six years of age or under.

Most of the cannery work was wet and dirty, and was done
in cold, damp, drafty sheds, the oyster shuckers or shrimp pickers
standing among the empty oyster shells or shrimp hulls. The
workers were liable to injuries from the sharp oyster shells, shrimp
thorns, and work knives, and to constant soreness of the hands
from acid in the shrimp. Many injuries were reported among
children.

In order to secure an increased supply of labor which the em-
ployers are able to control, the custom of importing families from
the North has been carried on each winter for a number of years.
These migratory workers are housed in company camps, which
usually were found to be insanitary and overcrowded. With no
community held responsible for their education, 37 per cent of the
white children 10 to 15 years of age in the migratory families studied
were illiterate, as compared with 4 per cent for approximately the
same age group, both white and colored, for the United States as a
whole. Nearly two-thirds of the children of these families at the
ages of 14 and 15 had not completed the fourth grade. Even among
the local children who worked in the canneries retardation in school
was serious. Nineteen per cent of the resident white children and
25 per cent of the colored, could neither read nor write.

In about one-fourth of the families in which the mother or the
children were employed, the father was dead or had deserted the
family. The study was made at a time when earnings were said
by employers and workers to be higher than ever before, but the
earnings of the fathers for their best week during this season were
found to be under $25 in two-thirds of the cases, and under $20 in
nearly one-half; for the average week 79 per cent of the fathers
made less than $25, and practically a third of them less than $15.
Four-fifths of the mothers averaged less than $7.50 a week.

Working mothers with children under 6 years of age either left
them at home, in a majority of cases with only children as care-
takers or with no caretakers at all, or took them with them to 'the

News From the Child Welfare Field 87

canneries, where they were subject to the physical discomforts of
the canning sheds and were hable to accidents.

Study of Child Welfare Laws in Alabama

The June issue of Alabama Childhood, the official bulletin of
the State Child Welfare Department, consists of a study of the
laws affecting children and suggestions for legislation made for the
Welfare Commission by the National Child Labor Committee.

In 1921 the Commission appointed from its membership a com-
mittee of five to make a careful study of child welfare legislation
with special reference to the problems presented in Alabama, and
to make recommendations for the removal of inconsistent, obsolete
or otherwise undesirable laws and also recommendations for new
legislation for the promotion of child welfare. The chair named on
this committee W. T. Murphree, S. D. Murphy, Dr. S. W. Welch,
Dr. John W. Abercrombie and Lawrence H. Lee. This committee
was empowered to employ such expert service as it deemed neces-
sary for the making of the study.

Under these instructions the committee called on the National
Child Labor Committee for help in making the study. Mr. Wiley
H. Swift, Miss Mabel Brown ElHs and Miss Gertrude Folks were
assigned to the task, and went to Alabama where a careful study
of the State's laws, agencies and institutions was made. The
National Child Labor Committee and the members of its staff who
made the study realized that the local committee was more intimately
acquainted with conditions in the state than they were. In fact,
they understood that the report was to be preliminary and that the
final report was to be the opinion of the special committee. But
the study was accepted with slight revision by this committee on
May 8, 1922, and the Commission as a whole received and adopted
the report May 18, 1922.

The agents of the National Child Labor Committee found that
the Alabama general law for children is in the main satisfactory,
and that there is no need for sweeping changes. The suggestions
they made are therefore in the nature of development of already
existing laws. Pending the next legislative session the special commit-
tee is now drafting laws in conformity with these recommendations.

88 The American Child

BREVITIES

The General Federation of Women's Clubs, which held their
biennial convention at Chautauqua, New York, the last ten days
in June, passed a resolution favoring a child labor amendment to
the Constitution. Although all delegates present saw the necessity
for child labor reform, the resolution was preceded by a lively dis-
cussion as to the proper method of attaining the reform. The
majority, however, believed that the only sure way of securing
effective legislation for the protection of children is through a con-
stitutional amendment.

For several years there has been in Rome an agricultural colony
of sixty children, the aim of which is to educate poor minors, orphans,
and deserted children. They are given a primary education up to
12 years of age, followed by vocational training.

In France there are 15 apprentice schools of agriculture for
children of dead or wounded soldiers. The apprenticeship lasts
three years, and boys must have a certificate of primary studies or
be 13 years old to gain admittance.

Charles E. Gibbons, of the staff of the National Child Labor
Committee, presented a paper, 'The Extent and Control of Rural
Child Labor," before the Department of Rural Education at the
Annual Convention of the National Education Association in Bos-
ton, Friday afternoon, July 7th.

In order to make intensive studies in the development of child-
ren between the ages of two and four years, the Iowa child welfare
station has organized a pre-school laboratory, where twenty children
are now under daily observation and experimentation. This is the
first laboratory school of its kind in America. — Journal of Education.

According to a decision handed down recently by the compen-
sation referee at Philadelphia, child workers between the ages of
14 and 16 who are injured on their way to continuation school are
entitled to the benefits of the workman's compensation act. — Jour-
nal of American Medical Association.

News From the Child Welfare Field 89

The National Child Labor Committee has received the follow-
ing letter from Dr. Louis Miller, chairman of the Committee on
Medical Literature of the American Medical Aid for Russia

"We beg to acknowledge receipt of your literature, which
as you may see from the enclosed notice, has been forwarded
to Russia on the S.S. Belvedere, which sailed May 31st.

''Inasmuch as literature on children is now of particular
interest to Russia, we are glad to have been the medium of
forwarding this, and we would be glad to receive from you all
future literature for the same purpose."

The National Association of Travelers Aid Societies announces
the appointment of John R. Shillady, formerly executive director
of the National Consumers' League, as general director of its work
in aid of travelers.

Wiley H. Swift, of the staff of the National Child Labor Com-
mittee, spoke in Toronto, June 22nd, before the Kiwanis Club In-
ternational on the subject, ''A Fair Chance for the Underprivileged
Child— A Future Citizen.''

The U. S. Bureau of Education encouragingly reports on one
method of solving the problem of rural education. Transportation
of pupils to the public schools is specifically provided for by the
school laws of 43 states. The remaining 5 states — Delaware, Florida,
New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming — permit transportation under the
authority granted to school trustees or directors to provide for the
general weKare of their school districts.

One of the three planks in the platform of the Progressive
Feminist Party, a new political body organized in Chile for the
purpose of gaining all the rights claimed by women, is the found-
ing of a ministry of public welfare and education, headed by a
woman executive, to protect women and children and to improve
living conditions. — Bulletin of the Pan-American Union.

According to the U. S. Department of Agriculture, a total of
136,441 boys and girls were enrolled in agricultural extension clubs,
in 1921, for training in various phases of Uve-stock work. These
junior farmers owned, last year, 76,149 head of farm animals and
554,286 fowls, representing a total value of $3,605,176.

90 The American Child

Although agricultural extension methods are older in Denmark
than in the United States, work with boys and girls as conducted
by the United States Department of Agriculture in cooperation
with state agricultural colleges has not yet been organized there.
A plan, however, is being considered for forming such clubs, says
S. Sorensen, agricultural advisor attached to the Danish Legation
at Washington. At present the work in Denmark is for people
from 18 to 70 years.

A news item in a Raleigh, North Carolina, paper reports that
the Drexel Furniture Company has instituted a suit for the recovery
of $6,312 in taxes paid by the furniture concern under protest,
child labor products tax. Judge James E. Boyd, who made the
ruHng holding the federal child labor law unconstitutional, signed
final judgment directing the United States Treasury to refund the
amoimt.

SW|[^ Am^rtratt (Etjilft

A Journal of Constructive Democracy
Published Quarterly

Owen R. Lovejoy Editor

Raymond G. Fuller - Managing Editor

Frances Zimmerman ------- Associate Editor

Contributing Editors

Charles E. Gibbons Wiley H. Swift

Sara A. Brown Walter W. Armentrout

Yearly subscription, four issues, two dollars. Single copies fifty cents.

Address:
NATIONAL CmLD LABOR COMMITTEE
105 East 22nd Street - - New York City

EDITORIAL COMMENT ON CHILD LABOR
DECISION

The Supreme Court decision of May 15, declaring unconstitu-
tional the federal child labor tax law of 1919, has received widespread
attention. Public opinion is unanimous in its insistence on child
labor reform, and many leading newspapers and magazines have
come out vigorously in favor of federal action based on a constitu-
tional amendment, as the only effective method of securing the
reform which public sentiment demands.

The New York Times suggests that the Supreme Court decision
declaring the child labor law unconstitutional is a disguised blessing.
After pointing out in detail in how many ways the recently invali-
dated child labor law was inadequate, it says: "The great campaign
for improving child labor conditions which is now going forward
with renewed energy is aiming much higher. It is working to raise
the age limit at which boys and girls can enter any occupation. It
strives to estabHsh health standards and assure several years more
schooling for boys and girls, whatever their subsequent work may
be. With an aroused public conscience, it seems improbable that
the next legislation will fall as far short of the ideal as those laws
which have been repealed. The whole problem of child labor, its
importance to the health, education and morals of the next gener-
ation will be opened and attacked in a broader spirit and with
increased vigor."

The New York Mail writes:

"After muddling around for more than ten years with the
child labor question, it would seem that even Congress must
be convinced by now that the only adequate recourse is to an
amendment of the Federal Constitution. Since Congress first
began dallying with the matter children have grown up into
imperfect and stunted manhood and womanhood who might
have attained normal and healthful development if the thing
had been done right in the first place. Are the boys and girls
of today to be doomed to the same melancholy fate? The

92 The American Child

inhumanity, the injustice, the barbarity of child exploitation
has come to be so generally understood that none dare uphold
it in the open. Congress must see to it that none can continue
a bushwhacking warfare against it in secret. New legislation
ought to be written into the nation's statutes immediately, on
whatever ground promises success. In the meantime the
machinery of amending the Constitution should be set in motion
without an instant's delay."

''It is plain," declares the New York Globe, "that a Constitu-
tion drafted in 1791, before the rise of the factory system, is not
adequate to meet the necessities of a nation as completely indus-
trialized as is the United States of 1922." In a later issue, the
Globe reiterates its urgent demand for a constitutional amendment:
'Two successive annulments of federal laws forbidding
premature child labor by the United States Supreme Court
have so aroused public opinion that apparently the way has
been prepared for the adoption of a child labor amendment to
the national Constitution. . . . Congress obviously ought to
have such powers as would be conferred by this amendment.
It is absurd that this nation should now have no legal authority
to interfere with conditions injurious to the health or morals
of the coming generations. For if a nation cannot defend its
young it cannot assure its own existence. These propositions
are so widely accepted that child labor laws duly safeguarded
in the Constitution ought soon to be upon the statute books."

In the opinion of the New York Tribune:

"The only adequate safeguard now feasible is a constitu-
tional amendment nullifying the recent decision. Opponents
of child labor barbarities should at once become active in behalf
of an amendment. The difficulties are great, but they can be
met. It has been shown that the Constitution is amendable —
that the old idea that the consent of three-fourths of the states
cannot ever be secured to change is faulty. The amendment
should be drawn in the simplest form and be confined to the
single matter of child labor, for any sort of larger general federal
control over interstate commerce would be combated and lead
to comphcations."

The New York newspapers just quoted are by no means the
only ones voicing strong sentiment in favor of a child labor amend-
ment to the Constitution. According to the Washington Star:

"Constitutional amendments are not as difficult to obtain
nowadays as in the past. It is possible to modify the organic

Editorial Comment on Child Labor Decision 93

law when a public demand is generally expressed. Some years
ago an amendment was adopted, when a Supreme Court deci-
sion pointed to its necessity, in order that an income tax might
be levied. ^ It is the hope of those concerned for the correction
of the child labor evil to repeat this procedure and lay the
foundations for an effective federal statute following amend-
ment. The fight against child labor is not to be stopped by
legal barriers which can be removed."

"The Constitution," the Boston Transcript says, "certainly
could not have provided for every emergency, for every develop-
ment of the national sense of morals and necessity."

The Denver (Colo.) Times declares: "We doubt not that the
rights of children are as important to the thoughtful American
citizen as those of the adult population. They must be protected
against the greed of industry. If the only way to effect this pro-
tection is by constitutional amendment, then let it so be done, in
order that the American child may be given an opportunity in
every nook and cranny of the nation to grow up to citizenship free
from the stunting influence of the factory, the mine and the shop."

The Cleveland (Ohio) Press points out that "The Supreme
Court's decision accords with the Constitution; but the Constitu-
tion must be amended if American civilization is to advance at an
even level."

The San Francisco (Cal.) Journal writes:

"A society that imposes premature age on children by
making drudges of them at the time they should be building
up their bodies by free play in the open air, or their minds by
education, will perish prematurely and will deserve its fate.
By two recent amendments to the Constitution, measures have
been taken to make the poisonous liquor traffic a matter of
national concern and to secure national recognition of the rights
of women as citizens. If we do not regard the rights of child-
ren as an equally important issue and of equal concern to the
nation as a whole, our boasted ideahsm is a rather hollow
affair."

The Tuscaloosa (Ala.) News takes the view that the Supreme
Court decision caused considerable satisfaction even among the
most ardent opponents of child labor, "for it was felt that the
apparent impossibility of enacting a satisfactory national law would

94 The American Child

hasten the adoption of a federal amendment which would serve the

same purpose in a larger and more thorough way.

'The feeling in favor of such an amendment, in spite of
the delay always attendant upon a change in the Constitution,
is Ukely to grow, particularly when it is realized that the un-
successful law would have reached only 15 per cent of the
working children in the United States, leaving the other 85
per cent unprotected. Children in street trades, sweated tene-
ment house children and the miUion children in agricultural
labor were wholly untouched by this law.

''Those who are working for a federal amendment on this
matter are keeping in mind the fact that many states now have
excellent child labor laws within their own boundaries and that
progress is being made year by year in improving local condi-
tions. The amendment will be so worded that its requirement
will be the minimum and so not annul the effect of state laws
that are in advance of it."

The Jackson (Miss.) Clarion takes the progressive attitude that
child labor is a national interest. "America cannot for its own sake
afford to have its youth deadened by unremitting and burdensome
toil under conditions which prevail wherever child labor is exploited.
It is more than a state interest. It is a national interest and it
will be very unfortunate if the evil is allowed to continue."

