ers, staying long enough with each to impart a knowledge of the elements of education.

In Massachusetts and New York children are not allowed to work at night, while in New Jersey the girls are protected by such a law, but the boys are still exempt from its enforcement and are still put into the glass works and canning factories. I need not dwell on the horrors of the life in the glass works of these half-clad, ill-fed boys, who as a result of perjured oaths go out in the night darkness to toil in those suffocating rooms, in a monotonous round of load-carrying, which, although the material carried may be not heavy, must yet be kept up with steady regularity all the night through on account of the "blowers."

At midnight these boys drink black coffee, as do the older workmen, and like them, as the night advances, maintain their ability to keep moving with the strongest liquors they can buy. We know of no children employed in the glass factories who are not persistent consumers of tobacco and strong drink. A case investigated in Illinois showed that when the boys left the factory at 5.30 a. m. they drank strong liquor and went to sleep in beds vacated by other children who work during the day.

The horrors which exist in cities like Pittsburg are worse than I can tell you. It is not unusual for children to be taken from asylums and orphanages under false oaths by disreputable men and women who place them in glass factories and live upon their earnings.

I do not know why the conscience of Illinois should be more sensitive than that of Pennsylvania, but when these things were published there the people asserted their indignation by passing a new law which provides that children under sixteen years of age may not work after seven p. m., that they must not be employed until they can read and write, and limiting the day's labor to eight hours.

When Governor Yates signed the law the glass manufacturers notified him that they would leave the State. In response to this a Chicago paper said, if the State must choose between

its children and its industries, the great child-eating ogre must go and they were prepared to let it depart.

A good bill was framed in this State last year, but it never had a hearing in the halls of legislation. A trouble here is that laws relating to the protection of these children, are left to those who either are indifferent to their interests, or are unenlightened, or else, not circumstanced for independent action. The fact is ignored that the commonwealth ought to protect all the children, and must do so for the common safety.

The miners in this State are better organized than the other workmen and last year secured a law providing that no child under sixteen years, be employed under ground, and none. under fourteen years, at the breaker. As a result of this law 1100 children in one township, have been dismissed from the mines.

During the last year a great tidal wave has stirred the conconsciences of women, from Maine to California. New York passed five laws affecting newsboys, messengers-boys and bootblacks. New Jersey raised the age limit for all the protected industries, and Illinois passed the best law, yet recorded for the protection of children. Alabama took a forward step, prohibiting night work for children under thirteen years and limiting time to eight hours, and South Carolina inaugurated a progressive law: This year the children of ten years may work, but next year the limit will be eleven years and the next year it will advance to twelve years.

From a Kindergarten in New York City two children of four and five years of age were missing and on inquiry it proved that they were kept at home covering wires with green paper for the stems of artificial flowers. It is usual for children of this age to sew on buttons, take out bastings and other work such as the deft fingers of the kindergarten child can do.

In New Jersey children of fourteen years may be worked if the parents are judged to be poor enough to demand it; thus lightening the burdens of poverty for adults by placing them upon the children.

MRS. KELLEY said farther, in response to questions: The

press is not a pioneer in reform, but it takes up gladly and discusses freely what the people waut to know about. It, however, shows caution in criticising child-labor in department

stores.

Compulsory education fails of its highest good because of short terms, failure to appoint truant officers or bad appointments. Sometimes the law seemed made to protect the employer from prosecution rather than to care for the good of the children,

WHITTIER FULTON said: This question is a part of the larger question of labor. The children will be emancipated when the great battle for universal freedom is won.

MRS. KELLEY said: The workman is left to secure by strikes what ought to be secured to him by legislation. Utah and Montana have eight hour laws and strikes are not needed there for that object.

