_New Jersey._ State board of education sent out a circular letter to superintendents and principals in which it was stated that credit towards graduation might be given in place of school work during the time a pupil was actually engaged in farm work as a member of the Junior Industrial Army, or while called out in the service of the state or of the nation as a member of its organized military forces. (Boys and girls over fourteen years of age are allowed to enroll in the Industrial Army in the agricultural or home-garden or the girls' service division.) Possibly no great harm was done by the action of these state officials and state boards. Yet the action affords food for thought; and perhaps the best way to bring about reflection is to pass immediately, without comment, to a quotation taken from the London _Times_ of July 19, 1917,--a quotation which gives a picture of the end of the road on which some of us in this country started in the spring of 1917. The reply, last week, of Herbert A. L. Fisher, Minister of Education, to a deputation of the Committee on Wage-earning Children was sympathetic and not merely a common-form shelving of the issue. The deputation asked for legislation restricting the labor of school children out of school hours. The extent of the evil was indicated by the deputation, but it is doubtful if even the educational public know how widespread and deleterious it is. On October 5, 1915, we pointed out that nearly half a million children between the ages of 12 and 14 years were receiving no education, or no education worth having, and that all of these were at work which led nowhither at the very age when their moral and physical development was at stake. Since then the conditions which we condemned have passed from bad to worse. Many thousands of children under the age of 12, under the ages of even 10 and 11, are at work, and willingly at work, since the younger the child, the more readily it responds to the demand for helpfulness. Mr. Fisher cannot but realize the evil of this exploitation of young children by parents and tradesmen. It is an evil affecting not only the efficiency of school life but our whole economic system. There never was an economic need for this child labor, and the Board of Education admitted in their circular to local authorities last week that there is no economic need in rural districts for such labor even now. This circular was a letter from the National Service Department and dealt with the pressure on education authorities in rural areas to release boys and girls under 12 for service on the land. The letter definitely states that, in view of the labor released from the army and the number of women now available, "it would appear that there should be no necessity for such a serious