The Houston (Texas) Chronicle takes issue with those who criti-
cise the decision of the Supreme Court, and admonishes them to
take the constructive viewpoint rather than the destructive:

"If the law is unconstitutional, and we still want it, there
is something more important and more constructive for us to
do than make faces at the court. Since we have the power
to amend the Constitution, unconstitutionality of any given
law is no permanent barrier to its final enactment. If three-
fourths of the states want it, there is a way for them to get
it. Whether a federal child labor law can be made effective
under existing provisions of the Constitution seems rather
doubtful. At all events, Congress has tried twice and failed.
Meanwhile, and if a great majority of people favor such a
law, as we believe, there is an open road by which to guarantee
its constitutionality. That road is the obvious one to follow."

The American Federationist, representing organized labor, de-
mands a constitutional amendment as the only remaining legislative
remedy: "The labor movement will continue its work of emancipa-

Editorial Comment on Child Labor Decision 95

tion, but a constitutional amendment is needed to complete the
work quickly. The Supreme Court cannot reach a constitutional
amendment. Every great moral force in the country should rally
to the cause of the children, demanding and working constructively
for immediate congressional action for a constitutional amendment
to save the children from the greed of employers."

One of the problems that has arisen from the Supreme Court
decision is the old question of states' rights. Some people still
feel that political tradition and absolute state autonomy are more
vital than the welfare of a nation's future citizens. Dr. John A.
Ryan, in the Catholic Charities Review, clearly defines this issue:

'The division between matters which are proper for state
legislation and those which should be subject to federal »con-
trol is clear. All subjects of a local nature which either do
not affect the people of other states at all, or affect them only
shghtly and indirectly, should be reserved to local and state
control. All matters which directly and considerably concern
the people of more than one state, should be regulated by gen-
eral federal laws. Not only the emplojonent of child labor,
but the whole province of industrial relations belong in the
latter class. They should all be subject to regulation by Con-
gress. What we need is an amendment to the Federal Con-
stitution empowering Congress to regulate all the conditions
of employment of labor, including the power to fix minimum
rates of wages in all industries."

The New Republic interprets the situation not only from a
logical viewpoint but from the humanitarian point of view that
the welfare of children is not something to be argued along geo-
graphical or political lines:

"It is not necessary, after a century and a half of indus-
trialism, to argue at length the case against child labor. Every
intelligent person who is not blinded by self-interest knows that
labor in mines and factories and shops is injurious to growing
children. It is a grave wrong to the children themselves, but
that may be conceived of as a matter which Hes between the
children and the state in which they are domiciled, if one chooses
to bound his human sympathies by rather shadowy geographical
lines. It is a wrong to industrial society, which will pay, in
future ill health and incompetence, for the small present profits
to the exploiters of child labor. And American industrial
society is not partitioned off by state fines. It is a wrong to
the nation, which depends in war upon the physical fitness and

96 The American Child

mental alertness of its young men, and in peace upon the vigor
and intelligence of its citizenship.

''But child welfare is such an intimate, such an imperative
matter: is it credible that the nation should need to step in
to hold any state to its duties to its children? Is it credible
that the state should need to step in to hold the parents of
children to their duties? It is credible. The history of child
labor proves that, conclusively."

''We believe," it continues, "that the case is one that calls for
national action. We are not in reaUty one nation unless we can
establish minimum national standards, most of all in the field of
child welfare."

To allow the exploitation of childhood, for mere, present, material gain
for the few, is suicidal to any commonwealth. Words are powerless to convey
the disastrous consequences resulting from denial to any child, white or black,
rich or poor, the opportunity to develop in home and school for the burdens
of adulthood. Neglect of the child brings to us an endless file of unemployables,
defectives and criminals. Of what use to spray a plant suffering from the cut-
worm? Let us unite on a child labor constitutional amendment which will
give to all children the fullness of life which is their birthright.

— Grace E. Bliss, Woman's Legislative Council, Seattle, Washington.

CONNECTICUT STUDY OF STREET TRADES*

H. M. DIAMOND

The study was made as a part of the work of the Connecticut
Child Welfare Commission appointed in 1920. The concentration
of effort in the direction of dependent, neglected, dehnquent and
defective children prevented the undertaking of any field work in
this study. As a result the study was made by questionnaire.
Questionnaires were circulated in the grammar schools of four
cities: Hartford, New Haven, Bridgeport and New London. Each
child reporting work on the streets was questioned by his teacher
and the replies entered on the questionnaire card. About 2,500
cards were returned and 1,222 were selected for final analysis.

The results of the study:

I. Nativity.

Birthplace of Street Traders
Birthplace No. Per Cent

United States 1,064 .88

Foreign Country 151 . 11

Unknown 7 .01

Total 1,222 100 . 00

Birthplace of Parents
Birthplace No. Per Cent

United States 276 . 23

Foreign 931 .76

Mixed or Unknown .- 15 .01

TotaL__ ...' 1,222 100.00

Table I and II deal with the matter of nativity; Table I indi-
cates the nativity of the children, and Table II that of their parents.

♦Paper read at Seventeenth National Conference on Child Labor.

98 The American Child

The table shows that very few of these children are foreign-born — ■
only 12 per cent; in fact, 88 per cent of them being of American
birth; while, on the other hand, Table II practically reverses the
percentages, 76 per cent of the parents being of foreign birth.

II. Parental Conditions.

The Connecticut figure of 84 per cent from normal homes sim-
ply corroborates the findings in other cities. The broken home is
a very slight factor in street trading.

III. Emplojnnent of Parents.

Tables VI and VII show that in 87 per cent of the cases the
fathers of the children were employed, and that in 15 per cent the
mother was employed. With respect to this latter figure, it is to
be noted that in only 10 per cent of the cases was the mother widowed,
so that as a matter of fact, in a few of the families both father and
mother were at work at the time this study was made. The figures
prove also that nearly all of these children are living with an adult
male bread winner.

IV. Earnings.

The average earnings of these children, calculated on the basis
of the above enumeration, are 54 cents per day. This figure
does not represent, however, what the average child actually takes
home. The general average is raised by the earnings of a few boys
who really make good earnings. Sixty-five per cent of the children
state that they can earn 50 cents and less per day; 26 per cent state
that they can earn 25 cents or less per day; 19 per cent claim to
earn more than $1.00 per day. For the greater number of children
the earnings are below 50 cents. If the calculation is made of the
average daily earnings of the group stating that they make 50 cents
and below per day, the result is an average of 33 cents per day. The
general average of 54 cents does not truly represent the amounts
which most of these children are turning in; the latter named amount
more closely approximates the sums which the greater mmiber of
children are obtaining by their efforts. As Hexter remarks, "The
average earnings are not representative as they include the excep-
tional boys who earn the large amounts.^'

Interpreting the figures from our returns in the fight of all the

Connecticut Study of Street Trades 99

facts of the case, a safe conclusion is that the regular earnings of
these children will vary between $1.00 and $3.00 per week, the
latter figure being somewhat higher than the average.

V. School Work.

About one-third of the street trading children are in the re-
tarded group as compared with one-sixth in the general school
population. One-tenth of the street traders are in advanced grades
as compared with one-fifth in the general school population. A
comparison of the figures for the general school population of these
cities with the group considered in this study yields the same gen-
eral results as above. The retarded group is much larger among
the street traders than in the general school population, and the
advanced group is relatively smaller.

Of these Connecticut children, then, two facts are established
in this connection: one that they are street traders, the other that
they are disproportionately behind in their school grades. Authori-
ties on the subject have voiced the opinion that the employment
of school children on the street competes with their school work,
with disastrous consequences to the latter. The fact that so many
unrelated studies carried on in widely separated localities have
uniformly disclosed this high rate of retardation is sufficient evi-
dence of the correctness of their conclusions. The phenomenon is
too regular in its manifestations to leave room for doubt on this
point. Unquestionably the same forces are at work and the same
relationships exist in Connecticut as elsewhere.

That the regular occurrence of this combination of factors is
not a mere matter of coincidence may be otherwise demonstrated
by an analysis of the findings of this study with respect to hours
and earnings. A relationship between the facts of street trading
on the one hand and of retardation on the other is definitely and
incontrovertibly established.

VI. School Work and Hours.

While the retarded group of children constitutes only 33 per
cent of the total number under consideration, they form 55 per cent
of the group working six hours a day, 59 per cent of those working
five hours a day, and 46 per cent of those working four hours a day.
On the other hand, they are but 22 per cent of those who work

100 The American Child

only one hour a day. It is obvious, therefore, that the retarded
children are largely identical with those who constitute the group
devoting the greatest number of hours per day to work outside of
school; and that they form the greater part of the group working
more than three hours per day, although, as a whole, they form but
one-third of the entire number of children tabulated. It should
be noted, also, that the percentage increases for the retarded group
as the number of hours increases, and conversely for the normal
and advanced children the percentage increases. In other words,
as the nimiber of hours per day of work on the streets increases, the
retarded children tend to form a larger and larger part of the total.

In fact, it can be demonstrated that as a group the retarded
children are putting in longer hours of service than are the children
whose school records show them to be in grades either normal or
advanced for their ages.

Examination of the tables develops the point made above that
the retarded children as a group are devoting more time to work on
the streets than are the children of normal or advanced school
standing. These figures may be summarized thus:

Of the normal and advanced group 63 per cent work two
hours and less

Of the normal and advanced group 37 per cent work three
hours and more

Of the normal and advanced group 16 pel* cent work four
hours and morje

Of the retarded group 44 per cent work two hours and

Of the retarded group 32 per cent work four hours and
more.

In brief, the percentages show that the degree of retardation
increases with the length of the working day of these children, and
that among retarded children those habitually working the greater
number of hours are further behind in their grade than those who
work a lesser number of hours.

VII. Hours and Earnings.

When the matter of earnings is reviewed in the same way the
same general facts appear. It is, of course, to be expected that

Connecticut Study of Street Trades 101

the children devoting the larger number of hours will show the
greater earnings; and that also, as Hexter has shown in his Cin-
cinnati study, the older boys are earning the larger sums. This is
revealed to be the case in Connecticut. The retarded children con-
stituting the older group are earning larger sums per day than are
the younger children whose school standing is advanced or normal
and who are devoting fewer hours per day to the work.

Summary.

Save for the fact of the presence of child laborers on the streets
of Connecticut cities, little has hitherto been known concerning
them. The foregoing study has attempted, under the limitations
of the time and funds at the disposal of the Child Welfare Commis-
sion, to establish some understanding of these children, and a few
of the salient and more readily discoverable facts concerning them
have been ascertained. Much remains to be accomplished in the
study of Connecticut street traders before a complete program of
remedial action may be resolved, for such a program must be based
upon the fullest possible knowledge of the conditions and needs of
these children.

1. The extent of employment of children on the streets in
this state is not known. In the grammar schools of four selected
cities some 1,200 children reported to their teachers that they
were so engaged outside of school hours. How many failed to
report; how many high school children are employed on the
streets; how many in the parochial schools; how many in the
other cities of the state? No one knows; no one may safely
venture a guess at the figure.

2. More than this, nothing is known of their physical con-
dition. Studies made in other locahties have demonstrated
that many of the street trading boys are suffering from serious
physical defects or organic disturbances. On the questionnaire
used in Connecticut a question was included relative to the
health of the children. The results were not tabulated for the
reason that it was concluded that the judgment of casual ob-
servers and lay persons could not be accepted as testimony on
a matter so important as that of health.

102 The American Child

3. Moreover, the relations between street trading and
juvenile delinquency has not been subject of inquiry in Con-
necticut, although on this point also the results of studies in
other communities have been most illimiinating and conclusive.
The Connecticut questionnaire asked with respect to each
child whether or not he had ever been arrested or was on pro-
bation. The returns on these questions were not tabulated
because in these matters also much room for doubt existed.

4. At present, then, facts are not available upon which to
base a case that will justify the abolition of street trading by
Connecticut children. On the other hand, this study has
demonstrated not only that some form of regulation of street
trading by children is necessary, but has indicated also precisely
what the nature of that regulation should be. The problem
as it has herein presented itseK is very largelj'', if not entirely,
educational in character.

5. A considerable number of these street trading children
are doing well in their school work, and a few are doing superior
work — in spite of it. But another disproportionately large
group of these street traders consists of children who are far
behind their grade when compared with the general school pop-
ulation.

6. This retarded group of children is largely composed of
those whose long hours of emplojrment outside of school with
their relatively large earnings are detracting from the energy
and interest which might otherwise be devoted to their more
legitimate school work.

7. It is evident that regulation of street trading in Con-
necticut should aim at a reasonable control of the number of
hours which school children shall be allowed to give to work
on the streets.

8. No sufficient reason has been found why these hours of
employment outside the school should not be so limited as not
to interfere in any serious measure with school work. Although
it appears that most of these children are actually contributing
of their earnings to the family budget, the contribution from
their labors to the support of their famihes is usually unheces-

Connecticut Study of Street Trades 103

sary and, from the viewpoint of American standards of living,
undesirable; and granted that this extra income is necessary
to the family, even then the additional amounts earned by the
extension of the hours of labor to the point of interference with
school work is not sufficient to justify the sacrifice.

9. The presence of retarded children in a class is always
recognized as a handicap to the progress of the class as a whole;
they are a chief source of anxiety and nervous strain for the
teacher, and their presence in any considerable numbers in the
schools is a distinct economic loss to the community. It is
self-evident that the pupil who takes ten years or eleven years
to accomplish work which ought to be done in eight or less,
or who spend eight or ten years in covering ground that should
be covered in six, and, probably the most serious count of all,
leaves school but half educated, represents an unnecessarily
large economic waste, and the community bears the expense.

10. Three-fourths of these street trading children come from
homes in which the parents are both foreign-born. The pubHc
schools offer their one opportunity to come into intimate con-
tact with the best that America has to offer: its language, its
history, its standards, and its ideals. The interpretation of
the land of their parents' adoption must come from outside the
home — and this interpretation should not be that of the street.
It is manifestly more important for these children to receive
the fullest measure of the benefit from the education pubUcly
provided than it is for any other single group in our schools
today; and the group whose educational progress — on the
basis of pubhc policy — should be interfered with the least,
should cease to be a group whose educational life, through
diversion by outside interests is compromised the most. To
this problem the educational authorities of the state of Con-
necticut should address themselves.

The protection of childhood is costly. The standards we are willing to
accept and carry forward are a test of democracy because they are a test of
whether it is the popular will to pay the cost of what we agree is essential to
the wise and safe bringing up of children. — Julia Lathrop.

