_The Nature of Guardianship._--The purpose of guardianship is to provide minors with the equivalent of parents. A guardian is appointed for a minor when the latter is not subjected to any parental authority; or when, although the minor has parents, these are unfitted, through lack of means or through defect of personal character, to make a proper use of their parental authority. The analogy between parental authority and guardianship should result in the guardian, in his care for the person and property of the ward, being invested with almost the same duties and rights as belong to the possessor of parental authority. But since the relationship between ward and guardian is less intimate than the relationship between a child and its parents, the guardian’s sphere of activity is naturally a more restricted one. For example, in respect of certain very important undertakings, outside the limits of the guardian’s usual sphere of administrative activity, the latter’s powers are restricted by the qualification that in such cases the undertaking is rendered valid only with the prior assent of the Board of Guardianship (see footnote to p. 74). _Guardianship of Poor Children._--The principal aim of guardianship to-day is to provide for the careful administration of the property of the ward, and it thus has no bearing upon the fate of orphans of the proletarian class, although these are really more in need of guardianship than orphan children belonging to the upper classes. The only “property” of the proletarian child, whether orphaned or not, is its power of working for wages. The adequate cultivation and utilisation of this power is more important to the proletarian child than the right administration of its property is to the child of the well-to-do. Although, as a rule, the proletarian child begins to work for wages while still under age, our existing legal systems make no provision for guardians and the Board of Guardianship to exercise much influence upon the working conditions of such children. It is owing to this defect in our laws that the exploitation of the labour-power of minors is so widely prevalent. To obviate these disadvantages, the following institutions are necessary, although they would temporarily interfere with social intercourse. Contracts of service in the case of minors should not be valid without the assent of the latter’s legal representatives and that of the Board of Guardianship, and such contracts should be terminable at any time by the legal representative with the approval of the Board of Guardianship. Should the parents of a child secretly arrange for it a contract of service, or should they compel the child to work for wages, they should have no legal claim to any portion of these wages. Where such measures are in operation, as in some of the States of the American Union, children are much less frequently compelled by their parents to work for wages.