little son. The father could not speak English, and apparently had no knowledge of the nature of the oath taken-it was only a ceremony prerequisite to getting his boy into the breaker. The age of the child was not asked, but was entered on the certificate as " Born May 15, 1891." Furthermore, the certificate which determines the age of this boy, who has lived in America for a month and appears not above nine years old, which shuts the door of the school-house forever against him and enters him permanently in the ranks of our wage-earners, was executed by the brother of the notary, who was absent from the city.

It is not denied that shiftless and dissolute parents add to the volume of child labor, here as elsewhere. One will see fine, manly boys, who have never attended school with any regularity, and who have been the main breadwinners of the family from eight, ten, or eleven years of age, and who, in addition to the hard toil of the mine, begin and end their day carrying a pail of beer from the saloon for the physical comfort of their thirsty parents. But the number of parents who place their personal comfort above the welfare of their children is not large, and it is believed that a reasonable effort to point to the advan tages of an elementary education, and to disclose the injurious effects of too early employment, will meet with a ready response among a people as kind-hearted and generous as are to be found in any commonwealth.

The third factor contributing to the volume of child labor in this region is the attitude of the employer. One is everywhere assured that these children work in the breakers only during the summer months, beginning in April and returning to school when the snow falls. This is true of many of the boys, yet the breaker continues to run and the slate is picked from the coal at all seasons of the year. If the boys are not there in winter, by whom is the work performed? When the boys come on in the spring, whose places do they take at the coal chute? The fact is, a boy of twelve, working for fifty cents or sixty cents a day, can do as much work in some parts of the breaker as a man who would

demand one dollar a day. The law of supply and demand explains the rest.

Again, we should fall into error were we to conclude that the coal operator is greedy above other employers. He is a business man facing the problems of the business world. Competition with other producers is keen. The appetite of his stockholders for dividends is insatiable. The obvious duty of the superintendent of any department in the concern is to get the work done as efficiently and cheaply as possible. Frequently employers, when questioned regarding certain little boys in the breaker, have replied with unconcern, "We have their certificates of age all right. That lets us out!"

The sense of social responsibility is slowly dawning. We are beginning to learn that nothing comes to our convenience or comfort without sacrifice somewhere in the process. Society is rising from the plane in which a cash payment for goods was regarded as the final discharge of obligation, and coming to reccgnize that we have not discharged all duty, or made full payment for goods, until we have done our utmost to secure to every person engaged in their preparation a fair reward for service, a full share of liberty, and an adequate opportunity for the complete development of body and mind to symmetrical maturity. That the individual can fulfill this social obligation alone is not expected, but that society must discover methods by which we can be fed and clothed and warmed without oppression or injustice is fundamental to democracy. Let the housekeeper who next becomes annoyed by a "clinker" in the range or furnace pause in his anger long enough to remember that the "clinker" is now his problem because it escaped the eyes of some ten or eleven year old slate-picker, bent for nine hours above the dusty chute, peering by the aid of a smoking whaleoil lamp into the black shadows that creep across the fair face of all his days.

At the recent session of the Pennsylvania Legislature two laws were enacted, one governing employment in the mining industry, the second covering other forms of gainful occupation. Both establish a fourteen-year age limit, require

F

ORESTRY is a science which must delay its growth and appli

cation until long after the earlier stages of industrial exploitation are past. To the settler in a new country the Forest is a hostile element in the struggle for life- -a stubborn enemy which must be driven back with ax and fire to make way for fields and pastures. Behind the settler comes the lumberman. To him the forest is an inexhaustible natural resource. He would exploit its wealth as a miner exhausts a vein of ore. When, however, all the land fit for agriculture is cleared, and when the products of the forest begin to fall below the demand, then comes the Forester. Straightway the conflict begins. The lumberman, with an ideal of present gain only, would cut whatever he can market and leave devastation behind. The forester, in the light of a better knowledge, would harvest the ripe timber-for he cherishes no silly sentimentality over cutting the individual tree-but he would leave the forest to perpetuate itself. Each regards the other with bitterness; the one considers forestry as a visionary effort to curtail his ancient liberties, while the other knows only too well the cost of ignorant and lawless disregard of the future. It is the forester that must prevail in the end. The forest is not an inexhaustible resource, nor is it a group of single and distinct trees. It is a growth which produces a slowly maturing but continuing crop. It is a highly complex organization of vegetable and animal life. is, moreover, a trust held by us, not only for our own benefit, but also for the benefit of posterity. Forestry is the applied science of the forest organism-the management of it under scientific principles to the end that its growth be directed and its yield perpetuated, that the prin

It

cipal be untouched and the highest interest from it be realized.

In America the time has come for the practice of forestry. While once the butt-log of virgin timber only was worth the cost of cutting, now an equal price per foot is paid for second growth. Twenty years ago black walnut was split for fence-rails in Ohio; within a few years manufacturers were sending agents among the farmers offering wire fence to replace these same rails. White pine is being shipped to Maine, the "Pine Tree State "-coals brought to wasteful Newcastle. With the growth of industries, the consumption has increased enormously. At the same time the supply is failing. Yearly the lumberman leaves vast "barrens" behind him, and yearly the fire that follows him eats up billions of feet of valuable lumber. As the stumpage price-the value of standing timber-rises, and the consumer pays proportionately, a wiser policy must obtain, and the forester begin his needed work.

In Europe this stage when demand far exceeded supply, and this outcome, are long since past. In America, however, forestry has but recently risen from the peonage of an unaccepted theory to the dignity of a profession. To the Society for the Advancement of Science belongs the credit of the first movement. In 1877 a committee was organized from that body to advise the Government of the need of measures for the protection of the forest. Little influential interest was aroused; a memorial failed to affect the politicians, always suspicious of scientific movements. At last, however, Dr. F. B. Hough was appointed as "special agent" to report on American forests in general. In 1881 this somewhat indeterminate office was joined as a division to the Department of Agricul