aristocracy and the lower whites are equally poor. We see in our cities the "unsubmerged tenth"; those who, by the sacrifice of family, or extraordinary virility and ambition, have been enabled to gain a start; but you can travel among the plantations of Virginia, North and South Carolina and find hundreds of families of the best type and heredity where poverty has been so extreme as to require the constant toil of the children; and wherever you find it, almost invariably the marks of mental arrest are distinctly evident. I have traveled through the mountain districts of Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia, where the stock is pure American for generations back, but where child labor is almost universal, and where the educational impulse has scarcely touched the people. Here the sign of organic degeneracy is well-nigh universal.

To all of us the investigation of this class of cases is an easy one, and if we will but give the matter serious thought, I am convinced that the evil of child labor itself, removed from any other correlative influences, will be apparent. We have but to look about us to trace the history of families in our own community; in fact, to study ourselves, in many instances, to find wherein the excessive work of our fathers and forefathers has handicapped us in the exercise of the finer intellectual and artistic faculties which we feel sure are potentially resident within us. This brings the problem into our own households-this makes the evil cry with a near voice and imposes a task on us on behalf of our own posterity.

Mental Retardation

In the great and permanent work to which the National Child Labor Committee is devoting itself, nothing could be more fruitful of good results than a thorough investigation into the definite though subtle influences of work itself on the development of the growing boy or girl. I am personally convinced that with excessive toil there is an actual organic change which takes place in the brain before the age of sixteen; a cessation of the growth of the functional or gray-cell tissue-a lessening in the depth of the convolutions, or possibly, a replacement of functional by connective tissue, which, for all time, puts a check upon the mental capacity of the individual. It does not merely make success more difficult-it makes certain kinds of success impossible. The loss

of an arm, a leg or an eye handicaps the individual-it makes it more difficult for him to accomplish his ends, but it does not make it impossible. The loss of hearing or of sight absolutely closes the door to work in certain directions. So it is with any structural change in the brain which diminishes its capacity. The world would stand aghast if a considerable percentage of our healthy children were deprived of eyesight or of hearing, but the same condition is being permitted to take place wherever children are forced, even under healthy conditions, to toil during the period of adolescence to a degree which deprives them of either the time or the strength to cultivate their power to think.

Such an investigation would be within the proper functions of the National Child Labor Committee. It would involve a broad study of individual cases; it would ramify into all the conditions of living. Where children under exactly similar conditions of heredity are placed in different environments, are many in number, but somewhat difficult to find. The study of children. of adoption is easy, but not altogether satisfactory. The investigation of the relationship between parent and child, through history and in society, would reveal a multitude of cases, but obviously the evidence therein gathered would be accumulative rather than positive; but I am sure enough data could be collected to clearly prove the proposition that child labor itself is productive of degeneracy of the mental fibre. The evidence would also impress and make more emphatic the greater evils of child labor under adverse conditions of health in the work shops, cotton mills and mines, and would bring home to us the grave responsibility of permitting any of the youth of the land to be deprived of the privilege of equipping themselves for a fair chance in the struggle for success. It would show that this country is not free to all its subjects that many are actually condemned in childhood to a form. of slavery, for which the community itself is largely responsible. It would fortify the longings of those now making sacrifices to give their children an education; it would place a restraining hand upon those who, perhaps through their own earlier limitations, are indifferent to the conditions surrounding their offspring. It would strengthen us in our effort to enlarge the opportunities of the young, for it would be irrefutable proof that not only is child labor bad under unsanitary surroundings, but that all excessive labor

among children, or even all labor which does not give full opportunity for simultaneous development, is criminally wrong.

On account of the important program to which our National organization is committed, this aspect of the case has not been seriously regarded, but it may be the gravest of them all, and I trust that others will determine to consider the question-to study it in their own lives and the lives of those about them. I think there are very few of us who, through our individual experience, cannot find evidence enough to show the hypothesis herein stated provable, if not proven.

If it can be clearly demonstrated that continuous labor of any kind, imposed upon a boy or girl, introduces an element of danger to his well-being, the public conscience can be relied upon to ultimately work out a solution of the problem.

ACCIDENTS TO WORKING CHILDREN

BY EDWIN W. DE LEON,

First Vice-President, Casualty Company of America, New York.

Exactly one hundred and seven years ago, the first protective labor legislation of the civilized world was enacted in England. It was intended then, as all such legislation is to-day designed, for the protection of the masses against the classes. Two names, representing the extreme ends of the social scale, will forever be associated with the inception of this great movement, Lord Ashley, Earl of Shaftesbury, and Robert Owen.

As far back as 1601, in the reign of Elizabeth, destitute children. and orphans were required by law to be taught spinning, weaving and other trades, and to be later apprenticed. In those days the condition of such children was deplorable. They were put to work at five years of age, and worked from seven to five in winter, and from six to six in summer, attending school after the long day's work was finished. Between the age of eight and eleven they were apprenticed, which meant that they were consigned to little more than slavery in the hands of masters, often brutal and unscrupulous.

The intolerable conditions existing at the beginning of the last century in England resulted in the passage by Parliament in 1802 of an Act, introduced by Sir Robert Peel, known as the Health and Morals of Apprentices Act. This statute limited the number of working hours to twelve a day; provided for instruction in reading, writing and arithmetic after working hours; abolished night work gradually; stipulated that factories were to be kept cleaned and ventilated, and that apprentices should be properly housed and clothed, and should attend church at least once a month. All mills and factories were required to be registered with the clerk of the peace, and two justices of the peace, one of whom must be a clergyman, were appointed as inspectors of factories with power to impose fines varying from two pounds to five pounds for violations of the Act. Kinder Wood in his History of Factory Legislation states that 'Socially and industrially the first two or three decades of the nineteenth century form a gloomy period, in which, as Spencer Wal

66

pole observes, it took twenty-five years of legislation to restrict a child of nine to a sixty-nine-hour week, and that only in cotton mills." Continued agitation on this subject by Robert Owen and others resulted in the passage in 1819 of an Act placing the age limit at nine years, and prohibiting any child under sixteen years from working more than twelve hours a day, exclusive of meal times. This law applied only to cotton mills, although the advocates of the act intended it to apply to all mills in which twenty or more persons were employed.

Various acts were passed between 1819 and 1832, but it was in the year 1833 that the turning point of factory legislation was made by a law that has been referred to as the first stone laid in the upbuilding of the great fabric of factory and protective legislation the world over." This memorable act was the result of the work started by Michael Sadler, a philanthropist and economist, and completed by Lord Ashley, afterward Earl of Shaftesbury, who took his seat in Parliament in that year. The new statute called for the appointment of four Government Inspectors working under control of and directly responsible to the Home Secretary. The inspectors were empowered to enter any factory at will, investigate conditions, call witnesses to give evidence; also to make necessary regulations to enforce compliance with the provisions of the act and to make reports twice a year. All persons under eighteen years of age were prohibited from working between 8:30 p. m. and 5:30 a. m. in any textile or silk mill. No person under eighteen years was to be employed more than twelve hours a day, or sixty-nine hours in any one week. No child under nine years of age was to be employed, except in silk mills. One hour and a half a day was to be allowed for meal times. Children were not allowed in the same room with machinery or to remain in the mill after the legal working hours. One of the most important and difficult duties of the inspectors was to prevent the employment of children under the prohibited age, for both employers and parents conspired to defeat the law, the one because he wanted children, regardless of age, to work in his factory; and the other because he was willing to sacrifice the future. health and welfare of his child for the sake of the few pennies that helped to increase the family funds.

It was not until 1837 that an act was passed requiring all births in England to be registered, and providing that no child be employed