the trolley cars and automobiles and good roads are bringing the youth in such complete touch with the city that instead of promoting that satisfaction and contentment with the country as we had expected these city advantages would do, it often has just the reverse effect. I am not prepared to say that these modern conveniences upon which we depended so much in the "back to the soil" movement will not in the end increase rather than decrease the numbers of country boys. I recently visited a city of about three thousand population in one of the most rural of states. What did I find? It has its moving picture shows along its Great White Way, limited to two or three blocks, with a roller skating rink, dance hall, and other forms of excitement and amusement—almost a perfect miniature of the larger city. The fact that the youth of the farming community, through trolley cars and automobiles, had convenient access to the city, where before it would have been more difficult, I was assured only whetted the desire in the country boy for the city life. It would seem then that we are booked for disappointment in the hope that the extension of city conveniences to the farm is going to increase the rural population and therefore the number of country children.

COUNTRY AND CITY BOYS.

But except as it shall present difficulties in the growth and evolution of modern civilization, I am not sure whether this condition, if it be the condition, need be viewed with any great alarm. There is a gregarious and sheep-like tendency in mankind to flock together. The phenomenon presented by urban and rural growth must be a natural one or it would not be so. It is simply presenting in the course of its natural growth an occasional difficulty in the body politic as we have an occasional disease in the growing body of the individual. It becomes our duty then, in the one case just as much as in the other, to remedy the difficulty, to direct the growth along natural and wholesome lines, and this calls for work and coöperation among those factors that have to do with the life of the city or country boy-home, school, neighborhood, church and state.

It follows then that our difficulties, as they must develop from time to time, will be with the city rather than the country boy. This is not because the country boy is inherently any different from the city boy-don't forget that any better or any worse, nor in my judgment because he is capable of greater possibilities. It is rather because of the environment and condition under which a great number of our boys must in the future development of this country necessarily be reared. I once attended a powwow of some Indian chiefs in North Dakota. There was present old John Grass, the successor of Sitting Bull, and Red Tomahawk, the slayer of the same old chief. I asked these Indian chiefs about Indian children in their primitive days, in the days of the real country and the wilderness. Did they lie? Did they steal? These

chiefs assured me that such things were practically unknown among Indian boys in the days of their own childhood which was before the white man came. "But," said one of the chiefs, "when white man come Indian boy he steal, lie just like white boy."

I asked one of these Indian chiefs why it was that in their primitive state stealing was unknown among Indian boys-and surely they were the original country boys. The old chief grunted and a smile. actually lit up that otherwise stolid Indian face as he replied: "It is very simple, there wasn't anything to steal. The child's wants were few and he had what he wanted." Neither was there any poverty, any crime. This virtue of the original country boy in America was acclaimed without a taint of pharisaism. For it was admitted that the honest little savage was no better than his dishonest little progeny. It was rather a problem of condition, of occasion, of environment, than one of inherent viciousness. The wants of the little savage were few and generously supplied by nature. There was no temptation, no occasion to steal.

This fact no more favors savagery than it disproves the advantages of civilization. It is the law of nature that men should multiply and populate the earth, and the instinct among the greater numbers to flock together in cities is precisely the same as it was in the days of savagery when smaller numbers flocked together in smaller groups more widely distributed. We must meet the change by doing two things:

HOW TO MEET THE CHANGES.

First. Perfect our system of education. We need to improve our methods of moral training. We must more and more develop heart and conscience that our children may be equipped for moral as well as industrial efficiency. Boys need strength, but most of all the strength that comes from within; self-control, self-restraint; a yielding of more obedience to authority and respect for law and the rights of others.

Second. The application of a system of real justice among men which means an industrial, social and economic world in which every man shall really have an opportunity to develop the best that is in him, and be assured that he shall reap the joys, rewards and profits to be derived from his own honest toil.

This means that the boy to keep pace with our modern civilization must be better supplied with certain opportunities that are now largely denied him.

New conditions necessarily create new problems. It is the law of growth and development. Since these new conditions are to be found principally in the cities, and since most of the boys who need our attention and interest are in the cities, it follows that the problem of the child is largely the problem of the city. But as the country

becomes more closely in touch with the city and many of its difficulties reach into the life of the country boy, we will also in time find the difficulties of the one are the difficulties of the other.

Whatever the city does for the child is done for the community as a whole, for the child cannot profit without equal profit directly or indirectly inuring to the entire community. It is difficult to put any limit on the duty of the community to the child. It is coextensive with that of the parent, if there be no parent, or if the parent be helpless, or the child suffers from the parent's neglect. This duty of the community, once recognized and accepted, is bound to be extended until indeed the community shall become one great family possessing some of the attributes, duties and responsibilities for the child that in original country life were limited to the particular family or family group of the child. The first general and accepted duty of the community towards the child was its education. Then came the demand for playgrounds, natatoriums, baths, trade-schools, recreation centers, medical inspection, visiting nurses, dental clinics, and finally the school free restaurant. That is as sure to come within the next ten years as the playground and the recreation center has come in the past ten years. In a word, there is absolutely nothing that the child needs which the parent for any fair reason cannot furnish, which it is not the duty of the community to supply. This is so because it is simply the struggle of the state for itself. The child is the state; when the child is neglected the state is neglected; when the child suffers the state suffers; when the child is lost the state is lost. To say that the child is the chief asset of the state is undoubtedly true, but it is short of the real truth. The child is the state. It is, therefore, futile to oppose the movement going on in this country for the conservation of childhood on the ground that it is paternal. If there is anything in the scriptural injunction that "A little child shall lead them," it is surely making itself felt at this period of our civilization. If we would conserve the real interests of the children of the Nation, we have simply got to be paternal. The state has got to be the over-parent. It cannot escape if it would; it would not escape if it could.

