The employer or boss of a little shop, who is so nervous in wrongdoing, so anxious to bribe, is but a helpless agent in the hands of a greater boss. He is no foul oppressor of his fellow man. The great clothing concerns in Broadway and elsewhere are his superiors. What they give, he pays, barring a small profit to himself. If these people are compelled by law to work less or under more expensive conditions, they must receive more or starve, and the great manufactories cannot let them actually starve. They come as near to it now as ever, but they will pay what is absolutely essential to keep them alive; hence we see the value of the law. To grow and succeed here, though, is something very different. Working, as these people do, they have very little time for education. The great struggle is for bread, and unless the families are closely watched, children are constantly sent to work before they are twelve. I was present in one necktie factory once where five of its employees were ordered out for being without proof that they were fourteen years of age. I have personally seen shops, up to a dozen, inspected in one morning, and some struggling little underling ordered out from each. “For why you come home?” is the puzzled inquiry of the parents at night. “Da police maka me.” Down here, and all through this peculiar world, the police are everything. They regulate the conduct, adjudicate the quarrels, interfere with the evil-doers. The terror of them keeps many a child studying in the school-room where otherwise it would be toiling in the chamber at home or the shop outside. Still the struggle is against them, and most of them grow up without any of those advantages so common to others. At the same time, there are many institutions established to reach these people. One sees Hebrew and Legal Aid Societies in large and imposing buildings. Outdoor recreation leagues, city playgrounds, schools, and university settlements--all are here; and yet the percentage of opportunity is not large. Parents have to struggle too hard. Their ignorant influence upon the lives of the young ones is too great. I know a lawyer, though, of considerable local prestige, who has worked his way out of these conditions; and Broadway from Thirty-fourth Street south, to say nothing of many other streets, is lined with the signs of those who have overcome the money difficulty of lives begun under these conditions. Unfortunately the money problem, once solved, is not the only thing in the world. Their lives, although they reach to the place where they have gold signs, automobiles and considerable private pleasures, are none the more beautiful. Too often, because of these early conditions, they remain warped, oppressive, greedy and distorted in every worthy mental sense by the great fight they have made to get their money.