Many years ago Macaulay declared, "Intense labor, beginning too early in life, continued too long every day, stunting the growth of the mind, leaving no time for healthful exercise, no time for intellectual culture, must impair all those high qualities that have made our country great. Your overworked boys will become a feeble and ignoble race of men, the parents of a more feeble progeny; nor will it be long before the deterioration of the laborer will injuriously affect those very interests to which his physical and moral interests have been sacrificed. If ever we are forced to yield the foremost place among commercial nations, we shall yield it to some people preëminently vigorous in body and in mind." To-day these words seem to us a veritable prophecy--but we must not forget that they apply to America no less than to England. If our civilization is to continue and to improve with time, every child must have a proper opportunity to grow under conditions as nearly normal as possible; we must secure to the children their birthright--the right to play and to dream, the right to healthful sleep, the right to education and training, the right to grow into manhood and into womanhood with cleanness and strength both of body and of mind, the right of a chance to become useful citizens of the future. Eternal vigilance is the price of protection for childhood, and while "Women and children first" is a rigid law of the sea, "Children first" is the fundamental law both of Nature and civilization. FOOTNOTES: [1] Wisconsin Statutes, Section 1728 p., Laws of 1911. [2] Report of Interdepartmental Committee on the Employment of Children during School Age in Ireland, 1902, Minutes of Evidence, Q. 71. Cf. also Great Britain--Employment of Children Act, 1903, Section 13. [3] _The Newsboy_, Pittsburgh, April, 1909. [4] Great Britain--Report of Interdepartmental Committee on Employment of School Children, 1901, pp. 18, 19. [5] Scott Nearing, "The Newsboy at Night in Philadelphia," _Charities and The Commons_, February 2, 1906. [6] "The Child in the City," Handbook of Chicago Child Welfare Exhibit, 1911, p. 25. [7] "A Plea to Take the Small Boy and Girl from the City Streets," a folder issued by Chicago Board of Education and a committee representing local organizations, 1911. [8] Pamphlet 114 of National Child Labor Committee, p. 8. [9] Elizabeth C. Watson, "New York Newsboys and their Work," 1911. [10] _The Survey_, April 22, 1911, p. 138. [11] "Studies of Boy Life in Our Cities (England)," edited by E. J. Urwick, 1904, p. 296. [12] Report of Interdepartmental Committee on the Employment of Children during School Age in Ireland, 1902, p. vii. [13] Twelfth Census of United States, Vol. II, Population, Part II, p. 506. [14] Twelfth Census of United States, Special Reports, Occupations, 1904, pp. xxiv, cxxxiii. [15] _Idem_, pp. xxiii, cxxxiii.