ENFORCEMENT OF THE STREET TRADES LAW

IN BOSTON*

MADELEINE H. APPEL

I assume that you would like to know three things about Boston:
what the law regulating street trades is in Massachusetts, what
machinery Boston has set up for its enforcement, and how the
system is working.

For the purposes of this discussion, the law can be briefly
stated: The minimum age for participation in street trades is 12
years for boys, and for girls 16 or 18, depending upon the size of
the place. Boys under 16 must wear badges which are issued by
the school authorities. They may not, of course, sell during school
hours. The morning and evening hour limits for boys under 14
are 6 a.m. and 8 p.m., and for boys 14 to 16, 5 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Enforcement is legally the duty of both attendance officers and
police.

Through Mr. Philip Davis's book ''Streetland'^ most of you are
more or less famiUar with the background of the Boston system of
enforcing this law. In an attempt to bring about more adequate
supervision of this type of child labor the School Committee in 1906
created the office of Supervisor of Licensed Minors. He was charged
with the duty of licensing the boys and keeping constantly in touch
with them through street inspections. Philip Davis was appointed
to this position. He at once tried to win the cooperation of the
boys, the keynote to my mind of any successful method of enforce-
ment. It was not, however, until 1908, after Mr. Davis had become
familiar with the Toledo Newsboys' Association, that the Boston
Newsboys' Republic was organized.

In each school where there were ten or more newsboys, a cap-
tain and two lieutenants were elected. It was the duty of the
captains to make a weekly street inspection of their districts and

*Paper read at Seventeenth National Conference on Child Labor.

104

Enforcement of the Street Trades Law in Boston 105

to make a monthly inspection at the school to see that every boy
had his own badge and to find out if any had been lost. These
elected representatives also sat as a congress which met quarterly
to discuss the conduct of the trade and to make regulations govern-
ing it when this was necessary. Action taken was ratified at an
annual convention held on June 17th. The Newsboys' Court or
Trial Board was the outcome of the 1910 convention. It was set
up in October of that year for the purpose of reducing the number
of boys who came before the Juvenile Court. The Trial Board had
five members, two adults appointed by the School Committee and
three newsboys. This completed the machinery of self-government.
What was vastly more important, however, was the spirit behind it.
Through district and central meetings of a social or educational
character, the supervisor won the friendship and confidence of many
of the boys, and they began to realize the importance and dignity
of their citizenship in the Newsboys' Republic. Supplementing the
work of the Republic was a Newsboys' Club, where varying social
activities were carried on.

You notice I have been using the past tense, because the News-
boys' Republic of today in Boston is only a ghost of its former self.
Captains and members of the Trial Board are still elected annually,
but apart from that action, the Republic as a whole does not func-
tion. It has seemed unwise to the present Supervisor to encourage
the captains to make street inspections of their districts. They do,
however, assist the Supervisor when he comes to their school to talk
to the newsboys of the district. Neither the congress nor the
annual convention meet now. The Newsboys' Club has recently
disbanded.

The Trial Board, however, still sits regularly every Thursday
evening. There is only one adult judge now and he acts as chief
justice. The boys serve as interpreters. Because of the limitation
of time, their advice in regard to the disposition of cases is not
asked as often as one might wish. The Supervisor acts as prosecut-
ing officer. One of the parents is required to appear with each child.
Most of the 495 cases heard in 1921 were dismissed with a warning,
but a number were placed on probation and the child required to
appear before the Board each week. If a teacher has complained
of a boy, he is asked to bring his school record with him. Only
two cases were taken to the Juvenile Court. To date, there have

106 The American Child

been six cases during the current year. One was a distributor who
furnished an unHcensed boy with papers.

How well is the law being enforced today? As I have said
above, the boy captains are no longer asked to make street inspec-
tions, so this is done ahnost entirely by the Supervisor himself with
only spasmodic assistance from the police.* It is an impossible
task for one man to maintain strict enforcement single-handed.
The boys know him too well and give warning up and down the
Hne as soon as he comes in sight. The Supervisor has succeeded
for the most part, however, in keeping under-aged boys from en-
gaging in street trades, although violations do occur, especially dur-
ing vacation times. The provision requiring boys to wear badges
seems to be the most difficult to enforce. A recent street canvass
in the busiest districts of the city showed that less than half had
badges in evidence. Late selhng at night is not very common,
although a number of children can almost always be found on the
streets after the evening hour limit. As a whole the law can be said
to be only fairly well enforced in Boston. There is certainly room
for improvement.

Methods of administering street trades laws must be adapted
to the needs and resources of each community. What is essential,
however, in my estimation, is an enforcing official with personality
— a man who can lead boys and awaken their sense of responsibihty
instead of relying solely upon coercion.

* At one time a special police oflBcer rendered valuable service in the en-
forcement of this law, but no such officer exists at the present time.

STREET TRADES IN ALABAMA*

LORAINE B. BUSH

For a number of years Alabama has been concerning itself with
factory children and children engaged in various other kinds of
work under bona fide employers in an attempt to give them an
opportunity for some measure of education and also protection for
their growing bodies, but it was not until about two years ago that
we started an honest-to-goodness effort to extend this protection to
the child laborer of the streets who has no employer except the
pubhc, which is much too absorbed in the larger affairs of the day
to ponder very seriously upon its responsibility for the fate of the
impressionable mites of humanity who are growing daily more pre-
cocious with the unhealthy wisdom of the streets.

The Alabama child labor law passed in 1915 contained a clause
restricting the age of boys selling papers to 12 years and boys
engaged in distributing papers to 10 years of age, and prohibiting
street work for girls under 18. This law also made it necessary
for boys to obtain a badge (his license) before they were able to
qualify for this work, but a boy, when he had once secured the
required badge, could sell at any and all hours of the day between
5 o'clock in the morning and 8 o'clock at night. I personally have
known principals of schools, who, upon being notified by the news-
papers that an extra edition was coming out, dismissed the news-
boys to participate in the sale. The original act required that a
boy should be a regular attendant at school and his record satisfac-
tory before he could obtain a badge. But this new law prohibits
the employment of a child under 14 years of age in any occupation
whatsoever during the hours when the public schools of the district
in which he resides are in session. The boy who formerly obtained
his badge and sold during school hours, or who attended school
irregularly, now, under the new legislation, forfeits his badge.

*Paper read at Seventeenth National Conference on Child Labor.

107

108 The American Child

The state child labor inspectors are too few and their inspec-
tions much too infrequent, to enforce this section of the law, but
in the cities and counties where there are school attendance officers,
the enforcement is mainly done by them under the direction of the
state inspectors.

As a beginning of our new efforts to tighten up on street trades
two years ago, we conducted three studies of hours, earnings and
behavior of boys engaged in selling and distributing papers in three
Alabama cities — Anniston, Mobile, and Montgomery. Last year,
a second study was made of Mobile and a study was also conducted
in Birmingham, the largest city in the state. The purpose of these
studies was to determine whether the boys engaged in street trades
were attending school regularly, and the effect of several hours of daily
contact with the street upon the school work and the morals of the
boys thus engaged.

One of these studies showed that 46 per cent of the boys wasted
their earnings in gambling, picture shows, soft drinks, candy, and
wiener sandwiches. This left a little over 50 per cent who spent
their earnings for anything necessary or useful. As a consequence
of street work less than 50 per cent of these boys received promo-
tions at the end of the school year. In Mobile, 66 per cent of the
boys working at street trading contributed nothing to the family
coffers, but wasted their entire earnings much in the same manner
as the boys had done in the first city studied. The result in this
city was that nearly 75 per cent of the boys were graded below
average in school, both in conduct and in scholarship. This meant
that the number of boys in street trades in each of these cities who
were wasting their earnings was running in the same proportion
with the number of newsboys who were failing in their school work.
In other words, school was running in competition with the excite-
ment and dissipation of the street work with its late hours, little
recreation, and its spirit of thriftlessness. The school was unable
to cope with its rival in the case of from 55 per cent to 65 per cent
of the boys, therefore, it was costing Alabama twice as much to
educate, or rather, try to educate, these boys who must spend at
least two years in a grade, not to mention the later cost to the state
in losing this number of citizens who would not be properly trained
or morally equipped to be independent and useful. A large per-
centage of the boys who were doing good work at school, despite

Street Trades in Alabama 109

the street work, represented the naturally thrifty and industrious
who usually came from the better homes and who had had a fair
start at an education before they began street work.

It was found that the boys would congregate about the news-
paper office for an hour or so before the papers came off the press,
in order that they might be the first on the street. While waiting,
they would pass the time matching pennies, rolling dice, fighting,
using foul and profane language, and creating bedlam in general.
The force about the distributing rooms usually encouraged the
boys in their uproar by teasing them. When one boy was questioned
as to how he spent his time while waiting for his papers, he replied :
''We play in the basement but we have a fight most every day.
Yesterday some of us boys bet Hugh that he could whip Gerald
and we had the best time." "Did he whip him?" the inspector
asked. ''Not yet," the boy answered, "but they are going to finish
this evening. Hugh had better whip him though or I am going
to lose some money." "What did Mr. X., the man who gives out
the papers, say about the fight?" asked the inspector. "Ohj he
don't care," said the boy, "he said that he hoped Hugh would whip
Gerald because he needed a good beating."

In one city it was found that the boys made only one cent on
each paper sold. But the manager with great pride told the in-
spector that the boys could make much more than one cent if they
were clever enough, because many customers would not ask for
their change if the boy was alert or appealing, and others would
not wait for their change if the boys would not be too hasty in
making it. In other words, he was encouraging his boys not to
make change unless asked for it and to appeal for tips to swell their
earnings.

After the study was completed and a copy sent to the circula-
tion manager, the inspectors started a campaign to better the con-
ditions by enhsting the school attendance officer to keep close tab
on the school attendance of the boys, and when they were not in
regular attendance at school, to revoke the badges and notify the
newspaper accordingly. The newspaper man, fearing that the
result of the study was going to be made pubhc and injure his paper,
immediately took steps to assume some responsibiUty for the be-
havior of the boys about his estabUshment. The result was that
the next year, when a similar study was conducted, it was found

110 The American Child

that whereas 65 per cent of the boys had failed at school the year
before, the number had decreased to more than half, or to 30 per
cent, and 50 per cent of all boys in street trades were doing school
work equal to the average of their class.

In the distributing room where chaos and uproar once reigned,
the manager now provides games such as checkers, dominoes, jacks,
etc., and the boys must obey certain rules of behavior and use no
vulgar or profane language. For a violation of these rules of order
they are fined from 10 cents up, according to the nature of the
offense. A bonus system for regular selling has been instituted,
and the fines are usually deducted from the bonus at the end of the
week. Instead of fighting and strugghng, as formerly, for the first
place to receive the papers, the boys now take a number as they
enter the room, and when the papers are ready for distribution, they
assemble in line according to these numbers and receive their papers
in a business-hke and orderly manner.

Last year a study was conducted in Birmingham, Alabama's
largest city, and 143 boys were studied, 107 of whom were street
sellers, and the remaining 36 newspaper carriers who worked in the
residence section only.

It was found that the boys engaged in street seUing made about
an average of $6.50 a week and 30 per cent of the boys spent all
their earnings for themselves, only 20 per cent having any savings
accounts. Most of these accounts were merely a Christmas sav-
ings fund or else savings to buy a bicycle, or some such article which
the boy desired. Forty-seven per cent were contributing none of
their earnings to the family incomes. The boys who were engaged
in delivering papers made an average of $2.00 a week, and 44 per
cent of the boys used all for spending money alone, only 14 per
cent giving any of their earm'ngs to their parents. When the school
records were examined, 35 per cent of the sellers were found to be
retarded, and although eight weeks of the school term remained at
the time the study was made, the teachers estimated that at least
33 per cent of all the 143 boys studied would have to repeat their
grades next year. It was learned, also, that almost without excep-
tion, the boys who were failing in their studies were those who had
engaged in street work for the longest period of time. And while
the teachers estimated that 67 per cent of the boys would pass
their grades, they also estimated that only 29 per cent of all the boys

Street Trades in Alabama 111

studied were doing work equal to, or above, the average for their
classes. The school attendance of the boys was good, running 94
per cent good for the boys engaged in distribution, and 82 per cent
good for the boys selhng. This was a result of a vigorously enforced
school attendance program in Birmingham and also due to the fact
that a boy's badge is revoked unless he attends school regularly.
Absences are followed up by the school attendance officer who issues
the badges, and it is not infrequent that the badges are revoked by
the attendance officer because of irregular school attendance. About
30 per cent of the boys doing street trading in Birmingham were
found to come from broken homes, and the mothers of 23 per cent
of the number were found to be engaged in some kind of work out-
side the home each day. This meant that one out of every four
boys was left to his own resources from the time he left school until
he returned home late at night. Twenty-eight per cent of the boys
smoked, 10 per cent were habitual gamblers, 14 per cent frequently
played truant, 12 per cent were known to be troublesome on the
street, and 6 per cent had been caught stealing articles. A few of
the boys coming from homes of especially poor environment were
found to stay out all night, sometimes sleeping on the floors of the
distribution room of the newspaper establishments, in nearby garages,
or such sheltered places. The consequence was that eight per cent
had been before the Juvenile Court. This number does not include
those former newsboys who were then inmates of the Parental Home
or the State Training School for Boys. Seventy-five per cent of
the boys with Juvenile Court records had been selling papers for
more than two years. Four of the boys had been before the court
on three different occasions and two had been previously conmiitted
to the Training School for Boys, and later dismissed.

Fifty-seven per cent of these boys lived in the downtown sec-
tions and spent all their time after school on the streets, thus hav-
ing no time or opportunity for play or recreation. When we stop
to consider this condition, we are really astonished that more of
the boys thus cut off from the normal activities of child life do not
succumb to the evils of the street.

