In our educational movements, we early opened Night-schools for the poor children. During the winter of 1870-71, we had some eleven in operation, reaching a most interesting class of children--those working hard from eight to ten hours a day, and then coming with passionate eagerness for schooling in the evening. The experience gained in these schools still further developed the fact, already known to us, of the great numbers of children of tender years in New York employed in factories, shops, trades, and other regular occupations. A child put at hard work in this way, is, as is well known, stunted in growth or enfeebled in health. He fails also to get what is considered as indispensable in this country for the safety of the State, a common-school education. He grows up weak in body and ignorant or untrained in mind. The parent or relative wants his wages, and insists on his laboring in a factory when he ought to be in an infant-school. The employer is in the habit of getting labor where he can find it, and does not much consider whether he is allowing his little _employes_ the time and leisure sufficient for preparing themselves for life. He excuses himself, too, by the plea that the child would be half-starved or thrown on the Poor-house but for this employment. The universal experience is, that neither the benevolence of the manufacturer nor the conscience of the parent will prevent the steady employment of children of tender years in factory work, provided sufficient wages be offered. Probably, if the employer were approached by a reasonable person, and it was represented what a wrong he was doing to so young a laborer, or the parent were warned of his responsibility to educate a child he had brought into the world, they would both agree to the reasonableness of the position, and attempt to reform their ways. But the necessities of capital on the one side, and the wants of poverty on the other, soon put the children again at the loom, the machine, and the bench, and the result is--masses of little ones, bent and wan with early trial, and growing up mere machines of labor. England has found the evil terrible, and, during the past ten or fifteen years, has been legislating incessantly against it; protecting helpless infancy from the tyranny of capital and the greed of poverty, and securing a fair growth of body and mind for the children of the laboring poor. There is something extremely touching in these Night-schools, in the eagerness of the needy boys and girls who have been toiling all day, to pick up a morsel of knowledge or gain a practical mental accomplishment. Their occupations are legion. The following are extracts from a recent report of one of our visitors on this subject. At the Crosby-street School, he says:--