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Taking up a further consideration of some of the things that may tend to prevent your boy or girl from becoming a delinquent, let me ask you frankly if you know your boy or girl; let me ask if you give any part of your day to a study of the characteristics of the child or children God has entrusted to your care. A child is a problem and each child is a problem of itself. The disposition of each child should be studied carefully, so that you may know the better what the particular child may need in the way of correction and discipline. Devote some of your time to this study, my friends, and see what the child is craving for most, learn to make the evenings

sale of literature, but, until such time comes, watch and know what your children are reading. Make it your business to read what comes into their hands and direct them in such a way that they will want only the best and most uplifting. Place within their reach such literature as will tend toward making good citizens of them. You may give your boy or girl the best of companionship; but ruin their lives by letting them read some of the trashy literature sold over the counter today. A book, a paper, a magazine is just as sure to affect the future life of your boy or girl as any other compan'on they may have. And I want to impress on you that the class of

such as to interest the child; make yourself a chum in every sense of the word. You are responsible not only for that child's babyhood, not only for his boyhood and his young manhood; but what you do or fail to do, may mean his ruin or salvation in after life.

I believe that I have read somewhere in the Good Book, "What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul." And how naturally it follows: "What doth it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and his boy or girl goes wrong."

You can sum it all up, you can look at it from every viewpoint, and you have got to admit that your ultimate success in life is going to be gaged by the character of the boys and girls you leave behind you.

Another very important matter, vitally affecting the lives of your boys and girls is the class of literature coming into their hands.

There should be some way of regulating the

literature your boy or girl should read is not to be gaged by the fancy cover, nor the price thereof. Unfortunately some of the most trashy and suggestive literature is sold in well put up books and magazines. Possibly some of you have seen the statement that no person had ever been known to become truly great who had devoted their time under the age of twenty-five years to the reading of novels. And also the statement that unless one cultivated the habit of reading facts before arriving at the age of twenty-five, they would not be likely to form that habit afterward. Think this over, my friends, and I believe you will find that you have to agree with the same. There is nothing to prevent one relaxing by the reading of a novel once in a while; but, as has been so well said, with so many good things, including history, etc., why should one waste their time on the imagination of some other person; for that is what most of the lighter fiction is. The brain is far more impressionable under

twenty-five years of age than later in life, and the good things we store away then, we can enjoy without effort later on. Another thought along this same line is one which I have so often heard: That anyone devoting fifteen minutes a day to the study of one subject will, within twenty years, be a master of that subject, an expert in that line. Therefore, any boy or girl who will take this thought seriously and devote fifteen minut ́s every day to the study of some subject need have no fear for the future. I do not mean the slip-shod reading of some subject for fifteen minutes, but the mastering of the thought which you do read, the making it your own, being able to determine wherein the author can be improved upon. Other subjects should not be negl cted, if we desire to get the true enjoyment out of life. This ought to impress on you how important the reading of your children should be to you.

Even the pictures you have on the walls of your home have an influence on the life of your child. See to it that this influence is of the right kind. Have pictures that mean something and see that your children understand the meaning. If you cannot afford anything else, you can get prints of the better class of pictures.

Idleness is a great contributor to the delinquency of the day. Loafing around on street corners, wasting their time, wasting the faculties which the Great and Good God gave them to improve themselves with. They may think it is fun, but I want to tell you that no idle man ever gets the enjoyment therefrom, which the man gets who is working and earning his living and supporting himself and family. If the man who works for a living takes a day off, he feels that he has earned that day; that it belongs to him. Man was made by his Creator to earn his living by the sweat of his brow. Think of the precious moments so many boys and girls are wasting and ask them how many of their companions would care or be willing to take care of them in case of sickness. See that they stay off the street at night. Get them to devote the evening to improving their minds, to working out some problem which may the better enable them to enjoy the day to come. Devote it to taking the rest which is necessary to the proper doing of the work of the day to come. Mankind cannot work night and day, but you would think from the way in which some young people work during the day and then loaf on the streets and frolic at night, that they thought there was no limit to their strength. No human being can stand it and they will have to pay for it some

time. Warn them to be careful of the strength which a good God gave them and of the time he has allotted them to remain in this world and urge them not to waste either.

