The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1914-01-24
CHILD LABOR
 DAY SUNDAY
More General Observance On Monday Throughout
 Country

 bor problem will be put before the children themselves throughout the country this year for the first time. To-morrow has been designated as Child Labor Day to be observed as has been the custom for the past ten years in regular and special church services generally. but new step has been taken by the National Child La bor Committee in calling upon teach CTS throughout the country to observe next Monday as Child Labor Day in the schools.
 The main idea is to get children to think in their own behalf on the prob- lem of child labor. To this end the National Committee has been busily engaged for a month past in supply ing teachers, as well as clergymen, with the latest phases of the move
 nent against child labor, and pro- poses that at chapel exercises or at some specially designated period in Mondays school work teachers shall in some manner take up the subject of child labor with their charges.
 Interest taken in the matter is re- dected in requests which have lately come in at the rate of over roe a day for information, in reply to which the National Committee has distribut- ed quantities of pamphlets on the re- lation of child labor to education. In- dications are that thousands Of teach CTS will unite with c1ergynen In some sort of observance of the day.
 Since the first Child Labor Day was observed in 1908, such striking pro- gress has been made thai the rank and
 file of states to-day have advanced beyond the standard of the most pro- gressfve ten years ago, according to
 Owen R. Lovejoy, general secretary of the National Child Labor Committee.
 The child labor laws of practically all states have been revised and i'm proveds knowledge as to the condi- tions of working children has been widely spread; the causes. effects and methods of prevention of child labor have become matters of of]thorough sci entifc study and treatment; Uni
 form Child Labor Law for the sew geral states has been widely approved and the Federal Government has put into successful operation Children's bureau.
 $ But,'' Secretary Lovejoy adds, "the white list of states with really effective child labor law covering ten or more of the common occupations of children is still very short-ouly IA states in all, and even these leave certain kinds of work outside Of the fourteen-year limit. @ There are nine states which have not yet reached a 14-year age limit ev- en for factory work; there is no state in the union that has attempted to get an age limit higher than 12 years for newsboys; and on1y seven states have reached standard of 21 years age limit for night messengers. t.Boys of fourteen or less are still employed at the peril of their moral and physical integrity in this night
 messenger work in a score of states. ''Agricultura1 work is still entirely unregulated outside of New Y ork and Tennesse, and children of tender years are doing an adults work in the | berry fields and cranberry bogs. | Many states that have made Child Labor laws are not seeing that they are enforced, and the National Com | rnittee is now engaged in a, careful survey of the methods of administer | ing the law in the different states. .The standard of inspection service ] is steadily rising, but we fall far be- I low the English. There are half a dozen states in which there is no att 1 tempt at inspection of labor conditions and therefore no attempt to enforce l the child labor law. And there are perhaps a score in which the staff of 1 inspectors is so ridicu1ously small that l through statewide inspection is phys l icalIy impossible"
 The whole subject of the adminis- l tration of child labor laws is to be l taken up at the National Conference on Child Labor which will be held in New Orleans next March. Plans are also under way for celebration, of the tenth anniversary of the organization of the National Child Labor Commit
 tee which will be reached on April 1 14th.