An interesting fact in connection with the studies of street
trades made in Alabama, and the enforcement of the law pertain-
ing thereto, is that the large dailies, instead of becoming antagonistic
to the department, rallied to its cause promptly, and made appar-

112 The American Child

ently very sincere efforts to better conditions. This has already
been indicated in the report of the Mobile study where the manager
of the Mobile Register , after our study, immediately set up certain
rules and regulations promoting better standards which are still,
more than two years later, in effect. On one occasion, friends in
Louisiana who were trying to secure the passage of a child labor
law applying to street trades, wired the Director of the State Child
Welfare Department of Alabama, asking that she send the chair-
man of the House Committee having the Louisiana bill in charge,
a telegram commending the advantages of the law in Alabama.
Realizing that her opinion would have little weight with a legisla-
ture, the director, instead of sending telegrams over her own sig-
nature, called up the managers of all the big dailies in Alabama and
assuring them that she would take care of all expenses, asked them
to send the chairman of the committee at Baton Rouge a telegram,
stating exactly their feelings about the child labor law. She urged
them to be frank, whether their opinions were favorable or not.
With only one exception, every big daily in Alabama forwarded at
its own expense day-letters commending the street trades clause of
the Alabama child labor law. The circulation manager of the Bir-
mingham News said to the Louisiana Legislature,'' If Alabama had
had this law 20 years ago she would not have to concern herself so
much today about illiteracy and other evils. '^

The difficulty of enforcement is greater in the smaller towns,
where big dailies are controlled by unscrupulous agents, than in
larger cities where pleasant and profitable contacts can be made
with the managers themselves. We have just succeeded in having
a form letter written by the circulation manager of the largest daily
in Alabama to his agents, advising them that if the Department of
Child Welfare continues to find non-observance of the law on the
part of the agents they would be expected to resign. This sort of
cooperation is very new and unique in Alabama.

Every year there are nearly 1,000 boys under 16 years of
age in Alabama who take out licenses for street trades. This
means that unless we work diligently, according to the statistics
obtained from our studies, more than 500 boys will fail yearly in
their school work because of street trades, to say nothing of their
being exposed to the many hazards with which they are in daily
contact.

Street Trades in Alabama ' 113

The time will probably come when every American city will
aboHsh street trading by children. But until such a time does
come, we must work zealously and earnestly to check its abuses
by perfecting the Hcense system and by amplifying plans for closer
supervision, with self-governm.ent as a basis for such supervision.

Children deprived of play-life are robbed of their childhood — and the world
can never repay what has been lost, even though it may try, in an agony of
repentance, to compensate these children — for in this respect, there is no for-
giveness of sin. Thousands of undeveloped children work in agricultural and
street trades, factories and tenements, denied schooUng and playtime, and are
worn in body and mind. — Royal Neighbor, Rock Island, Illinois.

Children, finishing the eighth or ninth grades, are too young to make the
most of themselves in they leave school They may enter industry, but, not
knowing what they want to do, they will drift along for a number of years,
forming habits of idleness and instabiUty, which are costly to the community
and harmful to the children. — Frank Cody, Superintendent, Detroit Public Schools.

STREET TRADES IN CHICAGO*

R ZETA YOUMANS

A report on street trades in Chicago must be one that concerns
itself with the things that ought to be done rather than those which
are actually accomplished. The chaotic condition of political affairs
throughout the state reaches down to all ages and grades and touches
the small boy selling newspapers as surely as it does the governor.
Plans for a new street trades ordinance have been given up because
of the general impasse.

There is no state law on street trades in Illinois. The situa-
tion in Chicago where the greatest activity in street selling shows
itself is disposed of by an ordinance enacted in 1912. The pro-
visions of this ordinance are as follows:

No girl under 18 may at any time sell anything on the
streets or in public places.

Boys under 14 may pursue any of the occupations enu-
merated after 5 o'clock in the morning and before 8 o'clock at
night.

Between the ages of 14 and 16 a boy who has on his per-
son an age and school certificate may sell all night if he so
chooses.

The ordinance further provides that the police officer who finds
violations must inform his superior officer, who in turn must cause
a letter of warning to be written to the boy's parents informing
them of the nature of the violation. A second offense permits
prosecution and the fine may not be more than one hundred dollars.
The most serious difficulty in the way of strict enforcement is lack
of cooperation on the part of the police.

Two obvious defects of this ordinance are that it sets no mini-
mum age and that the clause, permitting a boy of 14 to sell at any
hour of the day or night if he has a school certificate on his person.

*Abstract of paper read at Seventeenth National Conference on Child Labor.

114

Street Trades in Chicago II5

is out of date. The Certificating Bureau of the Board of Educa-
tion no longer issues work certificates to boys but handles them
through the employers.

The portion of the ordinance satisfactorily enforced is the para-
graph which prohibits street selHng by girls under 18. Girls are
occasionally found selling papers or gum, but the practice is rarely
persisted in after the first warning. The Chicago Daily News,
which practically controls the conduct of the news-stands during
the day, gives us very effective help in enforcing this part of the
ordinance.

But for the violations of the ordinance by boys under 16 years
of age there is no such clear-cut remedy. Although Mr. Wrigley
is beginning to make gum-seUing a part of the street trades prob-
lem, the selling of newspapers with the vast proportion of compe-
tition, of stimulating the public to buy, and of making it possible
to purchase at every step without interfering with the regular pur-
suit of business, makes the newsboy the central figure of interest in
street trades. One package of gum will last an ordinary individual
for a day. One shoe shine per day would seem to be all that the
average man needs, but the number of newspapers consumed by
an individual appears to be measured only by the capacity of the
newspaper to get out new editions.

The problem of day selling resolves itself into an effort to keep
boys under 10 from selling at the news-stands and on the streets.
The minimum age is not found in the ordinance but in a paragraph
of the state dependency law, which includes street selhng in a defini-
tion of a dependent child under 10. The difficulties of this problem
may be suggested by the fact that the majority of news-stands are
owned by Italians, and that apparently every Italian family that
has a boy usually attempts to have him sell papers or black boots
from the time he begins to go to school at six or seven years of age.
These cases are controlled only in the more crowded districts and
wherever the use of small children is perfectly obvious. That the
law is not enforced throughout the city is beyond doubt, although
the Daily News makes some effort to control this situation also.

Night selling, with its lure to boys already inclined to delin-
quency, is the worst problem that has to be faced. The news-
stands are owned by the men who sell day papers. The night
papers are sold by a different group, who use some of the same

116 The American Child

stands and make them serve as a distributing center for the wagons.
The men on the stands at night are often known only by nick-
names— Shorty, Red Jake, or Speck. The work of seUing has to
be carried on somewhat differently from day selling. The purchas-
ing groups are found in different places and are more widely scat-
tered. Sometimes whole areas profitable for day selling are not at
all profitable for night work. The men usually secure the services
of a group of boys, who, according to the law, should be 16 years
of age or have secured their work certificates. These boys usually
sell on a commission basis, or 50 cents per hundred. A typical
group of this sort was found in one district. Two or three nights
in succession at 11 and 12 o'clock at night, six boys were found
within a radius of three or four blocks from a certain stand selling
papers. These boys were all under 14 years of age. Investigation
showed all of them to have either delinquency or truancy records
and bad home conditions; one was subnormal. After the first
night we were never able to get in contact with the man for whom
they worked. None of them knew him by any name but Shorty.
A letter sent to the name and address he gave on the first night of
the investigation was returned for better address. Men of this
type may be found at any profitable corner after 10 o'clock at night.
Policemen pass on their regular beats. Boys as young as eight may
be selhng at midnight week after week, but unless that boy's name
and address and place of selling are sent to the precinct office, the
lad will never be interfered with. It is illustrative of this situation
that a boy of eight reported to be selling until 1 a.m. every night at
a certain stand proved to be the son of a policeman.

In 1916 the news alley situation was investigated by the Ju-
venile Protective Association. Demorahzing conditions were found
involving very young boys, many of whom slept in the alleys and
were in contact with the most degraded types of men. The result
of the survey was the promise of cooperation from certain of the
newspapers and an order to exclude from the alleys boys under 16
in the future.

During the winter just past, the fever of competition among the
newspapers resulted in the establishment of lotteries. Hundreds
of thousands of dollars were advertised to be given away to the
holders of lucky numbers, and the tremendous increase in circulation
that resulted broke down all the restraint in the use of carriers.

Street Trades in Chicago 117

The public must be satisfied with newspapers and lottery tickets.
Papers were piled on the street corners in mountainous heaps and
the streets swarmed with boys of all ages selling until one o'clock
in the morning. An appeal was made to the Chief of PoHce for
the enforcement of the street trades ordinance. Before the lot-
teries had ceased to function, the poHce made a vigorous effort to
get the boys off the streets, but unless the attention of the Chief
had been called to the situation it is very Ukely that no policeman
in the city would have considered it his duty to interfere with the
business of distributing newspapers and lottery tickets. At this
time the boys found their way again to the news alleys where news-
papers were again distributed to them.

The attitude of the men in charge of the circulation department
is illustrated by a night investigation. This newspaper was pub-
lishing an edition that came from the delivery room at 8 o'clock.
The street trades ordinance says that no boy under 16 without a
ceetificate may sell after 8 o'clock. On the night in question, 11
boys started into the newspaper alleys just before 8 o'clock. Be-
hind them, through the swinging doors, walked two officers of the
Juvenile Protective Association. They followed the boys through
the room from which papers are distributed to the wagons. The
manager of that room was about to put into the arms of the first
boy a bundle of papers, when he happened to see the officers. He
snatched the papers from the boy and said to the group of pros-
pective purchasers, ''It's against the law for you boys to get papers
here. Get out." The oldest boy in the group was 12 and the
youngest 7 years. They had been purchasing their papers from
the alleys for two months. They all came from one neighborhood;
all attended one school and were there to help an 11-year old boy
who had an estabUshed afternoon paper route with his older brother.

How many newsboys are employed in Chicago, what are their
general living conditions, how their occupation affects their school
work, and how the question is related to dehnquency, we have no
adequate way of knowing. A tentative plan was outhned by the
Juvenile Protective Association this year for a new street trades
ordinance that should set a minimum age for day seUing, fix a mini-
mum age for night selling at 16, and establish a hcensing system to
be handled through the Board of Education. The Superintendent
of Schools, Mr. Mortenson, and Miss Anne Davis, head of the

118 The American Child

Vocational Guidance Bureau, were very willing to cooperate in
securing such an ordinance and to undertake the issuing of licenses
or permits. This plan had to be given up until the present political
crisis involving the Board of Education is over.

A survey of seven schools, made by the Vocational Guidance
Bureau, in regard to after-school occupations, has given us the
first glimpse of the actual situation in regard to street trades from
the school point of view. Of the 123 boys who stated that they
were occupied after school in street trades, 74 were newsboys, 44
bootblacks, three peddlers of gum, one top seller, and one a distrib-
utor of hand-bills. Of these, 89 were Italians, 9 Polish, 8 Jewish,
5 German, and 3 Bohemian. The balance of 9 was divided among
8 different nationalities.

The basis of employment of the 74 newsboys was as follows : 6 sold
on commission, 8 could not tell the basis of arrangement, 10 were
employed by near relatives at a stated wage, 14 were selling for
themselves on a purchase and sale basis, and 36 were employed at
a stated wage by stand owners not related. None of these were
certificated for work.

The grades in school included everything from the second grade
to high eighth. Rank in school was as follows: 33 were in the first
rank in grade, 45 in the middle rank, 30 in the third, 13 were marked
failure, and only 1 was classified as subnormal. This is significant
from the point of view of fairly efficient school work being carried
on with an after-school occupation. The lack of subnormality is
also noteworthy, especially when compared to the number of sub-
normal children found begging on the market streets.

Out of the whole number of boys occupied in street trades
(123), 104 boys stated that the money earned was given to the
mother to spend; only 16 reported the use of any part of their
earnings by themselves, and only 13 stated that the money was
saved.

One of the most interesting situations disclosed by the infor-
mation gained was in regard to the amount of time spent in street
selling, the amount of money earned, and the methods of business
contract. The deductions from this portion of the survey have
not been completed, but it is quite obvious that the boys who are
paid a stated wage and work at a stand owned by a man not a rela-
tive are the most satisfactorily paid.

Street Trades in Chicago 119

The street trades ordinance is based upon the proposition that
a boy is seUing for himself. The statistics just given show a much
greater proportion regularly employed at a stated wage. For
years the State Factory Department, sustained by the Attorney
General, refused to consider this employment as a violation of the
child labor law. Under the present administration of the Depart-
ment of Labor a deputy factory inspector has been assigned to the
Vocational Guidance Bureau and a Department of Industrial Studies
estabhshed. A report from this new Department indicates the close
cooperation and extended interpretations of law given by the De-
partment of Labor.

Both the Employment Certificate Department of the Board of
Education and the State Factory Department are attempting to
give the widest meaning possible to the state child labor law. In
doing this, they are including occupations which might be con-
sidered as coming under the city ordinance on street trades. As
the standards of the child labor law are much higher than those of
the city ordinance, the Department feels that it is improving the
situation by having the state law encroach upon the territory as far
as possible. With the child labor law operating in all cases where
a boy is actually employed at a stated wage — an arrangement which
has always proved to be the safest and best for the children con-
cerned— it will only remain to control the free-lancers, who are
rapidly decreasing in number. This progressive attitude on the
part of the State Factory Department and the Board of Education
will greatly simplify the street trades situation.

The most crying need is that of a clear-cut limitation on night
selling and a stringent enforcement of it. The Juvenile Protective
Association is accumulating information on the demoralizing effects
of night selling that should be of potent value in securing better
enforcement of the present ordinance, and in breaking down all
opposition to a definite age limit of 16 for night work.

The world is moving in a way to show increasing solicitude for the welfare
of children. Scholarship, as well as sympathy; insight into the future, as well
as understanding of the present; respect for the natural and divine rights of
childhood, rather than for worn-out social philosophy and fallacious property
rights; these are conspicuous in the drift of the world ioda.y .—Reverend William
J. Kerby, Secretary, National Conference of Catholic Charities.

STREET TRADES IN PENNSYLVANIA*

BRUCE WATSON

The Pennsylvania Child Labor Law of 1915 provides that:

"No male minor under twelve years of age, and no female minor,
shall distribute, sell, expose, or offer for sale any newspaper, magazine,
periodical, or other publication, or any article of merchandise of any sort,
in any street or public place. No male minor under fourteen years of
age, and no female minor, shall be suffered, employed, or permitted to
work at any time as a scavenger, bootblack, or in any other trade or
occupation performed in any street or public place. No male minor under
sixteen years of age, and no female minor, shall engage in any occupation
mentioned in this section before six o'clock in the morning, or after eight
o'clock in the evening, of any day."

