line; and that the pressure of Southern competition renders it increasingly difficult to maintain the position already achieved by Massachusetts. The enforcement of existing requirements becomes more burdensome as' the reductions in wages of adults incite parents to perjured affidavits stating that children are older than they really are, in order to add the child's wage to the decreasing family income, and the force of the statute is thus undermined. Inter-State Aspect of the Right to Childhood. -Hitherto the right to childhood has been considered in the light of the experience of children in certain occupations, and in the light of the legislative provisions of certain states for protecting children from too early toil. The broader question, what the people of this nation as a whole are doing to assure to the Republic, a generation hence, an intelligent citizenship, has scarcely been formulated. The question is, however, compendiously answered by two tables of the United States Census of 1900, which have not yet received that general and widespread discussion which their significance renders imperative. The first table shows the percentage of children between the ages of ten and fourteen years who were able to read and write, in 1890 and in 1900. Except Nevada, whose Indian children were first included in 1900, all the states have been reducing the percentage of illiteracy. The figures upon which the percentages are based are given in a second table, wherein the states are twice arranged, once alphabetically and again in the order of the ability of the children to read and write, those states being grouped at the top which have the least number of illiterate children and those states grouped at the bottom which have the largest number of illiterate children. PER CENT. ABLE TO READ AND WRITE AMONG PERSONS IO TO 14 YEARS OF AGE The vitally significant fact revealed by the first table is the fall in the scale, between 1890 and 1900, of the six great industrial states when measured by the percentage of literacy of their children between the ages of ten and fourteen years. When measured by the value of their manufactures, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Massachusetts, Ohio, and New Jersey stand at the head of the scale of the states in the order in which they are here printed. When measured by the percentage of their children between the ages of ten and fourteen years able to read and write, in 1900, these states rank altogether differently. Thus New York, instead of being first is fourteenth; Pennsylvania, instead of being second, is twentieth; Illinois, instead of being third, is fifteenth; the other three are Massachusetts, ninth; Ohio, fourth; and New Jersey, twenty-first. Nor is their position in this scale either stable or improving. On the contrary, all the six great states fell from a better relative position during the ten years from 1890 to 1900. In 1890, New York occupied the eighth place, Pennsylvania the sixteenth, Illinois the fifth, Massachusetts the second, Ohio the third, and New Jersey the fifteenth. All alike have fallen relatively to the western states (Nebraska, Oregon, Indiana, Utah and Washington), which have correspondingly risen. Pennsylvania and New Jersey seem to have com www |