Helpful addresses and talks have been given by the different ministers of the city, including Rabbi Kahn, of Temple Emanuel.

Letters were written to our Representatives in Congress, urging the passage of the District of Columbia Child Labor Law Bill.

On January 27, 1908, a Committee of five was appointed, which is known as the Industrial Scholarship Fund Committee. The object is to assist to attend school worthy children who would otherwise be obliged to stay out and work to help support the family. Contributions have been received from Women's Clubs, Church Societies and individuals, amounting in all to $186.10. The amount paid out is $85.23. Balance on hand, $100.87. Last Spring two boys were assisted at $1.50 per week each. One finished the seventh grade in June, and is now working. He will soon be able to return the money which was loaned to him from the fund. We are at present helping one boy and three girls. The boy is taking the eighth grade, and receives $2.00 per week. He is fifteen, the oldest of five children, the mother a widow.

The girls receive one dollar per week each. All are members of large families. Two of the mothers have been deserted, one is a widow. In several instances children have been out of school for the want of shoes. In those cases, shoes have been purchased from the fund.

Incidentally, and in a quiet way, much personal work has been done by the members of the Scholarship Fund Committee. Where clothing and bedding were needed by these families, they have been provided. At Thanksgiving time, provisions and other useful things were sent; and on Christmas the members of each family were remembered by the Committee or their friends. The encouragement and inspiration of this personal interest are of great value.

Law infractions and unfavorable conditions are quite often reported to the Child Labor Committee. The Deputy Factory Inspector or the truant officer is at once notified, and when possible, the evils are corrected. Eleven denominations are represented on this Committee. The interest is growing, and we hope during the coming year we may be able to do still more work along practical lines. March 21, 1908, we sent $25.00 to Mr. Macy, the Treasurer, thus becoming a sustaining member of the National Child Labor Committee.

MRS. H. GAYLORD HOLT,

Chairman.

MINNESOTA CHILD LABOR COMMITTEE.

The Minnesota Child Labor Committee is just old enough to answer to roll call, but not old enough to offer an annual report, having been in existence (as fully organized) just one week. It owes its existence to the efforts of the National Child Labor Committee, through its field agent who, last October, suggested to a little group of persons the feasibility of such an organization in Minnesota. The Woman's Club of Minneapolis became

interested in the movement and appropriated the sum of sixty dollars ($60) to defray the expenses of preliminary investigation and organization.

The preliminary investigation covered:

First. The laws relating to children.

Second. Local conditions, and means of enforcing these laws.

Third. Canvass of organizations already in existence, with a view to co-ordination of existing forces.

Lars. The laws governing child labor and compulsory education are good. Slight amendment will bring them fully up to the standard submitted by the National Consumers' League in its Handbook of Advanced Child Labor Legislation.

No child under fourteen years of age may work during school term.

No child between the ages of fourteen and sixteen may work without a permit from the superintendent of schools or some one appointed by him to issue such permits.

Personal examination of children by the person issuing the permits is required. The requirements are those suggested in the so-called "Standard" Child Labor Law except, however, that children of poor parents are exempt from the full protection of the law.

The school record required by the law shall be signed by the principal of the school which the child attends, and is in the form approved in other states with good child labor laws.

Sixty hours per week or ten hours in any one day is the maximum number of hours of labor allowed any person under sixteen years; or before the hour of seven o'clock in the morning, or after seven o'clock in the evening, except on Saturday and on ten days prior to Christmas.

Local Conditions and Facilities for Enforcement of Laws.

Child labor and child loafing both exist in Minnesota. It is not possible at present to secure accurate statistics. All that can be said is that truant officers and factory inspectors are constantly finding them. Some evade the law under cover of change of residence; others are lost because of lack of cooperation of private schools in efforts to trace them. Minnesota has no school census. It is believed that when such a census is provided, better results may be accomplished.

The state provides a Bureau of Labor as follows:

Section 1. How Constituted-Terms-Employees.-The Bureau of Labor, Industries and Commerce shall consist of a commissioner of labor, as assistant commissioner and a statistician, and shall have its office in the capitol. The commissioner shall be appointed by the governor, by and with the advice and consent of the senate, for a term ending on the first Monday of January in the odd numbered year next ensuing. The two other members shall be appointed for like terms by the commissioners, but all the members shall hold office until their respective successors qualify. The commissioner shall also appoint, and at pleasure remove, three deputy commissioners, five factory inspectors, five assistant factory inspectors, and such other employees as may be necessary, and for whose compensation provi

sion is made by law. Two of the said factory inspectors shall act as inspectors of railroads. The factory inspectors and the assistant factory inspectors must be persons possessed of practical experience and knowledge in and of the operation of factories, and the appointment of any not so qualified shall be void. The commissioner shall be the head of the Bureau, and may assign any other member or employee thereof to any duty imposed thereon by law.

The total number of cases investigated by the factory inspectors while acting as truant officers for the several school boards, was......

(From September, 1908, to January, 1909.)

Their work was done in seventeen cities of the state.

The disposition of cases was as follows:

Returned to school .....

Granted employment certificates

Moved out of district

Excused by school board

Excused for illness, doctor's certificate

Over sixteen years of age

Attending private schools
Graduates of eighth grade

Committed to state school

684

423

93

35

66

26

17

21

2

I

684

During the fall term the superintendents of schools issued 935 permits to work to children under sixteen. One year ago 1045 were issued in the same period, making a reduction of 110, or 10.5 per cent.

