work at nine." And they are not going to pay a cent into that family because they see no reason why every one of those children should not be working. In Georgia they can work at six. The law does not say so, but they do. Ten is the lowest age; they are not supposed under any circumstances to work under that age. We hope that we are going to have those children when they grow up feel that their children must not go to work until they are fourteen, and gradually we hope to raise it higher.

A Dead-end Occupation.

There is another thing we are hoping to gain by it. You know when these children start in the cotton mills somehow they are cotton mill workers for life. We have in Columbus iron foundries and huge railroad shops, and my ambition was to see if I could not get two of our night club boys apprenticeships. Through one of the directors of the board I succeeded. The boys were elated and the next morning they reported to work and what do you suppose? The boss in the iron foundry found out that they were cotton mill workers and had been for two or three years. He didn't want them; wouldn't have them. And the reason of that is this: it is typical of that class that they do not work any more. than it takes money for them to live. If a boy of that class has no family to support, if he can live by working four days a week, he is not going to work any more; he is not going to put up that money or spend it. If the four days give him money enough to go to all the moving picture shows that he wants to, that is all that he will work. So this machinist thinks that it is a shiftless class and will not give them work. And we are hoping that if we can keep these children in school until they are fourteen, then they can get into the iron foundries and machine shops and not have to go into the cotton mills at all.

SOME ANCIENT STANDARDS OF CHILD PROTECTION.

RABBI DAVID MARX, ATLANTA, GA.

Within the past half-century, the welfare of the child has received more attention and consideration than at any time in the known scope of authentic history. His right to a healthy birth, to happiness, to normal physical development, to education and the opportunities that make for home building and good citizenship are of such intimate concern that almost daily some new thought is advanced, some new law enacted to insure to childhood the right to laugh and play and grow strong physically and develop mentally and morally.

A newer ideal combats an ancient thought that the child is the concern of only the parent or the state. This ideal makes for a dual responsibility. In this making, it meets with law. Custom precedes law; law becomes in turn custom, with all the implications of tradition and precedent. Law rests on conceptions of the past; it embodies ancient form and usage. Nor is it always mindful of the origin of the usage or the form. It is this loyalty to the past, which, while it affords stability, presents obstacles to advanced legislation for child welfare.

The idea of parental right as guardian, judge, arbiter of the child's life, is ancient. His property right in his children goes back to prehistoric times. That the children are his and he can use them as he sees fit, work them if he will, sell the labor of their young lives, receive their wages, yea, demand again of the employer the wages already paid to the child without parental authorization,goes back into the hoariest of times before Rome had sunk the foundations for the walls that were to enclose the people that in so large a measure gave laws to the world.

In the ancient world, in general, the standards of child protection were most limited. The father was supreme within his home. He was the priest who kept alive the sacred fire. He was the judge with unquestioned authority. Wife, child and slave were his property. When the city grew and began to frame laws, the lawmakers found the father entrenched behind the barriers of his home. He.

personally, might be answerable to the city authorities and the law, but not so his family. They were answerable to him, and he dare do with them that which was good in his own eyes. At least this was so in very ancient Rome. As priest and family head, to become, after death, deified, religion gave him his imperious position, yet it acted as a check upon him at least in so far as his male children were concerned. Through them lay not only the succession but also the religion of the family. Their death would entail the extinction of the hearth-fire, and would deprive the Manes of the father of the veneration and offerings which ought to be given, and could be given only by the son. Thus it was that even the severe law, originally a custom, which gave the father right to kill or to sell his children, had somewhat of a check upon it. (De Coulanges: Ancient City, Bk. II., Ch. 7 and 8. Henry Sumner Maine: Ancient Law, Ch. V.).

Similar parental authority, "Patria potestas," seems to have been an almost universal custom in the early days. As Sir Henry Maine remarks: "The unit of an ancient society was the family; of a modern society, the individual." (Anc. Law, p. 126.)

The patriarchal system of government naturally simplified the application of external laws, and this to so great an extent, that except in questions involving property succession, it is rare that the child is even considered by the ancient legislators.

To ascertain then what were the standards of protection would be almost impossible, were it not that the literature of the past occasionally throws some light upon the attitude of parents and public towards the children.

It is not just to infer that the child was not an object of solicitude to parents, watched over and cared for, merely because no law stands on the statute book prohibiting the exploitation of the child. Industrial conditions such as obtain to-day, were unknown and undreamed of then. It is true that many of the customs of that past, relative to children, were brutal. It is so even to-day.

