On February 8, President Roosevelt sent a telegram to the Speaker of the California assembly giving the Government's views on the pending bills. "The policy agreed to by both governments," he said, "aims at mutuality of obligation and behavior. In accordance with it the purpose is that the Japanese shall come here exactly as Americans go to Japan, which is in effect that travellers, students, persons engaged in international business, men who sojourn for pleasure or study, and the like, shall have the freest access from one country to the other, and shall be sure of the best treatment, but that there shall be no settlement in mass by the people of either country in the other." While there is nothing in the Constitution or laws to prevent the President from urging a State legislature to vote for or against certain pending bills, such a course is unusual. It had become a national question, however, and the President's energy in handling the problem is worthy of praise. According to the census of 1900, there were over 700,000 children under sixteen years of age at work in the mills, mines, factories, and sweat-shops of the United States. Nearly all of the States had child-labor laws, but they were ordinarily poorly enforced and no State was wholly free from the blight of this child slavery. While fourteen years was the minimum in most of the States, a few permitted the employment of children of ten years of age. In the majority of cases there was no legal closing hour after which children might not be employed. [Illustration] Cotton-mill operatives so small that in order to reach their work they have to stand upon the machinery. [Illustration: About thirty children, age 10 to 15.] The spinning-room overseer and his flock in a Mississippi cotton-mill.