The third class of societies which are at work in this field are those which deal directly with the question of child labour. It must be remembered that under the American system this is a matter which is left to the control of the separate States. Naturally there has been the greatest imaginable diversity among them. For a long time there were many that had practically no laws upon the subject, or laws so defective that they were useless. Even now the States are far from anything like harmony or equality in their child-labour laws. Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, and Wisconsin are probably in the lead in good legislation. If we may judge by the statistics of children between ten and fourteen years who are unable to read or write, Tennessee, Mississippi, the Carolinas, Louisiana, Georgia, and Alabama are in the rear. It must be remembered, also, that the number of children between ten and fifteen years employed in manufacturing pursuits in the United States increased from 1890 to 1900 more than twice as fast as the population of the country, and that the Census of 1900 gives the total of bread-winners under fifteen years of age as 1,750,000. A graphic picture of the actual condition of child labour in the United States may be found in _The Cry of the Children_, by Mrs. John Van Vorst (New York, 1908). Here is a little army--no, a vast army--of little soldiers, whose sad and silent files are full of menace for the republic. The principal forces arrayed against this perilous condition of things have been the special committees of the Women's Clubs everywhere, the Child-Labour Committees in different States, and finally the National Child-Labour Committee organized in 1904. Through their efforts there has been a great advance in legislation on the subject. In 1905, twenty-two States enacted laws regulating the employment of children. In 1906 there were six States which legislated, including Georgia and Iowa, which for the first time put a law against child labour on their statute-books. In 1907 eight States amended their laws. In the same year a national investigation of the subject was ordered by Congress under direction of the Federal Commissioner of Labour.