300 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
enactment, and even more in the enforcement, of laws for the protection of children in Illinois amounts to a revolution, and has placed Illinois in 1904 where Massachusetts has stood since 1894. The present law of Illinois is copied, with some modifica- tions, from that of Massachusetts, which it excels only in respect to the hours of labor of children and the inclusion of telegraph messenger and office boys, the latter excellence of the Illinois law being offiset, however, by the fact that in Boston the street occu- pations of children (peddling, selling newspapers, and blacking shoes) are regulated, as they have not yet been in the cities of Illinois. As to the hours of labor, the Illinois law excels that of Massachusetts in that it permits children to work only eight hours in a day, forty-eight hours in a week, and not after 7 p. M. ; while Massachusetts permits children to work ten hours in a day, fifty-eight hours in a week, and until 9 o'clock at night. Massa- chusetts has, however, fallen out of the first rank of the states in her care of her children, being supplanted in that noble position by New York and Colorado.
Is it true that Illinois now has the best laws in the country for the protection of the children ?
There are two objective tests which can be applied in seeking an answer to this question. One test is that which is afforded by the decennial census of the United States, which reveals the effectiveness (or the incompetence) with which the states are dealing with the education of their children, by revealing the numbers and the percentages of the children between the ages of ten and fourteen years, in each of the states, who can read and write.
The second test is an annual one and is applied locally by each community for itself. This is the departure of the pupils from the schools, their age, and their recorded acquirements at the moment of departure.
Where pupils virtually all complete the work of eight years of the curriculum of the public schools, the laws for the protection of the children are thereby shown to be working efficiently. It is claimed by citizens of Colorado that this is the case in the schools of Denver. Where, however, the pupils fall out of schoof after
