can if she wishes it be sent back immediately to the county town. If she then wishes to return to her home at her own expense she can do so only with the permission of the district representative

CHILD LABOR ON ENGLISH FARMS DURING THE WAR.1

The various propositions which are now being made for the use of children in farm work lend interest to the English experience with farm labor of children. England is putting her all into this war, and if she has found, in spite of the increasing strain of the passing months, that children's welfare has been needlessly sacrificed, surely the testimony of her officials is timely and important for us.

England has been granting special exemptions from school attendance. Between the outbreak of the war and the 1st of May last year 28,000 children of school age had been excused from school for farm work. What do the English official records show about the need for these children's help and the effect upon them of their employment?

The granting or withholding of exemptions has been in the hands of the local education authorities, and their policy has not been uniform. Many of them in all sections of the country have consistently refused to excuse children from school. The farmers of these districts have clamored as loudly as others for child helpers, but it appears from available reports that they have managed without the children when the school authorities stood firm.

The board of education during the first year of the war advised the local authorities as follows: Exemptions should be granted only to individual children after personal investigation of each case; no general breakdown of the laws in any district was intended; the employment of children of school age should be regarded as an exceptional measure and should be allowed only where the authorities were satisfied that no other labor was available. The authorities were to ascertain that application had been made to the labor exchanges with an offer of adequate wages. In no case were the authorities to excuse children if older children past the age of compulsory attendance were available; the authority should secure particulars of the work, the wages offered, and the period for which the labor was required; the work should be light and suitable to the capacity of the child.

A year later the board of education urged a stiffening of these conditions. They laid special emphasis on the fact that the urgency

1 United States Children's Bureau. Children in War Time: First article, Child labor on English farms (press material released Apr. 30, 1917).

of the need for the child's help might be tested by the amount of wages offered; also, they said, a register should be kept of children exempted, and exemptions should be reviewed at least once in three months to ascertain that the conditions under which they were granted still existed.

In spite of this, the latest report of the chief medical officer of the board of education says: "The board have already expressed their concern to local education authorities at the large number of exemptions which have been granted far too freely and without sufficiently careful ascertainment that the conditions of exemption prescribed by the Government were fulfilled."

The Board of Trade Labor Gazette speaks of various other ways in which the shortage of men for farm labor has been met. Older children have been employed. Women have volunteered for farm work. Machinery has been increasingly used.

The Labor Gazette refers also to the low wages offered by the farmers. And in the parliamentary debates on child labor in agriculture the farmer's liking for a boy who will work for sixpence (12.2 cents) a day is given by some members as an important reason for the demand for child labor. Unofficially it is stated that in those parts of the country where rural wages are highest the least use has been made of children.

That the best interests of the children themselves have been sacrificed is recognized. As the chief medical officer of the board of education puts it in his last report: "To withdraw the child from school at an earlier age than that contemplated by the attendance by-laws is to arrest his education on the threshold of the years when he is probably just commencing to assimilate and consolidate the instruction he has received and is receiving at school. His introduction to labor at this time renders him liable to conditions of strain detrimental to his physical well-being."

CHILD LABOR IN WARRING COUNTRIES.1

"The experience of war time has only demonstrated the necessitytechnical, economic, and even physiological-of the labor laws enacted before the war. In our legislation secured in time of peace we shall find the conditions for a better and more intense production during the war."

These words of M. Albert Thomas, the French minister of munitions, illustrate perfectly the official attitude of both France and England after two years of emergency exemptions for war industries, according to the Children's Bureau of the United States Department

1 United States Children's Bureau. Children in War Time: Second article, Child labor

of Labor, which has just completed a brief review of all available reports on child labor in the warring countries.

In France and England earlier standards of hours are being restored, not only to protect the health of the workers but for the sheer sake of industrial efficiency, present and future. In Italy the Central Committee on Industrial Mobilization has taken steps in the same direction. In Russia, a year before the revolution, a movement was under way to raise the age limit for children in industry.

Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, in spite of the great armies of men they have sent to the front, have maintained their labor standards with little or no variation. Victoria has slightly increased the amount of overtime which may be permitted to women and children in special cases. On the other hand, Manitoba has reduced its legal overtime. No change whatever in restrictions on woman and child labor is reported from New Zealand.

The Children's Bureau sums up as follows the child-labor situation in France and England:

France, after almost two years of war-time exemptions by which children under 18 were allowed to work at night in special cases, restored the nightwork prohibition for girls under 18 and provided that other nightworkers should be subject to medical supervision. The reason for this is indicated not only in the statement by M. Thomas, quoted above, but again in the following extract from the French official Bulletin des Usines de Guerre for July 31, 1916: "With the continuance of the war it becomes necessary not only to find the best possible disposition of the forces available for our war industries but also to avoid every cause for exhaustion or weakening of the labor employed in our factories. There is a close relation between the conditions in which we place our workers and the improvement or the increase of our war products. For the very sake of the national defense we must conserve all their physical strength for the workers who are responsible for the manufacture of arms and for the output of our factories."

