Second Annual Report of the Bureau of Statistics of Labor of the State of New York, for the Year 1884. Charles F. Peck, Commissioner. Albany: Weed, Parsons & Co. Pp. 521.
The attention of the Bureau during the year included in the report was directed chiefly to the investigation of the prevalence of child-labor in the manufactories of the State, in which, in spite of adverse circumstances growing out of the defects of the law under which the inquiries were conducted, and of the difficulty of getting employers to give information, a great many valuable statistics and much important testimony have been collected. The facts relate to the employment of children; its influence upon their physical development; the opportunity afforded in connection therewith for moral and educational training; and its relation to the social, commercial, and industrial prosperity of the State. A considerable portion of the report is devoted to the subject of compulsory education, the importance of securing the enforcement of the law prescribing it, and the means of accomplishing it. An article on "Hygiene of Occupation," by Dr. Roger S. Tracy, of New York, is also included in the report. In the appendix are given a report on Pullman, Illinois; the memoranda of a committee visit to the houses of cotton-mill operatives in Fall River, Massachusetts; the labor laws of New York; and extracts from the labor legislation of other States and of England.
A B C Book. By Francis A. March. Boston: Ginn & Co. 20 cents.
First Book in Phonetic Reading. Second Book. Third Book. Fourth Book. Fifth, or Transition Book. By Isaac Pitman. New York. Fowler & Wells Co. The set, 26 cents.
An article in the September number of the "Monthly" having caused some inquiry for phonetic primers, a number of these books are here noticed. They have the common object of making easy the first part of the process of learning to read by removing the difficulties of silent letters, and letters with several powers, to a later stage. The authors make the claim, and support it by abundant evidence, that children learn to read books in phonetic spelling, and then master the ordinary print, in less time than is commonly spent on the ordinary print alone. It is claimed, further, that in learning to read by the phonetic method the child's reasoning powers are stimulated, while if taught in the old way it forms at the outset a habit of dependence on the teacher which impedes all future progress. Some of these books recognize thirty-six, the others forty or forty-one, simple sounds in the English language, besides four or five diphthongs; and, as the common alphabet contains only twenty-three effective letters, it is variously extended by new letters and digraphs. Longley uses seventeen new letters; Pitman thirteen, with digraphs for the diphthongs; Vickroy eleven, with eight digraphs; while Mrs. Burnz uses but three, depending largely on familiar digraphs. Dr. Vickroy's reader has on the title-page a note, signed by Professor March as president of the Spelling Reform Association, in which he cordially recommends the book. As Mr. Pitman's books are published in England, the pronunciation which they represent differs slightly from American usage. Thus the vowel sound in lair is not distinguished from that in layer; been is represented as rhyming with seen, etc. Pitman and Longley use the continental vowel-scale, Mrs. Burnz the English, while March and Vickroy skillfully avoid conflict with either. Mrs. Burnz retains duplicate ways of representing several sounds, and a few other irregularities of the old spelling, claiming as compensation that her spelling departs less from the common mode than any other, and hence that a person whose education went no further than the phonetic stage could spell a
