and no girl under the age of eighten years should be permitted to be employed as a chorus girl, and no boy or girl under the age of eighteen years should be permitted to perform or be employed in any capacity in a concert hall, or place of amusement where intoxicating liquors are sold.

Factory inspectors should be endowed with greater police power. There are many establishments where employers are defiant, others who seek to evade the law on technicalities, and frequently the inspector will find a boy or girl employed at occupations where their lives and limbs are in danger, or where the child's health may be injured, and not infrequently we find them employed in places where their morals might be destroyed.

In all such instances the factory inspector should have authority to immediately remove the child from employment. And as the purposes of the law are constantly being defeated, because of the inability of the inspector to disprove the statement of the child and the employer that the child is of an age beyond the application of the law, it is essential that the statutes should provide that, in cases where dispute arises regarding the true age of a child found employed contrary to the law's provisions, the burden of proof of age should rest on the parent and on the employer, and not on the state. The employed should be required to prove the child of age, rather than the inspector to prove the child is under age.

It was but natural, in preparing the draft of the Illinois Child Labor Law, that its provisions should be made specially applicable to the employer of child labor; but in the desire to reach such employers who were the chief offenders, the disposition on the part of the parent and the child to evade the law and secure employment for the child, with its consequent income for the family, was in a large measure overlooked.

The result has been, that in a surprisingly great number of cases, which have come under my observation, many well-meaning employers have suffered injustice through the connivance of the parent with the child, in representing the child's age as sixteen, or above, when such child was under sixteen. Frequently the employer has been subjected to the penalties of the law, which should have been visited upon the conniving parent. It would be well if the child labor law could be so amended that it would protect the honest employer of labor, as well as the helpless children who are employed.

Under the present law, when a child signs an application for the purpose of securing employment, and states that he is sixteen years of age, and in many instances the parent indorses the statement, the employer has no legal means of protection. He has but few reliable means of ascertaining the correct age of the child, should he doubt the child's statement.

Unscrupulous parents have discovered this weakness in the law, and have taken advantage of it, to the injustice of the employer, deceiving him with regard to the child's age, with the result that the employer has been prosecuted, while the party guilty of an intentional violation of the law, the child, parent, guardian or custodian, has too often escaped. I have given this matter much thought, because I feel it is one of the most serious objections that can be properly raised regarding the present law, in its practical operation.

I am of the opinion that it would be well to amend the present child labor law, so that the well-meaning employer might protect himself against the cupidity of the child, its parent, guardian or custodian. There are numerous ways in which the law could be amended so as to accomplish this purpose. If the law were amended so as to require parents, guardians, or custodians of children, between the ages of sixteen and seventeen years, who are seeking employment, to secure a certificate as to the child's age before a Court of Record, we should have greatly improved the existing conditions.

Courts of Record exist in every county in the State, and there ought to be no reason why this plan could not be made to work admirably. The law should further provide that if the employer demands, and obtains of the child, a certificate from the Court of Record, certifying that the child is of the required age, and it later develops that the child is not of legal age, the employer shall not be held responsible or guilty of a violation of the law, but that the parent, guardian or custodian of such child, who files his application in the Court of Record for such certificate, and who furnishes the evidence of age upon which the certificate is issued, shall be deemed guilty of contempt of court; and that such parent, guardian or custodian may be summarily punished by the court by severe censure, fine or imprisonment, as for contempt of court. If such an amendment were secured and put in operation, and the courts

should vigorously enforce this provision, and punish the offending parents, guardians or custodians, either by censure, the imposition of a fine or light imprisonment, the practice of defying the purpose of the law, through the false statement of the child's age, would

soon cease.

When, without the knowledge of the parent, guardian or custodian, a child misrepresents its age, in order to secure employment, I believe such child should be cited before the Juvenile or County Court, for correction and punishment, as the court may decide.

It is my opinion that every foreigner who has children should be compelled, upon arriving at our shores, to give the names and ages of all the children belonging to, or in the custody of, such immigrant, and that such immigrant should furnish to the immigration officer, proper birth records or other satisfactory evidence. of the age of said children or dependents, and such immigrant should be obliged to secure from said immigration officer a proper certificate, testifying to such registration, which certificate should be kept by said immigrant at all times, as an evidence of his compliance with the Federal regulations.

One serious limitation in the scope of the Illinois Child Labor Law is its inapplicability to newsboys and girls, and other juvenile merchants who live in our streets. Our law does not apply to newsboys, because the courts hold that they are merchants in their own right. While I thoroughly believe that these street gamins are every bit as worthy of our most solicitous attention as are the children employed in the factories, I believe they should be given proper protection through the passage of a special statute covering the entire matter.

Laws of this kind have already been passed in some states, and I have prepared and presented to the last two sessions of our General Assembly a bill calculated to protect this class of child labor, but because of complicated difficulties at the time of the introduction of the bills, they have thus far failed of passage.

There has been criticism, not altogether without merit, that the legal limit in the employment of children should be based on the educational qualifications and physical fitness, rather than upon an arbitrary age. My experience has shown me that many firms who do not employ children under the age of sixteen years, employ them as soon as they become sixteen years of age, and such chil

dren are then started at learning a trade as a common apprentice. Some change might be made as to certain classes of children above the age of fifteen years, qualified by a proper preliminary education and general physical fitness, so that they might be permitted to enter upon a proper apprenticeship, certain limitations applying, and learn a trade, though they might be within the arbitrary age limit now prescribed. In other words, children are not all alike as to physical and educational qualifications, or as to circumstances of life, and some account should be taken of these differences.

THE FORWARD STEP IN LOUISIANA

BY JEAN M. GORDON,

State Factory Inspector, New Orleans, La.

A few Sundays past I had the pleasure of hearing a very excellent sermon by Rabbi Saal, of St. Louis, in which he used the parable of the Good Samaritan to illustrate his point, and all the time he was applying it to his story I was applying it to the history of the child labor movement, putting in the place of the priest who saw the sick man, but passed by on the other side, the great organized Christian church, which, instead of bringing its united strength to bear upon this sickness of our present day civilization, passes by on the other side.

Again, as the story was told, I saw in place of the Levite, who also passed by on the other side, our great school system, with its splendid organization in every town and village and its great national and internationl influence, passing by on the other side instead of using its organization to make and enforce compulsory school attendance laws for the thousands of little ones who have been permitted to remain out of the schools, endangering our civilization through the illiteracy which is bound to result from such negligence.

And then I saw the National Child Labor Committee in the place of the Good Samaritan having compassion on these little ones and trying to lighten the burdens which an ignorant, selfish, self-satisfied, grasping community has laid upon our children. In thinking this question out it would seem that the organizations which had the care of the children should have been the forces which would have worked for their protection. The state, the school and the church should have been the Trinity to prevent this outrage against civilization and Christianity from ever having assumed its present proportions. The strongest reason which suggests itself to me for this lack of action is the fact that in the state, the school and the church the will of the women has not been given an opportunity to act.