Her supervision and care of illegitimate, neglected or deserted children is indeed magnificent; her system of technical schools and municipal control could be copied for the advantage of Great Britain. South Australia is making a good second in her care of the child-life. Smoking and other habits of vice are suppressed by Acts of Parliament, and if children should break the law there are separate courts for their trial.
Another good Act is the "Suppression of Indecent Advertisement" and questionable literature. Το prevent children becoming criminals is much greater than reforming them, and to keep their minds pure is of infinitely more importance to the future generations than schools of correction, reformatories, and prisons, which are all needed in later life through the lack of attention in the right direction when the mind is most susceptible. Lady Montague, in a letter to her daughter, the Countess of Bute, said: "The same characters are formed by the same lessons." If only our legislators would think of that sometimes when they are dealing with the questions relating to children and the homes of our workers! We know what the slums and rookeries of crowded cities have turned out, and yet these same slums and rookeries exist and the same characters are being turned loose on the world; the lessons learned in those slums, of vice, cruelty, and degradation are being repeated day after day and year after year, and we only hear of the "Housing Problem." If women had the votes here in Britain do you think this would continue to go on?