France has now under consideration an education bill which would in effect raise the standard of labor protection in war time. It was introduced in the Chamber of Deputies in March by M. Viviani and closely resembles a bill passed by the French Senate in June, 1916. This proposal to establish a system of continuation schools and to require part-time school attendance during working hours by all working children under 17 years of age has the indorsement of the Minister of Commerce and of business interests in all parts of the country.

A similar advance has been recommended in England by the departmental committee on education for juvenile employment after the war. This committee also advises an effective 14-year age limit for required school attendance without the exemptions permitted by the present law. Supplementary estimates for educational purposes have been presented to Parliament by the Government which look toward a strengthening of adolescent education along the lines suggested by the committee.

In England as early as 1915 some employers returned to regular labor standards. The British chief inspector of factories and workshops writes in May, 1916:

"The tendency grew as the year passed to substitute a system of shifts for the long day followed by overtime, and this is particularly reported of

munition factories in the Midlands and in Sheffield.

* The number of days on which overtime was actually worked tended in many factories to decrease as experience grew of accumulating fatigue and lessened output. Probably for similar reasons Sunday labor also has tended latterly to decrease.” The reports of the British official committee on the health of munition workers on the waste involved in the long hours worked during the war are well known. They urge the restoring of restrictions and are full of such statements as the following:

"Even during the urgent claims of a war the problem must always be to obtain the maximum output from the individual worker which is compatible with the maintenance of his health. In war time the workmen will be willing, as they are showing in so many directions, to forego comfort and to work nearer to the margin of accumulating fatigue than in times of peace, but the country can not afford the extravagance of paying for work done during incapacity from fatigue just because so many hours are spent upon it or the further extravagance of urging armies of workers toward relative incapacity by neglect of physiological law.

“Conditions of work are accepted without question and without complaint which, immediately detrimental to output, would, if continued, be ultimately disastrous to health. It is for the nation to safeguard the devotion of its workers by its foresight and watchfulness lest irreparable harm be done to body and mind both in this generation and the next.

"Very young girls show almost immediate symptoms of lassitude, exhaustion, and impaired vitality under the influence of employment at night. A very similar impression was made by the appearance of large numbers of young boys who had been working at munitions for a long time on alternate night and day shifts."

In England the war exemptions to the factory laws have not included a lowering of the age limits for factory work. And the exemptions to the schoolattendance laws permitted for agriculture and “ light employment" are now bitterly regretted by the general education authority which has sanctioned them.

ADDITIONAL ALLOWANCES TO OLD-AGE PENSIONERS IN GREAT BRITAIN.1

Desiring to recognize in a measure the hardships imposed upon old-age pensioners by reason of high prices of food and other economic conditions arising from the war, the British Government has developed a scheme for the award of additional allowances up to a maximum of 2s. 6d. (60.8 cents) for the period of the war only. This allowance is to be restricted to cases of special hardship, and the general object of the Government, as set forth in the scheme of the Lords Commissioners of His Majesty's Treasury, is to provide a method whereby any old-age pensioner whose total means (including his pension) do not exceed 12s. 6d. ($3.04) a week and are inadequate to maintain him, may have his means raised by an additional

1 Great Britain. Old-age pensions: Copy of Treasury scheme for the award of additional allowances to old-age pensioners suffering special hardship owing to the war. Lou

allowance to a sum not exceeding 13s. ($3.16) a week, subject, however, to the maximum already mentioned. It is left to local pension committees or subcommittees to determine the amount of the allowance which should properly be awarded to a pensioner, having regard to his means and other considerations such as the cost, of living in the particular locality, the means of any relatives with whom the pensioner may reside, etc. If the old-age pensioner is one of a married couple living together in the same house and the joint means of the couple (including the old-age pension or pensions) do not exceed 19s. 6d. ($4.74) a week, it is provided that the means of the couple may be raised to a sum not exceeding £1 ($4.87) a week by the grant of an additional allowance to the pensioner or pensioners, subject to the same limitation that the allowance to each pensioner shall not exceed 2s. 6d. (60.8 cents) a week. It is not proposed that any additional allowance should be paid to pensioners who, by reason of their other means exceeding Ss. ($1.95) a week, are in receipt of less than the full old-age pension of 5s. ($1.22) a week.

The additional allowance is not restricted to existing old-age pensioners; any future pensioner is permitted to make application for an additional allowance. No additional allowance shall be granted to an old-age pensioner who is an inmate of an infirmary or other poor law institution. Provision is made for reducing the allowance if, after it has been granted, the pensioner's means have increased, and for increasing the allowance if, after it has been granted, the pensioner's means have decreased.

THE LABOR SUPPLY OF FRANCE.

[Special report by C. W. A. Veditz, American commercial attaché, Paris, France, to the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce, U. S. Department of Commerce, Mar. 28, 1917.]

In connection with the parliamentary discussion of the bill presented by Senator Beranger, providing for the mobilization of the civil population, and for the organization of national labor in France and her colonies, an interesting report was presented on behalf of the committee on the economic organization of the country. The most valuable part of this report consists of the statistical information presented by the Minister of Commerce in reply to a series of questions prepared by a subcommittee of the above committee. These questions were as follows:

1. What are the civil labor requirements in the following branches of production: (a) For agriculture; (b) for transportation and revictualing; (c) for public works-mines, waterfalls, electric power