step in this direction has undoubtedly been taken by the registration order referred to. (5) _Child Labour._--Both the educational and physiological experts who have given attention to this question are agreed that two things should be done. The system of half-time, under which a child spends half the week in the factory and half in the school, is a double evil to the half-timer, as both education and health suffer from the process. In the opinion of many competent observers the system of half-time should be abolished. So long, however, as it is permitted to continue, the age of eleven which was fixed under the new Act is undoubtedly too low, taking the general level of European nations as a standard, for, after all, the work in school is to the average child as hard as work in the factory, and it is too much to demand of young children the double strain entailed by mental, nervous, and physical causes which is involved in the school and factory _régime_. The age of thirteen, at which the child passes into the “young person” stage--to use the legal expression--and obtains the privilege of working full time, may be warranted in certain trades, but it is highly desirable that the field of occupation should be differentiated, and that occupations such as the textile trades, which involve special strain upon the physique of growing children, should be regulated by a scale of age. (6) _Extension of the Factory Acts._--The Acts should be extended so as to cover the case of laundresses, who ought never to have been left out. The sanitary conditions under which vast numbers of these women work are extremely bad, the hours of work are excessively long and far above the standard set by the Factory Acts, and in steam laundries there is a quantity of machinery used without any safeguards being adopted for proper fencing, so that accidents are very frequent. The arguments used for keeping laundries outside the Acts are, that it is a more or less domestic industry, that any limitation would fall very severely on the small employer, and that the nature of the trade is such as to necessitate long working hours during the latter part of the week, when most of the work is done. Against this, however, we must set the facts that no attempt has really been made to organize the work, which could as well be spread over a longer period as crowded into a few days each week; that individual employers have successfully done so; that for the protection of the women as well as of the public, sanitary supervision is most essential; and, finally, that the health and safety of those employed are severely compromised by the conditions under which work is done at present.