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 492 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

dren in factories. The agitation for legislation protecting work- ing children has, in other states, ordinarily begun among men who work side by side with children, and see the injury inflicted upon them by long hours of work, and the conditions under which they are employed. Another reason for the delay in legislation was the fact that the number of children at work in manufacture was relatively small, and the need of intervention on their behalf was, therefore, not so conspicuous as in New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania, where the number of children at work ran into the tens of thousands.

After years of ceaseless agitation of the subject, Illinpis at last takes rank among the half dozen states in which the lowest limit of the legal age for work is fourteen years, not for manu- facture alone, but for commercial occupations as well. As it stands today, after many changes and improvements, the child- labor law of Illinois prohibits absolutely the employment of any child under the age of fourteen years for wages in any mercantile institution, store, office, or laundry, as well as in any manufacturing establishment, factory, or workshop. The inspectors are clothed with no authority to exempt any child from this absolute pro- vision, and poverty or orphanhood can no longer cloak the exploitation of young children in department stores, or in the telegraph and messenger service, if the law is enforced.

Up to July i of the present year, under the old compulsory- education law, the Board of Education of Chicago made a prac- tice of issuing permits for work to children under fourteen years of age. Nominally these were mere exemptions from school attendance, but really they were never asked for or granted except for the purpose of enabling the holder to go to work. These permits were not required to be sworn to by the parent, as are the affidavits now required under the child-labor law. They were granted upon the mere assertion of the parent, and the greater the apparent wretchedness of the child, the more readily was the permit granted. After the enactment of the factory law of 1893, which prohibited the employment of children under four- teen only in manufacture, these permits were granted by the