Shield them from that class who take delight in telling stories with a double meaning, or with a meaning that cannot help but degrade. Many of the people who tell that class of stories do not stop to realize the harm they are doing. They will tell you that they are careful to tell them only in the presence of grown people. They will tell you that if the mind is clean, it will see no harm in the story. This story passes on down from that older crowd to one still younger, until finally, if you will stand on the street corner, or in your school yards, you will find it being repeated by the mere youth. Finally, even the mere child hears it. Its little mind may not notice it at first, but it is receptive and we do not always know what the result may be. There is no excuse for the telling of these stories by anyone; and, if those who told and carried these stories could only realize that the telling of it might result in just one boy or girl going wrong, I do not believe you would hear a story of that kind told again in this world. Who wants to be responsible in the next world for a single boy or girl having gone wrong? Who is there would gather their own children around their knee at the fireside and try and bring forth a laugh by the telling of such stories? Realize, my friends, that the story told today may be repeated later by someone else to those very boys and girls.

In my humble opinion, one of the greatest causes contributing toward delinquency today is the lack of recognition of authority. And in this lack of recognition of authority, one of the greatest elements is a lack of recognition of our responsibility to God. Are you moulding your lives on the law of God, or are you moulding them on the laws of mankind? Laws passed to suit the convenience of mankind, because they do not feel able or willing to live up to the law of God. To make clear to you what I mean, let me call your attention to just one of the commandments of God, which is as follows: "Thou shalt not steal." How many add to that "unless you can keep from paying for it for a period of six years." If more than six years has elapsed, so that the debt is outlawed by the law of mankind, they seem to consider themselves absolved from payment. They try to justify themselves under the law of mankind. Or, if they can go through bankruptcy and thus wipe out all of their indebtedness, they do not seem to feel that there is any moral obligation to repay, if they are ever

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able to do so. They again justify themselves by the law of mankind. What I want you to understand is that it does not take the boy or girl long to discover whether your ideals are high or low, strong or indifferent; whether you are basing your lives on your responsibility to God, or the laws of mankind. It may be necessary for a man, in order to get a new start in life, to go through bankruptcy and be relieved of his indebtedness, but that does not relieve the moral obligation to make payment when he can do so. If you want your boys and girls to become noble men and women, teach them the dearest lesson in their whole lives, their responsibility to God; and there is only one way to do that, and that is to mould your own life along that same idealistic line.

A short time ago in a neighboring State, a dastardly crime was committed, and one of the dispatches a few days later came out with the statement, in referring to the crime: "Every church in the city was packed yesterday." How many have or would stop to consider from that dispatch that it must have been unusual for every church to be packed on Sunday. If it was the usual thing, it would have passed unnoticed. Also, my dear friends, if every church had been packed every Sunday, that nameless crime would never have been committed.

Along that same line with the idea of authority and closely allied with it is the feeling prevalent everywhere today of criticising everything and everybody. Criticism is all right in its place, but you should be careful that you are not doing an injustice by your criticism. Who are you and how free are you from mistake or fault that you have a right to criticise others? Be sure that you are in the right; be sure that you know all the facts; be not too ready to rely on someone else; and when you have all the facts in your possession, then exercise charity and keep it to yourself. If you have fallen into the habit of criticising, try and break yourself of it; and, at least, do not let your children form the habit. Teach them to respect authority, both the authority of their Government and of their God, and they will be the more likely to respect the authority which you should have over them.

I have run across so much of this indifference to religion in my work while I was Juvenile Judge that I want to impress this growing indifference on you today. When asked what church they attended, invariably the answer was that they did not attend any. The same was true in the answer of the parent. Cut off your allegiance to your God, and you have only the idividual