The enforcement of the act is made the duty of the police, the
inspectors of the Department of Labor and Industry and the attend-
ance officers of the public schools. Between these three agencies
the enforcement of the street trades section goes by default. It is
the old story of divided responsibility, plus the constant menace of
a powerful newspaper influence that is opposed to enforcement.

Other sections of the law are pretty well enforced by these same
agencies, and the reason for the utter breakdown of the street trades
section is doubtless the fact that the newspapers are the worst
offenders and possess enormous political power. All enforcement
officers and their superiors know what will happen if they do any-
thing to interfere with the convenience or profit of the publishers.
Efforts to secure enforcement are met by violent opposition on the
part of three-fourths of the newspapers, and with rare exceptions
the other fourth give no active support.

The repeated studies made by our association have produced
information not unlike many others made in almost every part of
the country by many different agencies.

Children of tender years are on the street at all hours of the
night and day, many of them contributing nothing to their own

*Paper read at Seventeenth National Conference on Child Labor.

120

Street Trades in Pennsylvania 121

support, but using their earnings in attendance at shows, in gam-
bhng, and in gratification of various tastes and desires. Begging
is common, the papers being used merely as a cover. Most
people who are inclined to look with tolerance upon the evil give
the matter but little thought, and make no distinction between
legal and illegal selling.

But a small percentage of the children violating the law are
forced by economic necessity to do so.

A very large percentage have a record of poor school attend-
ance, retardation, and various forms of dehnquency. At first
thought the obvious conclusion is that street trades should be con-
trolled by the police, because the police are everywhere and have
ample authority.

Long-continued study and careful analysis of the matter has
convinced us that it is not a police job, for these reasons:

The business of the police is to look after the safety of citizens.
They deal with adult law-breakers and criminals. They have
neither the intelligence nor the point of view required for this task.
A proper handling of street trade violations reaches into the home
and sometimes into the school, where the officer on the beat cannot
go. Finally — the police will not do it.

Almost the same reasons apply against reliance upon the in-
spectors of the State Labor Department for the performance of
this duty.

Every one of these considerations points to the school depart-
ment as the proper agency to deal with this problem. It has the
intelligence, the point of view, the necessary organization, and
many contacts with the child through the school and the home.

Acting in accordance with this behef, the Pubhc Education
and Child Labor Association of Pennsylvania prepared and pro-
moted in the legislature of 1921 a bill fixing responsibility for en-
forcement of the street trades section directly upon school authori-
ties.

It provided as follows:

"In every school district of the first, second or third class, authority

for the enforcement of section seven of this act shall be vested also in the

board of school directors thereof. In every such school district, the board

of school directors shall employ attendance officers sufficient in number to

enforce thoroughly the provisions of said section. Said board of school

directors may make such regulations and adopt such plans as it may deem

122 The American Child

wise or necessary for properly carrying out the provisions of said section,
subject to the approval in writing of the State Superintendent of Public
Instruction.

"In case of failure of the board of school directors of any such school
district to properly enforce said section seven, it shall be the duty of the
Superintendent of Public Instruction to withhold any order for such dis-
trict's share of the state appropriation until such failure has been cor-
rected."

This bill advanced smoothly to third reading in the House of
Representatives, when the newspaper men discovered it, got it
referred back to the committee that had reported it out, and secured
a hearing at which the papers were represented by a large delega-
tion whose chief spokesman was a prominent attorney who had
been retained by them. The representative of one Harrisburg
paper appeared in behalf of the bill.

The usual specious arguments were offered, namely : ''that the
enforcement of the law would work a hardship on poor families and
that paper-selling was a school of business for the youngsters."

It was evident that the hearing was intended largely as a matter
of form, for the newspaper association brought its influence to bear
upon the political leaders of the dominant party. Word was passed
out to kill the bill, and it never afterwards emerged from committee.

Then a movement was begun to persuade school boards vol-
untarily to assume the responsibility (they already had the author-
ity) of enforcing the street trades section. Up to the present time,
the Philadelphia School Board is the only one which has comphed.
It has detailed two attendance oflScers, under direction of Mr. Henry
J. Gideon, Chief of the Bureau of Attendance, on full time, to handle
the problem. Their eflFort thus far has been directed at the evil
of night selling, by boys under 16 years of age after 8 p.m. While
they have ample authority to take violators into custody, they find it
best to adopt other methods at first. Their procedure is as follows:

When a child under legal age is first picked up, the child is
warned, his name and residence are taken and next morning his
parents are visited and warned. Seventy-five per cent of the parents
are ignorant of the law, although before this plan was put in opera-
tion a printed copy of the law was given to each child in school to
be taken home to his parents.

On second offense the child and his parents are summoned to
the school attendance oflBce and there reprimanded.

Street Trades in Pennsylvania 123

On third offense, if it appears to be the parent's fault, he is
summoned to the magistrate's court and given a suspended sen-
tence. If the parent seems to have the right attitude, but is unable
to control the child, both parent and child are summoned to the
House of Detention, where a formal hearing is held and both child
and parent warned of the consequence of another violation.

In the four months that have elapsed since the inauguration of
this plan there has not been a fourth offense. When a fourth case
occurs, the suspended sentence will be enforced and the penalty-
increased, if the fault is the parent's. If the child is beyond the
parent's control, he will be sent to an institution.

As the work progresses, it is planned that j&rst offenses shall be
reported to the regular school attendance officer working in the field
where the child lives, and that officer will make the home visitation.
In most cases he will know the child, the parents, and the child's
record.

While this work has been going on for only four months, very
slowly and cautiously certain results are apparent.

While at first each officer found an average of fifteen violations
in a night's work, he now finds only five or six, mostly new cases.

This is largely due to the plan whereby the "corners" are assigned
to boys by the various circulation managers of the newspapers.
When a boy has been picked up, the manager assigns a new boy to
his corner. Better cooperation of the circulation managers is
hoped for in future.

While it is easier to estabhsh a case against the night work as
dangerous to health and morals, yet the larger problem is that of
afternoon selling. By far the greater numbers are employed then,
and more violations of the law occur. It is against any curtailment
of either legal or illegal selling in the afternoon that newspaper oppo-
sition is strongest.

We are hoping that when the illegal night work is well under
control the Philadelphia Board of Education may be persuaded to
authorize its attendance officers to attack the afternoon and morn-
ing problem.

Already the attendance officers assigned to this work have found
the need and the means of a very helpful social work. Where child-
ren violating the law come from^homes of manifest economic need,
the^officers have sometimes been able to put them in touch with

124 The American Child

social agencies which have helped them to better self-support.
Sometimes the officers have been able to connect the children with
positions where they could earn money legally. One fifteen-year-
old boy was putting himself through high school by illegal paper
selling at night. The circulation manager who employed him was
notified and promised to find other employment for the boy by
which he could earn his support without breaking the law.

The attendance officers have arranged with the state employ-
ment office to send unemployed men to the circulation managers to
replace boys selling illegally. One circulation manager promised to
take all men that were sent.

During March, April and May, 418 violations were found, 176
cases were investigated at the schools attended, and 311 at the homes;
108 hearings were held at the attendance office and five cases were
taken into court.

Our field worker is now out among the second and third class
cities of the state in an effort to induce the school authorities of those
cities to follow the lead of the Philadelphia Board in assuming re-
sponsibility for the control of street trades and to go farther than
the Philadelphia Board has gone.

Most school superintendents are in sympathy with the plan and
in a few instances the attendance officers have done a little on their
own responsibility. One superintendent assured our worker that
there was no street trade problem in his city, and that if she found
a case of law violation and would report it to him, he would attend
to it forthwith. Within a very few hours she found a girl of 13 and
her brother of 11 working for a man named Wilson, from 6 to 9 p.m.
She also found and reported three boys aged 7, 9, and 10, selling
in the afternoon. His response was as follows: "By putting your
letter in the hands of the truant officer, he declares that it is legal
for the children to work these hours. I am happy to hear that
this is all you have found wrong in B." A further letter from our
worker explaining to the superintendent the incorrectness of his
attendance officer's information met no response. Fortunately this
superintendent is the exception rather than the rule.

A study of the street trades made recently in Pittsburgh brought
out the following facts:

Fifty-three per cent of the newsboys of the city aje vio-
lating the law.

Street Trades in Pennsylvania 125

Boys of two and three years of age are selling papers.
(The youngest newsboys our own workers in the state have
found were four years old.)

Nearly 75 per cent of the boys are retarded one or more
years at school.

Eighty per cent come from normal homes, the father living
and supporting the family.

Only one-sixth of the boys contribute anything to the
support of the home. Their money goes to the movies, is lost
in crap games, or is spent for candy and ice cream.

The average hourly earnings are about four cents.

Of 1200 newsboys, 197 boys under 14 years of age were
selhng after 8 p.m. The law says that no boy under 16 may
sell after 8 p.m.

100 boys under 12 were selling after 8 p.m.

772 boys, 65 per cent of the cases, studied, began to sell
before they were 12 years old.

The Rochester Reform School draws 75 per cent of its in-
mates from the newsboy ranks; Hart's Island (New York City)
63 per cent; Glen Mills (Philadelphia), 77 per cent; Cincinnati
28 per cent; Thornhill (Pittsburgh) 66 per cent.

Thirteen per cent of the cases studied admitted that they
gambled and ten per cent admitted that they smoked.

Five per cent of the boys received major bodily injuries in
the streets in one year. In many cases these injuries were very
expensive for the parents.

"The newspaper authorities themselves stimulate boys to
become 'newsies.' The more boys they have the more papers
they can sell."

Fifty-six per cent of the Pittsburgh newsboys have foreign-
born parents.

The whole situation in Pennsylvania may be summarized in a
brief statement, as follows:

The street trade evil in Pennsylvania has the same characteris-
tics that it has in every other state, with no real attempt on the
part of any responsible authority to check or control it except in
rare instances. The prevailing urban population intensifies the evil
and increases the problem.

^^J^ mm:^

A MODEL STREET TRADES LAW*

WILEY H. SWIFT

If I should be asked to draft a model street trades law, good for
any and all states, I would decline with thanks. It can't be done.
Laws cannot be packed up and sent around like smoking tobacco
in tin boxes.

Laws grow like corn, and however well one might do in drafting
any law, one would be unwilling to call it a model law — certainly
after the day of its enactment. Conditions change from day to
day, and besides, what would be a good law for one state would not
be a good law for another. Laws of value spring from the social
life and historical development of the people — they should never be
either forced or grafted.

There are, however, in this matter of street trading, some rather
well-accepted standards. You must have been struck with how
nearly everyone who has spoken this afternoon agreed with the
other speakers as to what ought to be done. You have observed
also that those who have spoken have come from different parts of
the country. We may therefore conclude that throughout the
country there is a rather definite opinion as to who may, and who
ought not to engage in street trading.

I may, I think, be permitted to call your attention to another
most interesting fact which no one has so far mentioned. The
people of towns from ten to one hundred thousand inhabitants are
beginning to make observations on their own account, and to feel
that something should be done for the regulating of street trades
in even smaller cities and towns. They are even beginning to talk
in our language. Right now, throughout the country the regula-
tion of child street trading is a vital question. I know of one state
child supervising agency that is making an inquiry into this matter

*Abstract of a discussion by Mr. Swift at the Seventeenth National Conference
on Child Labor.

126

A Model Street Trades Law 127

at this very time, and is planning to recommend and urge at the
next session of the legislature such legislation as, after inquiry and
study, it deems wise. We may therefore prepare ourselves to make
such contributions as possible in the formulating of street trades
laws.

If I were called upon to aid in the drafting of a street trades
act for any state, I would suggest that the following features be
given careful consideration:

1. No street trading for girls under 18 years of age. It
would be better if this could be made 21, and in time I believe
that it will be 21 in most of the states.

2. No street trading at night for boys under 16 years of
age. It would be better if this could be made 18 and in time
it probably will.

3. No street trading by boys under 12 years of age. It
would be better if this could be made 14 in all the states, but
in states where there is no regulation, or very little regulation,
if certain other features, which I am about to suggest, were
written into the law, there would be no great necessity for
insisting upon 14 instead of 12. We may have to approach
the best gradually.

4. The state-wide act should fix minimum standards only.
The act itself should carry a provision authorizing any city or
town to fix and enforce higher standards if it chooses to do so.
The state should hold the local community up to a certain
level in child care, but should not hold it back from going
higher.

5. Every boy under 16 years of age engaging in street trad-
ing should be required to hold a license in the form of a badge,
good at most, for not more than one year, and granted by the
officer authorized by law to grant work permits under the
general child labor law. I see no reason for having two per-
sons or agencies authorized to grant licenses for the employ-
ment of children. A badge is in reality a license on display.
These badges should be granted only after there has been a
proof of age as required by the child labor law, and a lawful
certificate of both physical and mental fitness for street trade
work. This is, I believe, a new feature. We have been press-

128 The American Child

ing the matter of certificates of physical fitness for ordinary
employment, but so far as I know, have not insisted upon such
certificates for street trading. I see no good reason why such
certificates should not be required for street trading and there
are many reasons why this certificate should cover mental as
well as physical fitness. These badges should be granted upon
the condition that they may be revoked, whenever it appears
that street trading interferes with the child's health or his
progress at school.

If these provisions and this condition were written into
the law and properly enforced, it seems to me that a 12-year
age limit for street trading for boys would be much better than
a 14-year age limit without them.

6. In the discussion I should raise the question of the
number of hours of employment. Not much, if anything,
has been said upon this question, but it is one that we shall
have to meet. The 8-hour standard for children under 16 is
now rather well established in ordinary emplo3niient.

Schoohng, if it is worth anything at all, is work. Going
to school is harder than hoeing corn — I have tried both. If a
child can stand more school work than is given in the ordinary
school day, then we might well lengthen the school day. Schools
exist for children, and not for teachers. Whether we should
insist upon an 8-hour day only, including the hours of school,
I am not certain, but I am very certain that a boy under 16
years of age should not be permitted to go to work selling
papers at 6 o'clock in the morning, work until 9 o'clock, go to
school until 2:30, and then sell papers until 8 o'clock in the
evening. By a little calculation you will see that we thus get
a 14-hour day. All will agree that that is too much.

7. Finally, I should seek to have incorporated into the law
a provision that any child who is found engaging in street trades
in violation of any of the provisions of the law, should be treated
by the Juvenile Court as a delinquent, dependent, or neglected
child, as the circumstances may show. I woult suggest this
for two reasons:

(a) To reach the independent child street trader who has
so far, in some states, been almost a person above all
law, and

A Model Street Trades Law 129

(b) because more and more we are coming to understand
that the Juvenile Court, rather than the criminal,
should take cognizance of all matters relating to the
welfare of children.

