of a guide to private societies and individuals dealing with the problems of child welfare. The times are propitious for that undertaking just now. Second, we might attempt to formulate through some existing governmental agency like the Bureau of Education, the Children's Bureau, or other agency, a children's charter which is essentially a bill of rights. Reference has been made to the children's act of 1908 in Great Britain, which does not claim to be a children's charter. It is part of the children's code as now embodied in three general acts of Parliament together with various amendments: the consolidated factory acts, the consolidated educational acts, and the children's act of 1908. So far as I know there has been no attempt to formulate a children's charter. Third, we might attempt to bring together the body of laws relating to children and codify them by striking out things that overlap, making slight verbal changes wherever necessary, and bringing the whole law relating to child welfare into working relation to all its parts. That is essentially a lawyer's job. It is not a thing any existing public or private authority could do without the cooperation of the interests represented at this meeting. But I doubt whether a satisfactory code can be formulated until we make further progress in the matter of formulating a bill of rights for the child.

"With these alternatives in mind it seems to me we would do well to begin with discussion of a proposal to formulate the rights of childhood, which would inevitably call for the cooperation of the various organisations working for child welfare. If it had no other value it would require them to look over their own program of work in its relation to other programs of work. Some of the rights of childhood I attempted to formulate several years ago in an article on Legislation for the Protection and Conservation of Childhood* as follows:

The right to be well born.

The right to parental name, protection, and support.

The right to leisure, play, and recreation.

The right to education and to exemption from work until physically and mentally fit for some specific task, and to a longer period of exemption in occupations which are physically or morally hazardous.

* Cyclopedia of Education, Edited by Paul Munroe, Vol. I., p. 621. New York, Macmillan, 1911.

The right to protection from inhumane treatment.

The right to protection of health and morals.

The right to another chance in a decent environment, physically and socially, when guilty of infractions of the law.

In this list of rights, which could easily be made more comprehensive now, you find many already recognised and guaranteed in our laws. Others have a semi-public recognition in the fundamental aims of various educational movements. If some organisation or joint committee were to collect and collate the rights guaranteed and implied in the social work of modern communities relating to children, we would have a program for discussion and the true basis for wiser legislative action. I know of no private organisation that could well undertake this task unaided. Perhaps we could persuade the federal Children's Bureau whose organic act, it seems to me, contemplates just such tasks, to undertake it. Therefore I beg to submit to the meeting for reference to the Board of Trustees of the National Child Labor Committee, a resolution which has been drafted by those interested in the program of this afternoon.

RESOLUTION ON A NATIONAL CHILDREN'S CHARTER.*

The rapid growth of the body of legislation for the welfare of children in recent years, the adoption of new and higher standards for their protection and education, and the creation of diverse new public social agencies in states, counties, and cities, have all combined to produce a strikingly chaotic condition of children's laws and their administration in most states of the Union.

This situation is characterised by conflicting statutes within the same state; unequal public protection for children in different parts of a state; adequate provisions in one line of activity and grossly inadequate provisions in another; high standards on the statute books and defective machinery for administration.

As a result of this condition, a growing sentiment among all groups active for the welfare of children throughout the country is voicing a demand for the correlation and codification of these children's laws within the various states. Already one state has extended and codified its laws and other states are preparing to enact new and complete codes of legislation affecting children. Appeals are being prepared to a number of the forty-six legislatures in session in 1915 for the appointment of commissions to draft such codes.

In view of this growing movement it is highly desirable that there should be collected at the earliest moment all possible information and material covering existing and suggested legislation for the welfare of children and covering also the administration of these laws in relation to state, county and city.

*These resolutions were unanimously approved by the Trustees of the National Child Labor Committee, January 26, 1915.

The collection of this information is a national undertaking. It is, too, a national obligation.

