THE ILLINOIS CHILD-LABOR LAW 491
will never be taken. If the inspection departments wait for the philanthropists, hospitals may be built for the repair of news- boys who have been run over, but never a proposition urged that unemployed men should sell the papers and the boys go to school ; vacations may be arranged for cash children, but no urgency shown that the errands be done by 'phone and tube, and the children sent to get manual training. The medical fraternity bewail the increase of consumption in the great cities, but do they help to banish little girls from laundries, or advise legislation shortening the hours and equalizing the temperature in the iron- ing rooms ? The initiative in all these things comes best from officers of the state, who have technical knowledge, not alone of the places in which work is done, but of the law as interpreted by the courts in the course of the endeavor to enforce it.
Nothing is more sought in these days than information con- cerning employment ; everything touching it seems to have an almost sensational charm for legislators as well as for the student and the philanthropist. But do the reports of our departments of factory inspection furnish information in the form in which it is most easily understood, verified, and used ? The failure in this respect has, perhaps, something to do with the slow develop- ment of factory legislation in several manufacturing states. For the purpose of educating public opinion in Illinois, it was found valuable to publish the reports of the department in such shape that he who runs may read how many men, women, and children were found by the inspectors at work in each occupation.
Until 1893 Illinois ranked with the most backward of the" southern and southwestern states in its care of the health, edu- cation, and welfare of working children ; although, in the census of 1890, Illinois ranks third among the great manufacturing states of the Union when measured l>\ the value of its manufac- tured product.
One reason of the delay in enacting valid child-labor legisla- tion probably lay in the circumstance that there was no textile industry in the state; and, therefore, no strongly organized body of intelligent working people in daily contact with young chil-