Child Life in Ancient Israel.

The limitations placed upon this paper compel us to direct our attention, and that somewhat hurriedly and not entirely satisfactorily, to child life among the people that gave us the Bible. Of all ancient nations (for reasons into which it is not necessary to go at

present) we are the most closely interested in this one whose literature we esteem.

There can be no doubt that in the earliest stage of the Semite Beduin life, the sacifice of the first-born son was an established custom for insuring a large progeny (Rob. Smith: Religion of the Semites). This custom was later changed to that of redeeming the child with an animal sacrifice or with money. According to the primitive thought, such sacrifice, as an act of religious reverence, was essential for securing a family.

Likewise it was customary, for a long time, to immolate a child and rear the structure of a house or of a city-wall on such a foundation-sacrifice. Thus in the time of King Ahab, "did Chiel, the Bethelite, build Jericho. With Abiram, his first-born, he laid the foundation thereof, and with Segub, his youngest son, set he up the gates thereof” (I. K., xvi. 34; Josh., vi., 26).

So, too, in these days with less religious reverence and with a finer cruelty, we rear the foundation of our industrial success upon the attenuated forms of infants and children.

Such acts of stamping out child life must not, however, be taken as typical of the attitude of Ancient Israel towards its children. The genius of Biblical custom and law, as reflected in the pages of Sacred Writ, shows a brighter side.

The attitude of mind, rather than the legal expression, the sentiment of the people, more than the compression of that sentiment into the form of compulsory enactment, is, after all, the better gauge and the truer measure of the ideals and practices for which that people stands.

What then was this attitude as reflected in Biblical thought and usage? What laws served as standards? What were the principles employed in the post-Biblical, in the Talmudic periods, and to what extent were such principles converted into laws?

Biblical Times.

The assumption that man is created in the image of his Maker, and that the children are likewise so formed, permeates the Bible. Love, affection, sympathy, devotion towards those who have come into being, is fundamental thought.

Children are desired. They are prayed for. What beautiful sen

timents cluster around the very thought of the little ones' advent; for are they not a "heritage from God"? (Ps. cxxvii., 3, 4). Abraham pleads, "What wilt Thou give me, seeing I go childless?" (Gen. xv. 2). Sarah rejoices at the thought of motherhood (Gen. xviii. 10); Isaac is entreated of his wife for children (Gen. xxiv. 21); Rachel demands children lest she die (Gen. xxx.); Hannah beseeches God to bless her (I. Sam. i.), Noah is hailed as a comforter by his parents (Gen. v. 29). The life of Jacob "is bound up with that of the lad," Benjamin (Gen. xliv. 30); he grieves over the loss of Joseph, refuses to be comforted; he will "go down mourning to the grave" (Gen. xxxvii. 5); the news that Joseph is alive revives him; he will go even into Egypt to see his son (Gen. xlv.). Esau is told by his brother, "these are the children whom God hath graciously given me” (Gen. xxxiii.); Miriam is placed by her mother to watch over the frail craft in which lies her brother (Ex. ii.); Israel refuses freedom from bondage unless the children can go (Ex. v.-r.); aye, the "crown of old men is their children's children" (Prov. xvii.); while the classic epitomes of parental affection are the heart cries of David for treacherous Absalom: "O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom; would that I had died in thy stead, O Absalom, my son, my son" (II. S. xix. 1); and the tragic figure of Rachel, weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted (Jer. xxxi. 15). The Prophets, in ecstatic vision, see the Messianic time when the streets will resound with the shouts of laughing children (Zech. viii. 5); or, "when the hearts of the fathers shall be turned to the children and the hearts of the children to the fathers" (Mal. iii. 24). Moreover, "The Lord chasteneth as a man does his son" (Deut. viii. 5); “He bore thee in the wilderness as a father carries his child" (Deut. i. 31). Nor was it only in poetic imagery that human relationship was likened to that of God towards His children.

Parental responsibility was real, even as was the obligation on the part of the child "to honor thy father and thy mother." If, on the one hand, the child was often admonished "to hear the instruction of parents and conform thereto" (Prov. i. 8; iv. 1, vi. 20), to remember that aged parents must not be despised (Prov. xxiii. 22), that to despoil the parental home brought disgrace and dishonor (Prov. xix. 26), the parent, on the other hand, was repeatedly cautioned "that a son becometh wise through correction" (Prov. xix. 18),