PALLIATIVES AND CURES.

The last decade of agitation in behalf of the boys of the city was for what is becoming more and more to be regarded as the palliatives. We first asked for playgrounds only in certain bad neighborhoods, on the theory that the children in that neighborhood were bad. We know now that the children were no different from other children, and if they need playgrounds, then all children need playgrounds, whether they be country children or city children. The play instinct needs to be wisely directed as much in one child as in another-in the country. as truly as in the city.

We first asked for child labor law forbidding children to work in certain industries, and we are realizing more and more that it is not a good thing for the Nation to draw on the manhood of tomorrow by sacrificing the childhood of today. (Applause) The recent report of the National Bureau of Labor on juvenile delinquency and its relation to employment makes perfectly clear the extra hazards and dangers to which children are subjected from being too early forced into economic competition with men. It demonstrates the necessity for not only more stringent child labor laws, but the better enforcement of those we have. It explodes the idea that the working boy and girl under 16 years of age is freer from dangers of delinquency than the nonworking child. It would seem indeed that the playing child in the street is much less likely to go wrong there than while engaged in those occupations in which they are mostly employed.

From what is undoubtedly a very thorough investigation and study of 4,839 cases of delinquents (of whom 561 were girls and 4,278 were boys), we have carefully worked out for us interesting tables showing 2,416 working as against 1,862 non-working delinquent boys, and 251 working as against 210 non-working delinquent girls, or a total number of 2,767 working delinquent children as against 2,072 non-working delinquent children. Added to these interesting figures is the further fact that the ratio of working delinquents is very much larger than the non-working in all these cities, varying in different cities from three to ten times as great as the non-working, with the disproportion even more striking among the girls, making it perfectly clear, as one chapter of the report concludes, "that putting children to work prematurely is not an effective method of training them for good citizenship."

THE VALUE OF THE REPORT.

Another interesting fact brought out by the report is that the repeaters or recidivists (those apprehended for the second to the tenth offense as carefully tabulated in the report) are to be found mostly among the working children with the proportions much larger among the younger working children between 9 and 14 years of age. Up to this point the scale in this respect constantly ascends, beginning to descend as the working age approaches maturity.

The report is unusually fair in making every possible concession to a variety of details and difficulties that might discredit its conclusions; but even with all such concessions there isn't any room to dispute its final demonstration that working children not only contribute more in actual numbers but in an alarmingly larger proportion than do the nonworkers to the criminal classes, and among repeaters or recidivists the same condition is even more marked. No such interesting or reliable set of tables has ever yet been added to the literature on this subject. It forces upon us the idea that the virtues necessary to good citizenship are not so much inherited as they are to be acquired. It follows that

we are doing hideous injustice to our children in unnecessarily subjecting them to temptations which their untrained, immature souls are not yet able to withstand. These temptations naturally enough are greatest among the six groups of working boys who furnish the most delinquents. They are well known to juvenile court officers. These six groups represent the six classes of occupations yielding the greatest number of delinquents out of the total number investigated. Proportionately they are, delivery and errand boys 491, or 20.3 per cent; newsboys and bootblacks 449, or 18.6 per cent; office boys 46, or 1.9 per cent; street vendors 66, or 2.7 per cent; telegraph messengers 73, or 3 per cent; employed in amusement resorts 51, or 2.1 per cent; or a total of 2,416, more than one-half of the total number of 4,278 cases of delinquent boys investigated. The greatest proportion of offenses among the boys are of course larceny. This one offense constitutes more than half of all the offenses reported. Putting these immature souls to work simply violates the supplication of the Christian's prayer "lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." The temptation of dishonesty constantly besets the working child, much more than the nonworking child. The results shown are rather to be expected. The next in order of popular offenses are incorrigibility and disorderly conduct, terms so indefinite as to frequently include larceny. Truancy appears only in the cases of 185, and begging in the cases of only seven. Every juvenile officer will appreciate the more than probable accuracy of these tables, for, with one or two exceptions of minor importance, they are confirmed by their common experience, for which heretofore reliable tables are rather scarce.

A FALLACY EXPLODED.

The tabulations concerning the parental condition of the delinquents show equally creditable work. They are interesting as exploding another popular fallacy (which indeed was long since exploded by Miss Jane Addams and other champions of child labor laws) that most of the working children were sons and daughters of widows. Only 419 boys or 17.3 per cent of the entire number investigated were sons of widows, and only 185, or 8.7 per cent, were orphans; while 1,318, or more than one-half of the entire number, had both parents living. And again, curiously enough, the tables show that proportionately the great majority of these delinquent boys, employed or unemployed, came from average good homes. Seventy-six and two-tenths per cent of the delinquent working boys are recorded as coming from "fair or good homes," and 71.6 per cent of the working and non-working boys (that is, of the total number of delinquents) enjoy the same favorable conditions in so far as their homes are concerned. The results seem to prove. what has often been emphasized by juvenile officers, that a good home is not as complete a guarantee of a good boy or girl as it would