In any state I would content myself with these suggestions and
leave to the members of the legislature and other interested organi-
zations and citizens the actual wording of the law. That, I am
sure, is the only way by which a fairly good street trades law can
be assured for any state.

Not an unoccupied but a well-occupied childhood is the aim of child labor
reform.

In a community that is not poverty stricken and that has educational
institutions of high gi'ade, with decent employment opportunities for adults,
the child-labor situation should be much above the standards set by law.
Heroic efforts should be made to keep children in school, to adjust their educa-
tional program, and to make continued education profitable and possible, what-
ever the minimum standards of law may be. — Miss Tracy Copp, Wisconsin
Industrial Commission.

JUVENILE STREET WORK IN IOWA

SARA A. BROWN

City streets and their relation to the welfare of young children
receive consideration by those interested in children's play, work,
health, morals, and habit-forming experiences. Child labor in city
streets with its accompanying results in terms of child life has chal-
lenged students of the subject in the United States and England
for a quarter of a century or more. Recent studies deal in the
main with street work in large cities and record conditions of which
the general public has little or no knowledge. Among such studies
are Child Labor in City Streets, Toledo School Children in Street
Trades, Newsboys of Dallas, Newsboys in Birmingham, and The
Newsboys of Cincinnati.

The National Child Labor Committee, in contact with child-
ren's work in rural communities and small cities, finds that in many
localities young children work on the streets under conditions which
violate lowest accepted standards for their protection, while in
others they do the same kind of work under conditions which com-
pare favorably with best known regulation of child labor. In an
effort to find out how effectively street work is regulated and what
supervision is afforded young children engaged in it in small cities,
we undertook a brief study of juvenile street trades in Iowa. The
state has eighteen cities of more than ten thousand inhabitants and
a capital rapidly developing the conscience and the conditions of a
large city. Iowa has a street trades law, a good compulsory edu-
cation law and altogether may be considered in many respects a
typical mid-western commonwealth with sane, advancing ideals as
to what work is suitable for children, safeguarding all against those
forms of work which deprive them of education, health, wholesome
play, instruction in religious ideals, and strength of character, in
other words, against child labor.

We group the findings under three main heads: I. Iiitroduc-
tion. (1) The law; (2) the study. II. Statement of findings.

130

Juvenile Street Work in Iowa 131

(1) Nature of street work; (2) newspapers' plans for distribution;
(3) administration of the law; (4) social status of parents; (5) length
of career and earnings; (6) neglect of carriers; (7) lack of super-
vision; (8) school records of 167 sellers and 70 carriers; (9) records
of delinquency; (10) street- workers in the State Training School
for Boys. III. Conclusions.

INTRODUCTION

The Iowa child labor law enacted in 1915 has a section on
street trades applying to cities of over ten thousand inhabitants.
It designates an age limit of 11 for boys and 18 for girls. Judges
of Superior or Municipal Courts may authorize officers to issue per-
mits to boys under 11 years, in exceptional cases. Boys between
11 and 16 may work between the hours of 4 a.m. and 7.30 p.m. dur-
ing school terms and 8.30 p.m. during school vacations. Admin-
istration rests with the Board of Education. Badges are issued by
the same officers handling work permits, with the same requirements
except fihng of employer's agreements. The street trades provision
requires (1) a school record certifying that the boy is regularly at-
tending school and that the work will not interfere with his progress
in school; (2) a certificate signed by a medical inspector of schools
or physician appointed by the Board of Education certifying the
boy has reached normal development for a child of his age and is
in sufficiently sound health and physically able to perform the
work; (3) evidence of age requires: (a) transcript of birth certifi-
cate; (b) a passport or transcript of baptismal certificate; (c) a
school census record; or (d) in case none of these is obtainable, a
physician's certificate. Enforcement rests with attendance officers
of the pubhc schools. Violation is a misdemeanor punishable by
a fine of not more than $15.00. Whoever furnishes or seUs any
article to any boy in violation of law shall be fined not less than
$15.00 and not more than $100.00. Reports are made annually,
sometimes monthly, to the State Commissioner of Labor Statistics
and specify the number of children licensed for street trades. It
is the opinion of the Labor Commissioner and of the Attorney
General that final responsibility for securing enforcement of the law
rests with the State Commissioner of Labor.

There are 18 cities in the state with a population of more than

132 The American Child

10,000. Des Moines alone has more than 100,000; Sioux City and
Davenport, more than 50,000; Cedar Rapids, close to 50,000;
Waterloo, Dubuque, and Council Bluffs more than 35,000. This
report is based on findings in four cities: Des Moines, 126,468;
Davenport, 56,727; Cedar Rapids, 45,566, and Mason City, 20,065.*
In these cities, in March and April, 1922, there were 1,542 boys
licensed for or engaged in street work. Data were obtained from
age, grade and attendance records of 167 out of 212 street sellers,
70 out of 573 carriers in Des Moines; from records of former street
workers now wards of the State Training School for Boys at Eldora,
and reports of the State Commissioner of Labor Statistics.

STATEMENT OF FINDINGS

Nature of Street Work

The nature of systematic street work carried on throughout
the state is principally the distribution and sale of newspapers and
periodicals. Carriers and street sellers of local and out-of-town
dailies, of magazines and periodicals are found in all parts of the
state and everywhere an effort of some sort is made to provide
badges as required by law. Spasmodic distribution of hand-bills
and free samples (such as breakfast foods and washing powders)
and the sale of popcorn and paper flowers during county and state
fairs or on circus days, are included in the street trades provision,
but not at present covered in its administration. Children working
in public markets, in shoe-shining estabhshments, and delivery and
messenger boys are subject to regulation under other sections of
the child labor law.

Newspapers' Plans for Distribution

Important factors contributing to conditions under which
children work, and influencing the officers issuing permits, are
newspapers' plans and organization for distribution in downtown
streets and to subscribers in their homes. The emphasis placed on
street sales and on distribution to subscribers depends largely on
the number of people on the streets, the distance of business men
and shoppers from their homes, and on means of transportation

Population figures, Official Register, 1922.

Juvenile Street Work in Iowa 133

from downtown districts. Papers for distribution on the streets
are handled in three ways: (1) through hustlers employed by the
paper; (2) through a news agency; or (3) direct with the sellers.
Carriers may sell on their routes but always onlj^ as a side issue —
their first responsibility being to ''carry" papers to subscribers.
Distribution in downtown places of business and in residential dis-
tricts by means of carriers is handled in two ways: (1) boys go to
newspaper offices where they are given their bundles of papers and
where they fold them; (2) bundles are delivered to a corner near
the boys' routes by means of a truck or street car. Some papers
use both methods, a fourth or more of the boys going to the down-
town offices for their bundles. Through the courtesy of circulating
managers we visited most of the distributing rooms, when newsboys
were present. The rooms vary in size and character from a large,
cheerful office on the first floor entered from the street, to dark,
dingy basements reached only through narrow stairs from an alley.
In a few instances boys are allowed to loaf about the alley spending
their time in idleness, smoking cigarettes. In two or three instances
they are subjected to swearing and rough treatment at the hands
of truck drivers eager to load up and start on their rounds.

An observer of street sales can usually determine which method
of distribution predominates in a city by the way boys pursue their
sales.

For instance: In Daveneport we found it necessary to
follow a small boy two blocks, wait while he looked wist-
fully in a bakery window, went in, bought a cream puff and
came out eating it, before we had any opportunity to buy a
paper.

One stormy night in Mason City we could find no news-
boy on the streets within an hour after the daily was off the
press. In Cedar Rapids and Des Moines no matter what
the weather, we were besieged at every downtown corner, and
two or three times between corners, by from one to five boys
eagerly and lustily crying their wares.

Des Moines and Cedar Rapids feature street distribution through
hustlers, while Davenport and Mason City pay slight attention to
street sales and feature distribution to subscribers in their homes;
the former handle street sales through a news agency and the latter
direct with a small and uncertain number of boys. News-stands
operated by adults are found at frequent intervals in Des Moines.

134 The American Child

In Mason City they are found in comparatively large numbers in
stores handling books, drugs, and cigars, in barber shops, and real
estate offices. Several newspaper men look upon the news-stand
as a good business for the owner but not satisfactory for speedy
street sales.

The hustler or street man usually advances from street seller
and it is said to be practically the only promotion to look forward to.
One hustler in Des Moines has been with the same paper twenty
years; one in Cedar Rapids seven, another five. Several began
as newsboys at five years of age. Two brothers are making their
way through high school and college. Among others we find truck
drivers, wrestlers, and promoters of boxing matches. Hustlers
have entire charge of the boys, and their influence over them depends
largely on their own character and ideals and their business methods
and attitude toward young children. They frequently believe in
using small boys on the streets because they consider they made a
success. One said, ^'Take little fellows and they can sell all round
the big uns"; another, "SeUing papers is a kid's job. When they
get nine or ten they are too old.''

Hustlers are responsible for estimating the number of papers
required for street distribution based on the history of sales at
various points. They assign boys to locations according to their
ability to handle the number stipulated, instruct them in methods
of selling, and promote or demote them as circumstances warrant.
They usually require each boy to pay for the total number of papers
assigned to his location whether he sells them or not. One hustler
explained, "If the order is stuffed, I sometimes take papers back,
otherwise, I never do." Payment is made daily, usually after the
papers are sold; a few are required to pay in advance.

Anxious to keep favorable locations, newsboys resort to a
variety of methods to dispose of the required number of papers.
Large boys shove them off on little fellows. Several have a list
of friends who "feel sorry for me and buy all I have"; many use
small brothers, cousins and friends as helpers, and all cry the most
sensational news to attract attention and sales. Discussing with a
small boy whether murder made good sales, he replied, "Naw, mur-
der don't go no more." Instances came to our attention of avari-
cious parents inflicting severe punishment on boys when they took
an arm fuU of papers home instead of a purse full of coins.

Juvenile Street Work in Iowa 135

Papers employing no street circulator sell direct to the boys
for cash. Each boy determines his nimiber and sells regularly or
not, as he chooses. Whether he develops sales as a business depends
upon him and in no way on the newspaper. A news agency handles
all street sales in Davenport. Boys licensed to sell deal direct with
the agency, pay in advance for any number they want and make
it a regular business or not, as they choose.

Carriers are responsible for papers reaching subscribers on
time. The member of the circulating department in charge of
carriers usually imposes a penalty of some kind in case a paper
fails to reach its destination. It may be a demerit, as in Cedar
Rapids, and after a certain number of demerits the boy is dismissed
or is transferred to a less desirable route. If no complaints are
registered against him during the month he may receive a cash
bonus as reward of merit. A cash penalty of 25 cents per paper is
required of carriers in Des Moines when the office sends a special
carrier to a subscriber. Those required to collect from all subscribers
on their routes are held responsible for payments in full. In case
a subscriber moves or for any reason fails, the boy pays.

With few exceptions newspapers in the four cities are cheer-
fully working with local authorities responsible for enforcing the
street trades law, and acknowledge that regulation, though faultily
administered, makes for more satisfactory work from the standpoint
of the paper on the part of the boy.

Administration of the Law

Badges are issued by or under the direction of school attend-
ance officers, who are already responsible for a multiphcity of tasks
connected with truancy, work permits, supervision of employed
minors, vocational training, taking of school census, and handUng
so-called delinquents. The letter-head of Des Moines' department
enumerates compulsory attendance, employment permits, place-
ment, continuation school, delinquent children, school census, visit-
ing teacher, and newsboys. All these are so persistent in their
demands upon the officers' time and thought that street traders
are crowded into the background and receive little or no attention.
Then, too, officers are usually appointed for reasons other than
their qualifications for or training in dealing with intimate and
complicated problems of children seeking to enter employment,

136 The American Child

their family and home hfe, requiring as we beheve a technical skill,
an understanding of children and a deep-seated social philosophy.

In the four cities no perceptible number of children of school
age sell on the streets during school hours. As one means of keep-
ing the school spirit high in the community, Davenport discourages
boys selling during school hours even on holidays. In Cedar Rapids
and Des Moines they sell in rather large numbers during noon
hours and on holidays. The half-day shifts in Des Moines high
schools make it easy for many to sell during hours they are expected
to spend in home study. The majority of the newsboys comply
with local requirements and have badges, though many have not.

Emphasis is everywhere misplaced on the badge rather than the
significance of the permit back of it.

For instance: It is not infrequent in Des Moines for a boy
just past his eleventh birthday to rush into the office of the
Attendance Department after 3.30 o'clock with a bundle of
papers under his arm, Often he is introduced by a boy who
has a street badge. To him, it is apparently a very important
matter. He must have a badge, and he has the necessary
quarter to pay for it, because he must sell his papers. The young
woman who issues badges accepts the boy's statements of age,
grade, height and weight. She then consults the last school
census, which is in the same office. If the boy is enumerated
there and his age is 11, he goes from the Attendance Office the
proud possessor of a metal badge, licensed as a street seller.

The purpose of the law is to insure protection, direction and
supervision to young children. The boy's application for a badge
is but a beginning and in no sense an end. It should open the
way for a thorough inquiry into matters specified in the law, his
home life, why he seeks to spend from two to four hours every day
working on the streets, to what purpose he will use his earnings,
the attitude of his parents, whether the matter has been seriously
considered by his family, whether it is necessary or wise, whether
he plans to enter permanently the ranks of employed children and
with whom he will associate. Unless the badge signifies that the
officer has full knowledge pertaining to such matters and is respon-
sible to the community for carefully supervising the boy after he
begins work, the value attached to the piece of metal or celluloid,
as the case may be, is all out of proportion to its real significance.

The Superior or Municipal courts do not handle request^; for

Juvenile Street Work in Iowa 137

street permits of boys under eleven, with the exception of the Judge
of Superior Court in Cedar Rapids, who during the course of one
year has asked the truancy officer to issue badges to about 70 boys
under the age of eleven years. This is done without an intimate
knowledge of all facts in the social history of the child and his fam-
ily, and in spite of the Judge's personal acquaintance with many
of the boys and his keen interest in their welfare, the badge does
not insure supervision and protection to the child who wears it.