We, therefore, representing the Eleventh Annual Conference on Child Labor under the auspices of the National Child Labor Committee in meeting at Washington this sixth day of January, 1915, urge upon the federal Children's Bureau, created by Congress for the purpose of investigating and reporting upon all matters pertaining to the welfare of children, the early assumption of this great service to the children of the nation.

In urging the undertaking of this work we are confident the host of organisations and individuals throughout the country who are interested in child welfare, appreciate its need, and we call upon them to join at once in expressing to the federal Children's Bureau their desire to see so far-reaching a service promptly assumed by the national government.

The adoption of the resolutions was moved by MRS. FLORENCE KELLEY and seconded by MISS LILLIAN D. WALD. DR. CLAXTON said: "I heartily approve of the motion. All laws pertaining to education and child labor are now being digested and codified by the Bureau of Education. This will cover part of what is called for in these resolutions and it will be a service for the public." Reference was made to other compilations of health laws and laws relating to juvenile delinquency. The resolutions were unanimously adopted by the meeting without further discussion.

Sixth Session: The Child, A Ward of the Nation

Homer Folks, Presiding

THE CHILD, A WARD OF THE NATION

WILLIAM H. MALTBIE

President of the City Club, Baltimore, Maryland

The term "guardian" involves two separate ideas: guardianship of the person and guardianship of the property or the estate. The guardian of the person of a minor ward is under the responsibility of taking charge of the development of that ward, seeing to it that he is properly protected, properly fed and clothed, and educated, and trained for the business of life. The guardian of the property has no such duty. It is a matter of indifference to him whether the child is developed or not. His function is merely to safeguard the property of the child and when the child reaches his majority turn over the property unimpaired. If the guardian fails to do this he must pay the penalty.

It seems to me that we have been too much given to thinking of the child as a ward of the public from the first of these two points of view. In a certain sense the public, through its governmental organisation, is responsible for the development and education of the child, or in other words is in the position of a guardian of the person and our appeal has almost always been based upon this relationship, that is, has been an appeal for the development and protection of the child for the sake of the child himself.

I would not question for an instant the importance of this point of view, but the difficulty is that under our form of government, with individual states reserving to themselves all authority except that specially delegated to the nation, this guardianship of the person belongs logically and properly to the individual states. Now

the individual states have to a very great extent failed to meet the duty incumbent upon them and some of us are ready to urge that this duty should be transferred to the nation. If we expect our request to be seriously considered we must give it a logical foundation, and it seems to me that this logical foundation is to be found in the second phase of guardianship, guardianship of the property. It will sometimes happen that a man finds himself in charge of something of value belonging to the child for the misappropriation of which he must pay the penalty. In such a case a wise man would at once have himself made the legal guardian in order that he might have the authority with which to protect the property and incidentally to protect himself from the penalty for its loss.

The nation is in that position. There are certain valuable rights which belong to the child which are hard to define, but which perhaps may be described as the right to live up to the American standard mentally, physically, and morally, a standard which is the result of the development and progress of the race, a standard which is higher than that of many other nations, is higher to-day with us than it was yesterday, and will, we trust, be higher to-morrow than it is to-day. The right to live up to this standard is the property of each of us and the property of the child. The nation may never have accepted the duty of protecting this right, but the protection of it can rest nowhere else, and if this right of the child is not protected and surrendered to him intact when he reaches his majority, it is the nation that must pay the penalty.

race.

You cannot develop a stunted race without an injury to the You cannot take a single child that has in him the making of a good citizen and dwarf him in babyhood, deprive him of his physical and mental inheritance without doing something more than merely wronging him. You and I and each of us-the nationpay the penalty. If this is true, and I don't think any man who makes a study of political and economic conditions or is interested in the development of the nation and the race would question its truth, then the nation is in the position of being the guardian of the property of the minor. If the nation has not the legal right to protect that property, the sooner it gets it the better for the child and for the nation itself.

How can such power be gotten? Under our Constitution the nation received only certain delegated rights, while all others were