REV. JAMES H. ECOB, of Philadelphia, said: We are the victims of bad laws, worked through evil minded men. We ought to fall back on the higher law of conscience, purge our statute books of evil laws and energize the good ones for the benefit of humanity. Slavery was intrenched in law, the liquor business is intrenched in law. Moloch was as mild as a May morning compared with a modern prosperity mill. We have said, "We the people are the law," and we need to verify it. There is a plumb line somewhere, held by an Almighty hand, and at last, in the eternal ordering of things we must make human law square with the plummet.

ELIZABETH LLOYD said: Let us go from this meeting resolved to carry into the world's work our optimism, and work for humanity with renewed effort during the coming year.

MABEL P. FOULKE said: We have organizations that can be used to further the passage of good laws. Women's clubs and the W. C. T. U. would willingly interest themselves in the work.

The morning session closed with a hymn by MISS AMANDA M. TURNER.

SIXTH-DAY.-AFTERNOON SESSION.

MISS TURNER sang at the opening: "Time and Tide."

The discussion of Child Labor was continued.

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON said: We are greatly indebted to all students of this problem who bring the needs of the caseto our notice. The laws do seem, sometimes, as if directed more towards the protection of property than of human life. We naturally inquire into the causes of and remedy for such conditions as Mrs. Kelley describes. The causes lie deep in economic considerations. We need to think seriously as to how dearly our prosperity is purchased.

FREDERIC A. HINCKLEY: Law is a method of expressing the people's will. We do not wish to wipe out law, but to arouse the people to an interest in expressing themselves through. law. Our trouble in this State is that "we the sovereign people" have abdicated our throne and left our work to designing men. The public conscience needs to be quickened. We are amassing corporate wealth and power at the expense of vital human interests. The unrestrained accumulation and unequal distribution of wealth opens to us the greatest social question of the twentieth century. Great forces are at work threatening the personal liberty of the individual. We hardly realize the acuteness of the situation. We must find the industrial application of the Golden Rule. We must banish industrial feudalism. As I see the difficulties incident to the adjustment of the coal strike I realize with increasing keenness the fact that the labor question involves the deepest problems of the human mind.

JUDGE SHELDON: In the great slavery issue we had God on our side, but church and State were morally dead. To-day our problem is a more hopeful one. It will, I believe, find a settlement without war or waste of life. When Lincoln was confronted by rebellion he organized an army to resist it. We must do likewise. Out of the virtue, intelligence and honor of our several communities we must organize our army; and foremost among the means of such organization will be a declaration in favor of woman's political equality.

ELIZABETH B. PASSMORE: Lincoln declared that no nation. could exist, half slave and half free, yet that is what we are still trying to do. Women are yet in legal thraldom.

MRS. FANNY B. AMES: I know most about Child Labor in Massachusetts where we have good laws, but you in Pennsylvania need to keep your minds on the abuses of the system until they are corrected. The better conditions in Massachusetts are no doubt due to the universal education so long prevalent there. She gives more thought to education, spends more money on it and devotes more time to its consideration than any other section of the Union. The compulsory education law and the child labor law work well together. No child under fourteen years of age can be employed in a factory Every child must attend school up to the age of fourteen years. Children employed between the ages of fourteen and sixteen must have a certificate stating they have complied with the school attendance law. Massachusetts has now a generation of working people who have been well schooled, but the influx of a foreign population and the exodus to the West of the home-born, make necessary a constant process of assimilation. In Pennsylvania the population is less homogeneous; yet in view of the pure stream that came in with William Penn you must have among you backbone and enough spiritual power to make the same merciful provision for the children of the commonwealth that Massachusetts has done.

CHARLES G. AMES: It is a hopeful sign when a handful of people take up the consideration of a great question as seriously as if they were responsible for its settlement. They are the leaven which, scattered far enough, will work social regeneration. But this process takes time. We are not full human beings yet. The Golden Rule is still out of sight with many of us. My own sermons box my ears every week between Sundays. We are so little accustomed to looking up that it often makes our necks ache. We do not see clearly all around us because our level is not yet high enough. A spiritually educated people will yet solve our problems. There are still too

many of us who share the spirit of that slaveholder who