266 NATURE STUDY REVIEW [7:9— Dec, 1911 



hour day prevails, he is subjected to 2,J+96 hours' confinement. In 

 Alabama a child of twelve years may legally work 3,120 hours a 

 year, or more than three times as many hours as he can be con- 

 fined in school in states having the nine or ten months' school 

 year ; while children of fourteen years may be employed seventy- 

 eight hours a week or Jf.,056 hours a year. The total number of 

 hours of daylight in the year, exclusive of Sundays, is 3,744, so 

 that the manufacturing industries of this state may legally em- 

 ploy their fourteen-year-old children 312 hours of the night be- 

 sides all the hours of daylight. 



The fruit, vegetable and sea-food canning industries through- 

 out the country remain practically exempt from all child labor re- 

 striction. A large number of states still employ young boys in coal 

 mines and quarries. The regulation of street trades is chaotic. 

 Hundreds of young girls and boys are being sacrificed in vaude- 

 ville and moving picture shows to the enterprise of theatrical 

 managers and the ignorance of parents. The reduction of hours 

 for children to eight per day — a standard already commonly 

 recognized as reasonable for adult men — has been secured in only 

 ten states, and it is significant that none of these boasts of textile 

 manufacturing as a leading industry. Law enforcement and edu- 

 cational opportunity are almost lacking in many sections. Little 

 school children, and even their younger brothers and sisters, in 

 New York City, continue to bend over their hard tasks in stuffy, 

 dim-lighted tenement rooms, at unseemly hours of the night, with- 

 out violation of any law by those who employ them. 



A Better Crop of Boys and Girls 



William A. McKeever. 



Professor of Philosophy in the Kansas State Agricultural College. 



The greatest evil of to-day is the incompetency, the ignorance of 

 parents, and it is because of that evil that others exist. — Mrs. Theodore 

 W. Birney, Founder National Congress of Mothers. 



This is a great age for the breeding of thoroughbred horses, 

 hogs and cattle, but not especially an age for the improvement of 

 the race of men. If an ordinary farmer chances to have a horse 

 that balks in the harness or a cow that runs off the reservation 

 he needs only to write to the nearest government experiment sta- 

 tion in order to secure, free of cost, a carefully prepared bulletin 



