ffirm the fundamental principles of democracy, the right to freedom of thought, are till regarded with suspicion. The creation of a machinery of destruction for earth, ea, and air more terrible than any yet devised goes on apace. Gigantic appropriations re being voted for imperial projects beyond the dreams of any nation in history. The oor are being bled by burdens of taxation to foot the bills. Almost the entire levy federal taxation is for the support of our military and naval establishments. We e still innocent enough to trust our political leaders and the lords of the market place. ut we venture to believe that enough of common sense and enough of courage are nerating not only among our humble populace but also among the leaders of business terprise, to take successful issue in the near future and permit coming generations to ɔk back upon this decade as the birthday of a new world. This seems apparent not only in America, but in Egypt and Palestine and Ireland, Czecho Slovakia, in Poland, in Russia, in China and India, and among the Latin oples of the Western world. During this period certain radical departures have been developed among our own ople. We have seen the emergence into political existence of half of our population— haps the better half. Henceforth the women of our nation must be reckoned with 'acing our national destinies. A rebirth of democracy and a new faith in community iative have taken place. We have seen the most successful business enterprise, perhaps the most gigantic— business of coining profit from the appetites of weak men-put under the ban. The ate business interests of the country have already begun to record their approval of destruction of an institution which was both the lying-in ward of the intemperate the rendezvous of the political trickster. It is already beginning to appear that the blem of the family, as viewed by the social worker, is simplified by the purchase of hing and food instead of stimulants, and while it is too early to record sweeping conions, relief agencies do not hesitate to testify that a trend toward national sobriety arked and full of promise. And this in spite of widespread lawlessness due in part, loubt, to what many regard as a too drastic application of the law itself. ness. The housing of the people, once regarded as the hobby of social reformers, is becomthe recognized duty of a self-respecting nation, and the United States Chamber of merce is an example of those agencies that have espoused the cause as a matter of This is not to say the problem has been solved. We are not so sanguine. the charity organization society and the settlement worker and the district nurse nger carry the burden alone. The recognition of a national duty to see that people the a decent place to live is the first essential to a solution of the problem. The er as of the and H We have seen serious attention given to the problem of a living wage, not its realion but practical attempts to find out how it can be written into the program of indusenterprise as a substantial asset of prosperity, not a liability against it. In state state attempts are being made to fix a minimum below which industry shall not lowed to enlist the efforts of human beings. The problem is complicated and the ssity for standards more urgent than ever by the tremendous increase in the number men entering industry. We have seen an epidemic of unemployment. Men able-bodied and eager have ed our streets and ridden our bumpers in search of work. We halt and stagger in diling with the problem but at least we no longer ignore it. We have nailed a card Thar front door announcing that the infection is in the home, and that is something. Confession precedes correction and the labor-atories of industry are busy isolating the germ of enforced idleness to find the cure. We have passed or perhaps are still passing through a tragic financial panic but we no longer regard this as an act of God. We acknowledge our own responsibility and that is the necessary prelude to a serious attempt to avert such disasters in the future. We have seen child labor lifted from the debates of the woman's club and the protest of the poets and set forth as a national responsibility. A whole people recognizes that the system injures, not so much the children involved, as the nation itself. It is a game in which everyone loses. Efforts to cure the evil have commanded the attention of our national lawmakers and two abortive efforts have been made to administer a national treatment. Where such unanimity of opinion is generated one would be bound to see that the work will not be abandoned until every child shall be privileged to realise what our orators have so long and so vacantly claimed for him, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And we shall achieve this even if its realization should scrap one of our most valued political traditions. We shall all learn in detail what progress has been made in any of these fields of social endeavor. We shall hear from those well qualified to speak on the basis of personal experience. We shall see also wherein we have failed; we shall be humbled by the meagerness of our accomplishment and goaded to a quickened endeavor. But the conviction that man, being alive is bound to grow makes us bold to declare that in spite of the reactionary forces which still bird us to the past and the self-interest that still works to disintegrate we are headed forward and we shall see or at least pass on to posfecity the possibility of seeing how a nation can actually house and feed and dothe itself without destroying any of its people or any other people in the process. ་ dwellings. Consequently "tenement house reform” has gone and in its place we have "better housing." Under this slogan we made very creditable progress in improving housing conditions up to the outbreak of the world-war. And during the last year or two of this period we began our fourth step, a step which, after the interruption of the war, we are now completing. We devised or adopted and adapted zoning. The step from tenement house reform to housing betterment was a very real one. It not only widened the field many times, but it quite changed our attitude toward certain things which had become accepted as axioms. Tenement house legislation had made a breach in the citadel of "Every man's house is his castle," erected centuries ago and in the Old World to protect the commoner against the tyranny of king and noble and maintained long after its real purpose was ended as a stronghold from which private greed launched attacks upon the public welfare. But the breach was not wide. Housng betterment captured the citadel and exacted terms according to which the castle cannot be constructed or maintained in a manner hostile to the public interest. But housing betterment still dealt with houses individually. It set up standards vhich apply to each individual house in the community. These standards necessarily re low because they must take in every dwelling without exception. Something more vas needed, and zoning supplied the something more. Zoning again marked a very