“If the institution hopes to make its inmates strive for better things in life it will have to set a better example. Compelling a man, after a day’s work to go into one of the little cells now provided, and sleep on a bag of straw only half wide enough, and almost as unyielding as the floor, will certainly never do it.” Yet the power of personality is felt in spite of this. The officers are all under civil service and selected only for fitness. The warden says “a more courteous, prompt and efficient lot of prison officials cannot be found in any other penitentiary in the United States.” The prisoners themselves respond to the wise treatment they receive and show it “in their willingness and ability to do the work assigned them; in their almost uniformly kind and courteous treatment of the officers; in the absence of any destruction of prison property; in the few punishments and in their general cheerfulness and obedience.” Kansas ought to give a good warden a good prison with plenty of land about it. CHILD LABOR AND POVERTY A. J. McKELWAY Child labor is even more a cause than an effect of poverty. This was the point emphasized at the ninth annual conference of the National Child Labor Committee, which was recently held at Jacksonville, Fla. The meeting Was characterized by fearless and frank descriptions of conditions in the different states and especially in the South. Apology and defence, based on a comparison of child labor conditions from the sectional point of view, found no place at the conference. Delegates from the North and from the South vied in acknowledging the shame of a common sin. The other distinctive note was that co-operation among all classes of social workers is needed to gain this reform. This note was sounded in a strong resolution which called upon many national organizations to supply not only the active sympathy of their membership but special investigations of child labor conditions from the different points of view which these organizations have taken in their respective spheres of work. Mention was particularly made of the National Education Association, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Medicine, the National Association for the Prevention of Tuberculosis, the American Red Cross, the American Bar Association, the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, the National Council of Jewish Women, the Social Service Commission of the Federation of Churches, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Conference of Catholic Charities, the National Conference of Charities and Correction, the American Association for Labor Legislation, and the American Federation of Labor. Finally, since the child-employing industries, while forming only a small percentage of industrial establishments, have brought the reproach of child labor upon American industry itself, the National Manufacturers’ Association was also mentioned.