Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/325

 LAWS FOR PROTECTION OF CHILDREN 313

The number of children at work in Illinois grows by leaps and bounds. The demand for children's work presses unceasingly as the improvement of machinery renders the children available and the increasing immigration furnishes them by thousands to meet the demand. To pause in the process of improving the laws for the protection of the children means the growth of illiteracy and child-labor. To gain upon these evils, new and progressive measures must be adopted year after year, as rapidly as public opinion can be educated. To be satisfied with less than the best would be unworthy of the third greatest state and the second city in the republic.

If, however, Illinois is to rise again from the fifteenth to the lost sixth place in the scale of the states, as shown in the census of 1890-1900; and, still more, if Illinois is to acquire that which she has never yet possessed, namely, standing in the front rank of the states which take enlightened care of their children, it will be necessary to avoid all vainglorious boasting and face the facts as they are, realizing that a large task awaits the legislature. For it will be necessary to enact comprehensive measures, covering the following twelve important points :

1. A required amount of the work in the curriculum of the public schools to be covered by all the children, either in the public schools or in private schools, or in some other manner (in insti- tutions or at home), preferably the work of the first eight years, as in Colorado.

2. Required school attendance to the age of sixteen years, except for children exempted after compliance with the foregoing school requirement.

3. A physician's examination of all the children at the time of beginning work, and the filing of a signed statement of a physi- cian of the local board of health that at the time of the examina- tion the child is of the normal stature of a child of fourteen years and in good health.

4. School physicians, with powers much enlarged beyond those of the present medical visitors of the Chicago schools.

5. School nurses provided by the local board of health.

6. Special classes in the schools on a large scale, not only for