Officers require the consent of parents before badges are issued,
with the exception of those in Des Moines. We talked with mothers
there in their own homes, who claimed they did not know their boys
were selling papers on downtown streets after school.

Everywhere children as young as six and seven years help
older boys as carriers and as street sellers. In Cedar Rapids many
as young as six sell on downtown streets. In Davenport and Des
Moines several little fellows watch papers while older boys scout
about. Others sell for the ''big guy" for 25 cents a night or a half
of his sales. Many are on downtown streets after 8.30 at night,
and in Des Moines on Saturday nights boys ten and eleven were
seUing as late as 11.30 to after-theatre crowds.

Nowhere is a physician's certificate required except in Cedar
Rapids, where private physicians contribute their services to indi-
vidual children. In Davenport the officer consults the record of
the last examination made by the school physician who checks up
on them as conditions require. This is likewise true of children
receiving work permits. Cedar Rapids and Mason City employ
no school physicians. Des Moines has a well-organized system of
school clinics with hours elastic enough to take care of all children
who attend. Yet for no child entering employment on the streets
or elsewhere have these clinics been used this year. Neither are
health records consulted, though these are already on file in the
ward building.

Several cases came under our observation of children
neither mentally nor physically fit for the strain of street work.
One is an epileptic with a long history known to medical and
social workers; another a puny boy of eleven, whose history
is ''difficult feeding in infancy and delayed development; sub-
ject to convulsions, seizures; diseased tonsils; bad posture;
malnutrition; possibly chorea; living in a manner not proper
as regards hygiene and diet."

138 The American Child

It is just as important to know a child entering employment
is sound in body and mind as to know he is not. The Commis-
sioner of Labor states in Bulletin No. 4, issued June, 1920, and
re-afSrms the statement in April, 1922: ''Although the law pro-
vides for physical examination of children desiring work permits —
there is no provision of law authorizing school boards to expend
money in payment of physicians' services. The Board may legally
hire and pay for services of dentists and nurses but in case of physi-
cians are directed to hire under the provision of the child labor law
but they have no authority to pay for services. As a result there
is practically no compliance with this requirement of the child
, labor law.'*

Social Status of Parents

The popular idea that newsboys support widowed mothers is
not true to fact in Iowa or elsewhere. The majority have both
parents living; they do not stay in street work for a great length
of time, and their earnings are all too meager to contribute mate-
rially to the support of a family. Studies in other states show
similar percentages. Of 167 street sellers in Des Moines, the social
status of their parents follows:

Both parents living 83%

Mother only living 9%

Father only living 6%

Both parents dead 1%

Unknown. 1%

Sixteen per cent belong to families receiving some form of social
or relief service; 1.2 per cent receive mothers' pensions, and 14
per cent are known to the Juvenile Court.

Length of Career and Earnings

A boy's life as a street seller ranges from three days to three
years, and unless he continues in some form of newspaper business,
seldom exceeds two years. In Des Moines, one boy, now fifteen
years of age, has been selling for nearly 10 years. He makes
$4.00 a week for 6 days of 4 hours each and $3.00 on Sundays for
33^ hours. He is the capitalist among his associates. Out of 22

Juvenile Street Work in Iowa 139

boys, 21 average 30 cents a day; out of 34 selling on a given night
in March, 2 made 15 cents; 1, 21 cents; 9, 25 cents; 11, 18 cents;
7, 45 cents. The night was favorable and sales went well.

The following table indicates the share of the sale price accru-
ing to the newsboy:

Number of

City Dailies Sale Price Boy^s Share

Des Moines 2 $.02 $.01

Des Moines 1 .01 .005

Sunday Edition 1 .10 .03

Davenport 2 .05 .0175

Out-of-town...„ .10 .03

Cedar Rapids 2 .02 .01

Out-of-town. . 05 and .10 .03

Mason City 1 .05 .03

Out-of-town. - .10 .03

Regular sellers count on making large profits on special occasions,
such as elections. Unfortunately large numbers who do not sell
any other time, without permits, crowd into streets favorable for
sales, and thus deprive regular sellers of profits they should have.
Violations of night hours are most common on Saturdays, when the
Sunday morning editions with larger money returns are ready for
street sales by eight or nine o'clock.

Reliable information is not available as to what use is made
of even small earnings, and could not be secured without visits to
the homes of a large number of workers. Certain it is that in
many cases they are used for spending money in no way directed
by parents or any one else. One night an officer kept track of ten
boys, the total number selling downtown that night, and found
that eight went to movies before they went home.

In 1916 Anna L. Burdick made a study of pubUc school children
under 16 years, engaged in the sale and distribution of papers in
Des Moines. Her report, published in Vocational Guidance Bulle-
tin No. 2, is based on the record of 535 boys. She says: ''The greater

140 The American Child

number engaged in street trading are 12 years and under. About
75 per cent of the boys are serious about their work. The money
they make is over-estimated. The least earnings are five and ten
cents per day — the average 30 to 40 cents. Four high school boys
earn $1.10 for their daily sales."

Carriers usually realize larger profits than sellers. Three
papers in Des Moines and one in Davenport require carriers to
collect from all subscribers on their route's and pay on an average
$15.00 a month, depending on distances, length of routes, number
of papers, or collections. The time required averages three hours
daily, except Sunday, and an additional three or four hours on Sat-
urday for collections. Other Davenport carriers realize from $6.00
to $10.00 a month and carfare, and Cedar Rapids carriers from $7.00
to $10.00 a month.

Neglect of Carriers

According to the law, sellers and carriers are required to secure
badges and do, except in Des Moines. The middle of March, two
hundred and twelve 1922 badges had been issued to downtown sel-
lers in Des Moines, and an average of 150 boys were on the streets
every evening except Sunday. At the same time the three dailies
reported 573 carriers distributing to subscribers before and after
school. The issuing officer and the Attendance Department had no
record or knowledge of these carriers. Davenport had issued three
hundred and eighty 1922 badges to sellers and carriers; Cedar
Rapids 275 and Mason City 102. Invariably the four cities neglect
their responsibility for carriers, who often rise early, work long hours,
go great distances and carry heavy loads. It is true they work largely
in residential districts and do not always go down town for their bun-
dles; that many come from so-called better homes and their parents,
perfectly willing for them to have routes, would not permit them to
sell on downtown streets. Nevertheless the life of a carrier may be
very difficult, especially in cities where early morning papers, either
local or out-of-town, are distributed to subscribers at an early hour.

We saw two boys in the State Training School from two
very excellent families in the state. Influences which led to
their commitment first came into their fives after they began
to defiver early morning papers. They got up by an alarm
at 4 o'clock, and walked fully a mile for their 100 papers, y/Jiich

Juvenile Street Work in Iowa 141

weighed at least 24 pounds. Bottles of milk were the first
things they stole and more serious offenses followed.

A paper in Des Moines insures delivery by 6 o'clock in the morn-
ing the year round. One hundred ninety-seven boys set alarms at
any time between 4 and 5 o'clock; go to designated corners in their
neighborhoods where a street car or truck has left the papers; de-
liver them to subscribers; hurry back home for breakfast; then off
to school. These same boys and twenty-one others distribute the
evening edition immediately after school, between 3.30 and 6.30
o'clock, and unless delayed are home for the evening meal. The
maximum number distributed by one boy for one evening paper is
120, and they weigh 15 pounds by actual weight; for another even-
ing paper, 180, which weighed 45 pounds; for another 225 papers
weighing 843^ pounds. Granted they have fairly regular meals, as
most do, carriers often begin work at 4.30 or 5 o'clock in the morn-
ing, attend school, carry again after dismissal and reach home
between 6 and 7 o'clock at night. Not one will admit he retires
early.

One carrier, age 12, wath a route of 14 blocks, leaves home
at 5 o'clock, delivers 81 papers in an hour and a half, and after
school deHvers 87 papers in two hours. During a bhzzard last
winter he waited for his evening papers until 7.30 only to find
they had been sent east instead of west on 18th Street. One
morning at 8.30 a boy who had got up by his alarm at 4.30 was
still waiting for his papers to arrive, missing school rather than
disappoint his patrons.

Again quoting from Anna L. Burdick's study: ''36 boys at

School reported hours as follows: nineteen were out

after 6 p.m.; eight before 6 a.m.; three until 9 p.m.; one (who was
six years old) from 4 a.m. to 7 p.m., except during school hours;
two from 4.30 a.m. to 7 p.m.; two from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m.; thirty
worked in the morning; 353 in the evening; 104 both morning and
evening."

Lack of Supervision

Nowhere is there friendly supervision after badges are issued
and only very limited contact with the boys in their homes and
natural groups. An effort of rather superficial character intended
to provide activities for newsboys as a whole, does not meet the

142 The American Child

needs of street workers in small cities, where boys are never a com-
paratively great distance from their own homes.

For instance: Boys in Des Moines selHng downtown have
little or nothing in common as boy citizens; they do not and
should not group together naturally on the basis of their work.
The largest number are Jewish; many, Italian; a few, Negroes
and the others so-called Americans. About two-thirds are of
immigrant families. On the basis of natural grouping as to
nationality, religion and race, the Jews, Italians, and Negroes
are well organized for religious, social, educational and recrea-
tional activities. Every Jewish family is intimately known to
the Federation of Jewish Social Agencies, which in various
departments stands ready to protect and develop the indi-
vidual interest of every Jewish newsboy. The Italians have
three community centers and the Negroes have three, develop-
ing and encouraging recreation and education, each for his own
group.

Boys selling on downtown streets should be carefully supervised
by some one not primarily interested in the number of sales. They
should not find it easy to remain downtown when through with
their work, but should go immediately to their homes. If these
are not fit places for them, it is the responsibility of the community
to see that they are made so, not only for the newsboys but for their
brothers and sisters as well. Fully two-thirds of the street sellers
in Des Moines come from good homes, and there is no reason why
they should linger away from them. Attendance officers are no-
where utilizing or directing possible supervision by volunteer agen-
cies, such as boys' clubs. Spasmodic voluntary effort undirected
by trained and competent supervisors is apt to be detrimental
rather than beneficial to the boys, their families and the community.

School Records of 167 Sellers and 70 Carriers

Out of the 212 boys ''badged" for street seUing in Des Moines,
we secured school records for 167, through the courtesy of their
principals and teachers. Information on file in the Attendance
Department was cheerfully placed at our disposal. It is restricted
to name, age, residence, parent, height, weight, number of the
badge and distinguishing mark. All records of attendance, scholar-
ship and physical examinations are kept in the offices of the boys'
principals. Since carriers are not "badged," no list is kept in the

Juvenile Street Work in Iowa

143

Attendance Department. Each newspaper keeps an up-to-date
list of its own carriers, and two or three principals keep track of
those enrolled in their buildings. In order to get an idea of the
school record of a few of the 573 carriers, we asked principals in
different sections of the city to furnish information for those en-
rolled in their buildings. As a result they made available records
for 70 boys distributing papers in residential districts in different
parts of the city, which may be considered fairly representative of
the 573 total.

Charts 1 and 2 tell the story of sellers and carriers in percentages
as to age, grade, attendance and retardation. In estimating retard-
ation, a variation of one year might well be allowed, because ages are
recorded in terms of years as 8, 10, etc., rather than date of birth;
and because grades are recorded in terms of nimabers only, as 7,
8, etc., rather than 7B, 7A, 8B, 8A. If a child begins school at six
or seven and takes one year to a grade, he will normally reach the
8th grade at thirteen or fourteen. On this basis, used in many city
schools, we computed retardation.

From Anna L. Burdick's report we again quote: '^Of the total
(535), 12 per cent were reported as failing; of the 104 who work
both morning and evening, 50 per cent showed either over age or
retardation."

CHART No. 1

Record of 167 Des Moines street sellers for 130 school days (September, 1921 to
March J 1922), as to age, grade, attendance, retardation, and 'promotion

Per

Days

Per

Pro-

Per

Age

Cent

Grade

Cent

Absent

Cent

Retardation

Cent

motion

Cent

2nd

Not any

13.7

Accelerated

Promoted
during year

3rd

5 or less

35.2

Normal

4th

6 to 10

21.

Ungraded

Failed

5th

11 to 15

11.4

Retarded: lyr.

6th

16 to 20

2 yrs.

7th

21 to 25

7.2

" over 2 yrs.

8th
All others

26 and more

6.5

Of eleven sellers absent 26 or more days, seven missed more than 33^ per
cent of school.

144

The American Child

CHART No. 2

Record of 70 out of 673 Des Moines carriers for 130 school days {September, 1921
to March, 1922), as to age, grade, attendance, and retardation

Age

Per Cent

Grade

Per Cent

Days Absent

Per Cent

Retardation

Per Cent

1.5

4th

1.5

Not any

18.5

Accelerated

11.5

5th

1.5

5 or less

28.6

Normal grade

6th

6 to 10

28.6

Retarded: 1 yr.

7th

11 to 15

Over 1 yr.

8th

16 to 20

4.3

21 to 25
26 or more

12
3

Of three carriers absent 26 or more days, one missed more than 34 per
cent and two more than 22 per cent of school.

Records of Delinquency

Out of 167 boys licensed for street selling; in Des Moines, 14
per cent are known to the Juvenile Court. Chart 3 tells the story
in percentages as to age, grade and retardation. Court records
contain little or no information regarding their occupation unless
it is directly related to their offense. Probation officers leave to
the attendance officer all matters pertaining to street workers,
taking responsibility only in case complaints are filed. The Court
has but one probation officer available to make investigations and
to supervise from 75 to 80 boys at a time. It is obviously impossi-
ble to give satisfactory probationary service to street workers under
these circumstances.

CHART No. 3

Fourteen per cent of 167 Des Moines sellers known to Juvenile Court as to age,
grade, and retardation

Age

Per Cent

Grade

Per Cent

Retardation

Per Cent

9.5

3rd

Accelerated

4th

Normal

5th

Retarded: 1 yr.

6th

2 yrs.

9.5

7th
All others

19
15

Others

Out of 349 boys in the State Training School, April, 1922, thirty,
or 8.5 per cent, are street workers from Des Moines. Out of 227

Juvenile Street Work in Iowa

145

under 16 years of age, 12.8 per cent are street workers from Des
Moines. Chart 4 tells the story in percentages as to age, grade,
retardation at time of commitment, and nature of the offense on
which the commitment was made.

