The doctor's observations throw a bright side-light upon the economic home conditions that lie at the root of this problem of child labor in the factories. With that I have not done. Taking the Factory Inspector's report for 1890, the last at that time available, I found that in that year his deputies got around to 2,147 of the 11,000 workshops (the number given in the report) in the Second district, which is that portion of New York south of Twenty-third Street. In other words, they visited less than one-fifth of them all. They found 1,102 boys and 1,954 girls under sixteen at work; 3,485 boys under eighteen, and 12,701 girls under twenty-one, as nearly as I could make the footings. The figures alone are instructive, as showing the preponderance of girls in the shops. The report, speaking of the State as a whole, congratulates the community upon the alleged fact "that the policy of employing very young children in manufactories has been practically abolished." It states that "since the enactment of the law the sentiment among employers has become nearly unanimous in favor of its stringent enforcement," and that it "has had the further important effect of preventing newly arrived non-English speaking foreigners from forcing their children into factories before they learned the language of the country," these being "now compelled to send their children to school, for a time at least, until they can qualify under the law." Further, "the system of requiring sworn certificates, giving the name, date, and place of birth of all children under sixteen years of age ... has resulted in causing parents to be very cautious about making untrue statements of the ages of their children." The deputies "are aware of the various subterfuges which have been tried in order to evade the law and put children at labor before the legal time," and the Factory Inspector is "happy to say that they are not often imposed upon by such tactics." Without wading through nearly seventy pages of small print it was not possible to glean from the report how many of the "under sixteen" workers were really under fourteen, or so adjudged. A summary of what has been accomplished since 1886 showed that 1,614 children under fourteen were discharged by the Inspector in the Second District in that time, and that 415 were discharged because they could not read or write simple sentences in the English language. The "number of working children who could not read and write English" was in 1890 alone 252, according to the report, or more than one-half of the whole number discharged in the four years, which does not look as if the law had had much effect in that way, at least in New York city. I determined to see for myself what were the facts.