Canvass of Organizations and Organization of State Committee.

Lists were procured so far as possible of organizations throughout the state interested in any way in the welfare of children. As a basis of organization, a circular letter was sent out to these organizations in which it was proposed to form a State Child Labor Committee to be composed of delegates from other organizations. The result was that November 15th, twenty-eight delegates in meeting assembled decided to form a Minnesota Child Labor Committee. The first meeting of the Executive Committee occurred January 15, 1909. A Committee has been appointed to formulate a plan for securing and issuing labor scholarships.

The Minnesota Committee is in cordial sympathy with the work of the National Committee. Resolutions in support of the bill, asking for a Federal Children's Bureau and for the observance of Child Labor Day, have been offered, and it is the ambition of the local Committee to attain such strength and power that it may be worthy of the responsibility imposed upon it by its membership in the National Committee.

META JACKSON BARNARD,

Secretary.

NEBRASKA CHILD LABOR COMMITTEE.

Under the operation of the child labor law in Nebraska, with superintendents of schools handling the issue of schooling and age certificates (which are the permits to work) less than 700 such permits were issued up to the close of the school year in 1908. The law went into effect on March 1, 1907. Most of these permits were issued in Omaha and South Omaha, naturally, as the large establishments likely to employ children are located most numerously in those two cities. Lincoln followed in number issued, while in the state outside the permits were very few in number.

This condition exists in Nebraska: The attorneys of many of the larger factories, and of the packing houses advised against taking any chances with the law, and as a consequence some boys were discharged whose employment was not really a violation of the spirit of the law. Only in a few cases, comparatively, was stubbornness exhibited in continuing to employ children illegally after fair warning. Barring the Greek boys who are farmed as shoe shiners, court prosecution was not resorted to, except incidentally.

We met the Greeks in court, and they virtually defeated us. Those who watched the cases carefully became convinced that the Greek plan of campaign had been mapped out before the boys left the old country. On the first trial some of them, talking out of court, admitted they were not quite fifteen. Next day, on the stand, they were all sixteen or over, and when the case threatened to become serious, all were seventeen or over. A great many insisted they had come into the country with their fathers, but in a big majority of the cases the father had "gone back to the old country." The State Labor Commissioner took part in investigating and attempting to prosecute these cases, and a special agent of the United States government also took a hand; but the latter seemed as much at a loss how to reach and remedy the evil as the local authorities. However, the hearings had a good effect, at least for the time being. A continual excuse of merchants who need messengers and boys for other purposes about stores, is that we permit under-age Greeks to work, but will not allow American boys to do so.

Up to this time the plan of having school superintendents issue permits, under the direction of the State Labor Bureau, has worked very satisfactorily. The retiring labor commissioner reports that he found it unnecessary to issue even one permit over the heads of the superintendents, although he did advise the issue of perhaps half a dozen where superintendents were in doubt.

A peculiar and gratifying development of the operation of a group of correlated laws in Nebraska (child labor law, compulsory education law, and Juvenile Court law) has been a great lessening of the commitments to the reform schools for boys and girls, especially the former. The retiring superintendent of the Nebraska Industrial School, Mr. Sherman, has reported that the number of boys sent to that institution has been decreasing so steadily that, if it continues, there will be no use for at least one of the buildings.

Two of the volunteer inspectors provided for under the Nebraska law have aided very effectively in having its provisions carried out. These two are Rev. James Wise, of South Omaha, Chairman of the Board of Inspectors, and Mrs. Draper Smith, of Omaha. The three other inspectors have been such in name only, two of them being located where there was no call for their services, in small rural towns, the third evincing no interest after being appointed by Governor Sheldon. An effort is to be made to have inspectors located hereafter in towns where their services are very likely to be needed. There are several such towns in the state outside of Omaha and Lincoln.

On the whole, it can be asserted without fear of contradiction that Nebraska is quite free from abuses of child labor, with the possible exception of the messenger service. Employers have been commendably willing to obey the spirit of the law. The law here can be regarded as mainly preventive, a closing of the door on possible danger in the future.

JOHN J. RYDER,

Secretary.

NEW YORK CHILD LABOR COMMITTEE.

The New York Committee has had a year full of activity, and is pleased at this time to report considerable progress. By far the most important gain has been the enactment of legislation to place the inspection of department stores and all other mercantile establishments under a new bureau established in the State Department of Labor. This marks the end of a twelve-year struggle against powerful mercantile interests. The campaign attending the passage of this measure was the hardest fought since the radical amendments were obtained to the child labor laws in 1903. The chief credit for the victory is due Commissioner of Labor, Hon. John Williams. The New York Committee, the National Child Labor Committee, and a number of other organizations were unceasing in their support of his efforts to secure the enactment of this bill.

As but three months have elapsed since the new Mercantile Bureau was organized in the Department of Labor, it is too soon perhaps to judge of its permanent effectiveness. However, the Committee feels an important piece of work has already been accomplished since the law went into effect October 1st last. This bureau, with but eight inspectors for the three largest cities of the State-New York, Buffalo and Rochester-made approximately 2100 inspections and found a few over 1000 children working illegally during the last quarter of 1908. Thirty-five prosecutions have been instituted against employers violating the law. From these results we are confident that children working in department stores, small mercantile establishments, and for telegraph companies, will receive much greater protection from the law during the coming year than ever before.

The work of the Department of Labor in its inspection of factories has shown very substantial progress. Illegal child labor, which in 1906 represented twenty-seven per cent. of all children employed and in 1907,