CHART No. 4

Thirty Des Moines street workers in the State Training School for Boys, April,
1922, as to age, grade, and retardation at time of commitment and nature

of offense

Per

Age

Cent

Grade

Cent

2nd

3rd

4th

5th

6th

7th

8th

Over

Q}i

Retardation

Accelerated
Normal
Retarded: 1 yr.

" 2 yrs.

" over 2 yrs.

Per

Cent

6%
17
30
13
33K

Nature of
Offense

Truancy
SteaHng
Ran away
Stay out nights
Incorrigible
Larceny
Break and enter
Bad associations
All others

Per

Cent

20
20
20

9.5

7.5

Mrs. Burdick's study of Des Moines Juvenile Court records
(1916) dealing with pupils up to 16 in attendance at the public
school, showed

27 per cent came from the 5th grade
21 " " " " " 4th "
17 " " " " " 6th "

^^ a a (I (( a ^j-J "

21 " " " " all other grades.

The ages of the juvenile offenders she found as follows:
21 per cent were 15 years of age

lo u a "14 " " "

1 o « u ^' 1 '^ " " "

yj u u "12 " " "

26 " " " between 12 and 8 years of age.

The nature of their offenses she grouped as follows:

45 per cent were due to larceny

25 " " " incorrigibility

14 " " " due to phases of dishonesty of de-
liberate criminal intent

16 " " " petty crime, growing out of gang
activity

146

The American Child

Street Workers in the State Training School for Boys

We consulted records at the State Training School for Boys at
Eldora, in order to determine to what extent the pupils there are
recruited from boys engaged in street work. We hoped to confirm
the popular idea that selling papers and other merchandise on the
streets in small cities universally makes for manly qualities of char-
acter, thrift and industry. Through the courtesy of the Superin-
tendent and his staff the record of previous occupations for 349
boys enrolled at the time of our visit were available, and personal
histories of 116, or 33.2 per cent, who were formerly engaged in
street work. Out of 227 boys under 16 years of age, 101, or 44.5
per cent, were street workers, and of these, 12.8 per cent belong to
Des Moines. Chart 5 tells the story, to a slight degree, of somebody's
neglect of young street workers in Iowa:

CHART No. 5

Street workers in State Training School for Boys as to number enrolled, age, grade
at time of commitment, and nature of offense

Total Population

No. Street Workers

Percentage

349

116

33.2

Under 16 yrs.

227

101

44.5

Per

Nature of

Per

Nature of

Per

Age

Cent

Grade

Cent

Offense

Cent

Offense

Cent

2nd

Stealing

Larceny

3.5

3rd

Truancy

Sleep out

2.2

4th

Ran away

DeUnquency

2.3

5th

Incorrigible

Forgery

6th

Break and enter

Cigarette fiend

7th

On streets all night

Set fire

Over 15

8th

Bad association

Hold up

9th

Sex irregularities

Idleness

Below grade

Unknown

Out school 3 yrs.

Juvenile Street Work in Iowa 147

CONCLUSIONS

Street work in Iowa constitutes no uncertain source of danger
for young children allowed to engage in it without supervision.
Children are not receiving protection which well regulated super-
vision makes possible. There is no way of measuring accurately
how far influences of the street affect them unfavorably or what
attitudes are created by street work. But the unquestionable fact
that evil results are found in a number of cases in cities, large and
small, is sufficient to justify such supervision as will protect all
children, as far as possible, from detrimental influences. The
spirit of Iowa's Commissioner of Labor is reflected in what he says
in Bulletin No. 4, "Without purposely making work permit require-
ments too stringent as to be prohibitive, the prevailing idea is to
protect the child in matters of health and education and to check
as far as possible undue license in employment of children for the
benefit of parents or employers."

Whether children enter street work temporarily as an adven-
ture, or because they want spending money, which their families
are either unwilling or unable to furnish, or whether they enter
with an idea of permanency, they are too valuable as children and
as potential citizens to turn loose on the streets without some one
being responsible for them, who is primarily interested in them as
children, not as money getters or sellers of merchandise.

Children hcensed for street work are apparently neither lag-
gards nor truants in large numbers, although 42 per cent of 167
sellers in Des Moines are retarded and 10 per cent failed to merit
promotion. While 13.7 per cent of these same boys did not miss
one out of 130 days of school, nearly 30 per cent were absent more
than two weeks. School retardation among 70 carriers registers
21 per cent, and while 18.5 per cent did not miss one day of school,
nearly 30 per cent missed more than two weeks.

Unquestionably there are sick children working who need the
help which careful physical examinations and subsequent treatments
would provide. There are children working who are menially sick.
As a rule they do not stay long in street work, because they are not
able to get along with others and do not "stay put," as one hustler
expressed it. Dull or retarded children never should be permitted
to work on the streets, because they easily imitate what they see
and hear.

148 The American Child

There is significant relation between records of delinquency and
retardation. Among street workers known to Juvenile Court, 72
per cent are retarded, and of Des Moines' street workers in the
State Training School, 76K per cent are retarded. The age of
these so-called offenders is pathetically young. The largest num-
ber of one age known to the court are but twelve, and those in the
Training School were but twelve when committed. Whether boys
known to juvenile courts and those committed to the State Train-
ing School work on the street because they are ^'bad," or are "bad''
because they work on the street, it is imperative that our programs
for regulation and supervision prevent those with tendencies toward
delinquency from entering street trades, and protect all who are
allowed to enter, from influences which make for delinquency. Out
of 116 street workers in the State Training School, 60 per cent were
committed because of stealing, truancy and running away.

Teachers, speaking of the characteristics of individual street
workers, frequently use such terms as 'listless," '^mable to con-
centrate," "inattentive," "indifferent," "inaccurate," "crave excite-
ment," and "restless." We know street workers are exposed to
undue fatigue, to all kinds of weather without regard to health, to
sights and sounds for which they have neither understanding nor
power to resist. They have little opportunity to learn a trade,
they spend their earnings as fancy dictates without direction or
instruction, developing a demand for excitement, frequent change,
and qualities not known as thrift. No one knows how many child-
ren work on the streets because of real economic necessity. We are
confident the number is much smaller than the casual observer
believes. In the four cities, the only group having accurate infor-
mation on this point is the Jewish Federation of Des Moines, and a
comparatively small percentage of Jewish street sellers there are
urged through economic necessity. We are just as confident that
no lowan believes children's earnings can ever cure poverty, but are
the beginning of poverty in the next generation.

Then, too, if eight hours is a desirable working daj' for men and
women, how far can any city permit children eleven and younger
— for man}^ under eleven work with or without badges — to work four
and five hours on the streets, plus five and six hours in school, every
day school is in session.

We believe it is desirable to issue badges for street work only

Juvenile Street Work in Iowa 149

as symbols of permits on file with the issuing olSicer; that permits,
and subsequently badges, should be issued only with the con-
sent and full understanding on the part of the child's parent or
guardian, as to hazards of street work, its probable future, nature
of the work in detail, character and purpose of those to be associated
with the child, and what the probable effect may be on his school
work, health and habits. We beheve a report in writing should be
required from the child's principal as to age, grade, attendance,
scholarship, habits of application, the opinion of the principal and
his unreserved approval of the child assuming additional work;
that a complete up-to-date hst of all street workers in his building
should be furnished each principal; that a social history of the
family be secured along with legal proof of the child's age; that
as complete a physical and mental examination as possible be given
every child, with authoritative certificates kept on file with the
issuing officer.

Even after badges are issued on such basis of knowledge, a fail-
ure to furnish adequate supervision may be responsible for immeas-
urable harm to the young merchants. Some one is needed who
shall be free to give all the time required to know each street worker
personally — in his home life, his recreation, his school; to know how
he spends his time, all details of his street work; to help him make
such personal adjustments that all experiences connected with it
shall become positive factors in his education. Such a supervisor
may be a volunteer or a paid member of the attendance department,
but without such supervision a program otherwise effective fails to
give adequate protection to young children engaged in street work.

BOOK REVIEWS

International Relations of Labor. David Hunter Miller. New York:
Alfred Knopf.

The history of international labor relations is so amazingly short that a
survey of what took place in the last generation gives a complete outline of its
precedents. In this compact Uttle volume David Miller, the legal adviser of
the American Peace Commission, describes the progress made in international
labor relations from the first Labor Conference in Berhn in 1890 to the Wash-
ington Conference in 1919.

The author traces in a concise and lucid manner the change which has
occurred during that time in the governmental attitude toward such regulations :
how, from an idea that they were far too novel even for diplomatic discussion
in the first part of the nineteenth century, the attitude changed to a recogni-
tion by the Peace Conference of the right of labor for international protection.
Thirty-three years after Bismarck's declaration that international protection of
workmen was impossible and impracticable, an International Labor Magna
Charta was incorporated in the Treaty of Versailles. The former tendency
toward distrust and obstruction of labor regulations has given way to a ten-
dency toward union, and the international labor movement, instead of being
made a movement of hostile classes, has become one looking rather to the prog-
ress of humanity than to any group advantage.

The change in the attitude toward child labor, for example, is shown by a
comparison of the proposals of the first "International" in Geneva in 1866 with
those of the recent Washington Conference.

Mr. Miller emphasises the fact that the present status of international
labor relations is bound up with the Labor Clauses of the Treaty of Versailles,
which provides an international conference of the members of the League of
Nations to meet at least once a year. Thus there is estabhshed a continuous
international parliament of labor, which does not have final legislative power,
but which has powers of unrestricted discussion.

Speaking of the constitutionahty of the recent federal child labor law, the
author points out that in Australia, under a constitution in this respect hke our
own, a very similar statute was declared unconstitutional by the High Court
by a 3 to 2 vote.

He goes on to say, "If Congress, either under the taxing power or under
some other power granted by the Constitution, can legislate on the subject of
labor conditions in the United States, our own interstate problem of uniformity
and progress will have found a solution, a solution, however, delayed under our
constitution as long as the solution of the similar international problem which
has confronted Europe for the century past.

150

Book Reviews 151

"Indeed, in view of the constitutional difficulties regarding Federal legis-
lation in the United States, to which I have alluded, it has been suggested that
the treaty power of the United States would not extend such international
labor legislation as is contemplated by the Labor Clauses of the Treaty of Ver-
sailles." Mr. Miller does not believe that this contention is well founded but
its mere possibiUty makes the necessity of a constitutional amendment more
imperative.

Anyone who has watched the slow struggles in the United States for state
labor legislation will realize what the international adoption of minimum stand-
ards for conditions in industry would mean. And how much more difficult it is
to regulate international labor conditions than merely to regulate those main-
taining in forty-nine homogeneous states. Just as some of the southern states
are the backward members of our federation in regard to social legislation, so
India and Japan are the backward countries in international legislation; special
consideration was given to them at the Washington Conference and must be
given them in the future.

Such a study of the history of international regulations of labor clearly
foreshadows the inevitabiUty of future international legislation for child wel-
fare. America will, of course, join in cooperating with the labor movement in
other countries in that regard, even though she is not a member of the League
of Nations.

J. D.

Penology in the United States. Louis N. Robinson, Ph.D. Philadelphia:
The John C. Winston Company.

Dr. Robinson, formerly chief probation officer of the Philadelphia Municipal
Court, has given us in his volume on Penology in the United States, a useful
compilation of facts on past and present methods of handhng criminals. There
is httle discussion of the changing theories involved in these methods, for Dr.
Robinson feels that the evolution of the various means of punishment sufficiently
illustrates the evolution of the theory. It seems to the present reviewer unfor-
tunate that a volume designed for use as a text-book in colleges and law schools
should not have devoted a Httle more space to the underlying philosophy of a
field in which concrete accomplishment is so uneven. The bibhography, how-
ever, lists the standard sources of information for those who wish to study
further.

Dr. Robinson traces the historical development of the county jail system,
the workhouse, the state prison and reformatory, and other forms of punish-
ment including flogging, fining, sterilization, and the use of the death sentence;
and he discusses the question of prison labor, compensation of prisoners, proba-
tion, and parole. Not the least interesting chapter to the general pubHc, for
whose information the book is also designed, is that which deals with the man-
agement of institutions. For without good management the physical equip-
ment of any institution counts for little. In the last chapter of the book cer-
tain next steps are outlined which, when taken, will go far toward bringing about
the scientific treatment of the individual offender which is the dream of the

152 The American Child

present-day penologist. They are: the socialization of the criminal court;
the extension of probation; the establishment of institutions for special types
of offenders; the eHmination of jails or places of detention for sentenced pris-
oners; a flexible system of transfers among institutions; the abolition of the
death sentence; and the renewed emphasis upon making the goal of prison
administration the development of character.

M. B. E.

Parenthood and Child Nurture. Edna Dean Baker, M.A. New York:
Macmillan Company.

As stated on the jacket of this book, "This volume is written to show par-
ents in how many important ways the discoveries of modem child study may
aid them to understand their children better and make a surer success of their
bringing-up."

It is a practical, readable and apparently accurate study of child hfe from
birth until eleven years of age; one that any mother, whether she is versed in
psychology or not, can read with profit and learn that a child's mind is net
guided by adult-conceived principles of behavior.

G. P. W.

The Young Industrial Worker. M. PhiUips. New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press.

The relation of the Continuation School to the young industrial worker —
its mission, function, curriculum, and problems are frankly treated by Miss
Phillips, an English Continuation School teacher of six years' experience. The
discussion is suggestive and constructive without being dogmatic, authoritative
without being pedagogical. The author beheves that the Continuation School
offers the best corrective of the stunted and abnormal personahties which crude
industrial conditions miiit inevitably produce. The book is made vivid with
extracts from letters from her pupils and snatches of themes which are a revela-
tion of the psychology of children in industry.

The lack of seK-development of the young worker, the fact that he never
knows solitude or has a room to himself at home, his crowd mentaUty, his aes-
thetic tastes set for him by the streets and houses in which he Uves, makes the
whole problem of training the individual in independence of thought a formid-
able task. The average Continuation School girl lives always in a crowd; she
suffers torture if asked to enter a strange room in a factory without a companion
or if obhged to walk home from work by herseff. To combat this tendency,
group work in the Continuation School is strongly advocated.

Social and aesthetic education are discussed with many suggestions as to
the ways of stimulating interest and appreciation in the child whose mental
instabihty, lassitude, and lack of concentration are a result of energy exhausted
in work. The book is an interesting document in the progress toward an equali-
zation of educational opportunity among ^UjClasg^of society.

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Full text of "The American child"

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