More than a year ago, in an effort to get at the truth of the matter of children's labor, I submitted to the Board of Health, after consultation with Dr. Felix Adler, who earned the lasting gratitude of the community by his labors on the Tenement House Commission, certain questions to be asked concerning the children by the sanitary police, then about to begin a general census of the tenements. The result was a surprise, and not least to the health officers. In the entire mass of nearly a million and a quarter of tenants[8] only two hundred and forty-nine children under fourteen years of age were found at work in living-rooms. To anyone acquainted with the ordinary aspect of tenement-house life the statement seemed preposterous, and there are valid reasons for believing that the policemen missed rather more than they found even of those that were confessedly or too evidently under age. They were seeking that which, when found, would furnish proof of law-breaking against the parent or employer, a fact of which these were fully aware. Hence their coming uniformed and in search of children into a house could scarcely fail to give those a holiday who were not big enough to be palmed off as fourteen at least. Nevertheless, upon reflection, it seemed probable that the policemen were nearer the truth than their critics. Their census took no account of the factory in the back yard, but only of the living rooms, and it was made during the day. Most of the little slaves, as of those older in years, were found in the sweater's district on the East Side, where the home work often only fairly begins after the factory has shut down for the day and the stores released their army of child-laborers. Had the policemen gone their rounds after dark they would have found a different state of things. Between the sweat-shops and the school, which, as I have shown, is made to reach farther down among the poorest in this Jewish quarter than anywhere else in this city, the children were fairly accounted for in the daytime. The record of school attendance in the district shows that forty-seven attended day-school for every one who went to night-school.