conscience to dictate what is right and what is wrong. What is such an individual going to take for the basis of his conduct? Some may take high ideals and some may take low. Are you going to base your conscience on the law of the land? If so, have you stopped to consider that the law of the land may deteriorate as the indifference to religion grows, until even those who profess no religion may stand aghast. No country can be better than its people and no people can continue to grow in moral standards who fail to profess and live up to some religion. The boy or girl who has no religious or moral training has not the backbone necessary to contend against the temptations which are continually confronting the inhabitants of this world. A parent may tell me that neither they nor their children profess any religion and their boys and girls are leading the best of lives. I grant it; but the probability is that that same parent had a mother who deeply impressed her religious principles upon them and they have unconsciously imbedded these same principles in the lives of their children. There are exceptions to every rule; but this exception does not prove that one can get along without religion. I am not here to dictate your religious belief, but I do want to impress on you that you should practice the religion you stand for, not only on Sunday, but on every day of the week. Make the younger generation realize that it is something to be proud of. Make them realize and know their responsibility to their God. Make them realize and know a responsibility beyond the grave. Any boy or girl who is not familiar with the ten commandments, and with the Great and Loving God who gave them to us, is missing some of the true enjoyment of this life is missing the only true enjoyment of serving a Kind and Loving Master; and it is only by service to this Master, and teaching your boys and girls the meaning of service to this Master that you can prevent delinquency.

You may think that I am talking religion. I am, for one cannot talk on the prevention of delinquency without talking religion; and I want to tell you that a man who believes in God and lives up to His teaching will be a good citizen; whereas, one who sets up his own standards may go wrong. Any and every one living up to and obeying the ten commandments, need have no fear of breaking the law of the land. If you give unto God the things that are God's, you can give unto Caesar, which means any Government, the things which are Caesar's.

(To be Continued in April Issue)

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OTH good and bad records for child wel

fare legislation were established by the various states in 1916-1917, according to the November "Child Labor Bulletin," containing the Thirteenth Annual Report of the general secretary of the National Child Labor Committee. Among the states which weakened their laws were four (Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont) which gave to some official or commission the power to relax the child labor laws of the state during the war, and two states (New York and California) which authorized a similar relaxation of their compulsory education laws. Among the eleven states which strengthened their child labor laws are Delaware, Illinois, Kansas and Texas where entirely new laws were enacted, and Wisconsin, which added domestic service to the list of occupations for which work permits are required. Compulsory education laws were improved in six states and mothers' pension laws were enacted for the first time in Arkansas, Delaware, Maine and Texas, and amended in ten other states, making a total of thirty-four states which now have mothers' pension laws.

In outlining the work for the next year, Owen R. Lovejoy, secretary of the National Child Labor Committee, says, "As standards of child labor legislation rise in the different states, it becomes increasingly evident that further steps for the protection of children against exploitation must be taken in closer co-operation with other measures for the welfare of children. The problem of safeguarding the child is one which involves consideration of health, education, recreation, and general wellbalanced training for useful service to the community. We believe it is the duty of this Committee to seek a closer co-operation than has been possible heretofore in developing legislation that shall safeguard children in all these respects so that legislation may be built up as a consistent whole expressed in some clear code easily understood by all the citizens of any commonwealth."

In addition to the Annual Report of the National Child Labor Committee the November "Child Labor Bulletin" contains a study of "Child Labor and Juvenile Delinquency in Manhattan," by Mabel Brown Ellis, the National Child Labor Committec's Special Agent on Juvenile Courts. The records of 1,792 children, who passed through the Children's Court in New York in 1916, were studied by Miss Ellis to find out whether there is greater tendency to delinquency among employed or unemployed children. The popular feeling is that the child who is not employed is more likely to get into mischief than the employed child, but Miss Ellis found quite the opposite to be the case--that working children contributed four times their share to the ranks of juvenile delinquency. They are also responsible for a larger proportion of serious offenses than the non-working children. "Among the recidivists, or repeating offenders," says Miss Ellis, "both the absolute and relative numbers of workers are very much in excess of the unemployed." In an effort to account for the poor showing of the working children, material was gathered showing the age, amount of schooling, nationality and home conditions of these children, as compared with unemployed children. In every case it was found that conditions were about the same for the two groups that the working children had as much education, as intelligent parents, and as good homes as the non-working children. "It is hard to avoid the conclusion," says Miss Ellis, “that the mere fact of being at work, irrespective of occupation, was a more potent factor than age or family conditions in bringing these boys before the Children's Court."

In her recommendations Miss Ellis urges better enforcement of child labor and compulsory education laws, the establishment of more special schools for the retarded boy who is not mentally defective, and vocational guidance of children who are of the legal age for employment and are mentally and physically fit to go to work.