NO TES AND ABSTRA CTS 325
Factory Legislation for the Protection of Women and Children in Italy. In 1396 Venice passed a law placing all children employed in factories under care of state and protecting them against the arbitrary will of the manufacturers. Similar laws were passed by all the Italian republics that had attained a certain grade ot industrial development. The decay of industries and the rigid regulations of trade guilds removed all occasion for legislation until the present century. Between 1838 and 1844 the rise of industries led certain philanthropists to consider the subject. In 1863, the viceroy of the Lombard-Venetian kingdom issued an order prohibiting the employment of children under nine years of age in factories, and, where the work was dangerous, under fourteen years. Children, before being placed in factories, .were required to have had two years of instruction in the elementary schools. After the political unrest of the Unification, writers began to press the subject upon the public for consideration. By the census of 1881, it was shown that 292,265 children between the ages of nine and fourteen were employed in factories, some for very long hours. A law passed in 1 886 regulating the employment of children in all places using mechanical motors and employing ten or more persons. Children under nine are not to be employed in such places, and none under fifteen are to be employed in dangerous occupations. Those under fifteen must present physician's certificates that they are fit for the work in question. None under fifteen can be employed to manage or polish machinery in motion. The hours of labor per day may not exceed eight. The force of inspectors is inadequate, and but 544 visits were made July i, 1889 December 31, 1892. After that, the judicial police were ordered to assist the inspectors, and the supervision became adequate ; but still the most important question is that of supervision of the execution of the present law. A law is now pending for a corps of inspectors. In 1891, 220 establishments employed 5830 children. Of these 1.8 percent, were between nine and ten years of age, and about 10 per cent, between ten and twelve. In 1892 the proportion of those between nine and ten had fallen to .82 per cent. In 1892, out of 11,159 boys employed in quarries and mines, 3.2 per cent, were under ten, while in 1893, out of 8121, only 1.24 per cent, were below that age. The bill of M. Barazzuli, reported in 1895, which is likely to become a law, provides that the age at which children may be employed shall be raised to ten, and prohibits the employment of women and children under twelve in undergound work. Night work of children under twelve and women under twenty-one is also prohibited. Mothers are not to return to work within one week of child-birth. Hours of labor are to be limited as follows : Six to eight hours for children under twelve ; ten hours for children from twelve to fifteen ; twelve hours for women from fifteen to twenty-one. R. B. D'Ajano, Journal of Political Economy, June 1896.
Crime and Punishment. From present indications, there is no prospects of crime either being reduced to a vanishing point, or of even being reduced to a consid- erable extent. It is impossible to say even that compulsory education has had much effect in this respect. Conclusions of criminologists based upon a study of Italian slabbers could not be applied to ordinary English burglars. It has not been shown that a distinct criminal type exists. In Lombroso's "La Donna Delinquente," figures are given based on the examination of 1033 female offenders, 176 skulls of this class, 685 skulls of prostitutes, and 255 normal women. But even these few observations were made at different times by different people, and apparently in different ways. For such conclusions an immense multitude of facts is demanded, and until we have them, it will be safer to act on the old supposition that n criminal is like the rest of the race, and swayed by the same motives. It is not the born criminals, the extraordinary offenders, that give rise to the problem of crime, but the commonplace pickpockets and swindlers. Knglish legislators, therefore, do not have to deal with moral monsters, but with men whose passions are a little stronger and wills a little weaker than those of their respectable fellow-citizens. The current to attach most importance
to the reformation of the criminal as a means of preventing crime seems least likely to secure that result. Thus far science has failed to discover any mode of treatment which can be regarded as effective fr reformation. A man's behavior in prison is no criterion by which to judge his character, for the way of life there is altogether different from