real step forward, for it not only applies to large numers of dwellings in terms of the districts they occupy, instead of house by house, but also establishes the right of a community to divide itself into different classes of disicts and make different regulations for each class. This was something that housing etterment never attempted and as a result it could secure no better standards in new, ndeveloped sections of a city than were practicable in the oldest and most densely uilt sections. Zoning then has opened a new avenue of progress and so made our pace ster than was possible under old conditions. Moreover one of the three divisions of >ning regulation, area, deals with the fundamental of good housing, i.e., adequate open ace about the dwelling. And as zoning may apply different standards in different asses of districts, it can and does secure far more nearly adequate open spaces in the yet unspoiled districts than housing could. The second of the three divisions of ning regulation, height, is of only second importance to housing. Housing, by posing minimum standards for light, air, sanitation, and maintenance, has an apprecile effect in encouraging the erection of one-family dwellings rather than multi-family wellings. Height regulations under zoning, supplementing area regulations, still rther encourages the one-family house. Even the third division of zoning regulation, e, is proving of very direct and practical assistance to housing by protecting residence tricts against business and industry and so stabilizing the value of investment in od housing property. Zoning, coming as it did just before the war, was providentially opportune. The w York zoning ordinance attracted national attention and many other cities apnted committees or commissions to show them how they might share in the promised efits. Then came the war and temporarily housing slid back, far down the hard d it had climbed. Except for the bright spots around the federal government's r-worker villages, it was a time of general gloom during which housing workers had to iggle as best they might to retain some part of what they had gained. The construcof new houses sank to an unprecedentedly small number and people were forced to accept what accommodations they could. Repairs and maintenance charges almost disappeared from the account books of owners. So when we emerged from the war we were underhoused as we had not been since the years immediately following the Civil War, and a large proportion of our houses were in a very run-down condition. Because of the shortage of dwellings and the increased cost of building and repairs, rents and sales prices rose. Everyone looked forward to the end of the war as immediately ushering in a period of normalcy with a great increase of house construction to make good the shortage and a consequent lowering of rents and sales prices. What everyone expects is very likely to take place for a short time, until it runs into economic facts which have been disregarded in formulating the expectation. We knew there was a great shortage and that house prices were high according to pre-war levels. But we did not take into account the many other shortages all of which had a bearing on house building. We started off gaily in the spring of 1919 to make up for preceding years. Then suddenly we hesitated, then we paused, then we slumped. Prices instead of declining, rose and kept rising to the peak of 1920. Instead of making good on the housing shortage of 1917 and 1918, we added to it in 1919, 1920, and 1921. Only during this year of 1922 is there prospect that we shall build more new dwellings than are necessary to care for the current increase of need, i.e., begin to cut down on the accumulated shortage. Of course, the situation is not the same in all American cities. In some the shortage never has been as great as it has been in others. In some building operations have gone ahead more steadily than they have in others. The shortage for the country as a whole is today estimated as somewhat over two and half years' production. In some cities the shortage is estimated at nearly four years. In others, at approximately one and a half years, or even less. This means that many thousands of American families are still living in cramped quarters, well-to-do families as well as poor. More significant, it means that a considerable proportion of these families are becoming accustomed to this cramped living, accepting it as normal. I have heard of an admiral of our navy who with his wife and two sisters occupies three rooms in an expensive apartment house and has his meals prepared on an ingenious little electric stove in the hall, of a comparatively well-to-do woman who occupies one room and bath and has her laundry washed in the bathroom. When one goes from such people to the poor, he finds the old overcrowding accentuated and insanitary conditions worse than they were before the war. Up to the fall of 1921 or the beginning of 1922 housing conditions, as alread intimated, were, with one very important exception, growing worse. Now, however. the tide has turned and though we cannot expect house building to continue long at its present speed, we may hope that it will continue to exceed current increase of need and so gradually reduce the shortage. Coincidentally we may expect that building prices will come down, not steadily-just at present they are rising from the lower level of the winter-but with occasional flats and ascents. This means that we mane for dwellings produced and sold at smaller cost and so put within the means larger proportion of the people until the day comes when the old process started from poorer houses to better houses and so make available to means the old but adequate houses that are still habitable. At pres between the expensive houses under construction and the dwelling wage earner. At present and for some years in the future, so far as we t tly will be little or no building of new dwellings, at least in the East, for unskilled wage earners. Desire for such dwellings is likely to expose us to an insidious danger: the attempt to cheapen construction by diminishing the space put at a family's disposal or by encouraging shoddy construction. We must stand firmly for good minimum standards in house building, adequate size of rooms and number of rooms, adequate open spaces, honest construction, even though this prolongs the overcrowding of existing houses. With these standards maintained we shall gradually bring prices down through more efficient operation until we have enough good houses for all. The short cut of shoddy construction which has been and still is to a lesser degree, one of our greatest menaces. promises to offer earlier relief, but at a cost which our children and grandchildren will not pay. The short cut of diminished space has amply proved its fallacy in tenements of New York. Its ultimate results will be higher rents for a population so crowded together that it cannot live, but will merely exist. The important exception to the backward process which ceased and became progress only a few months ago, is the extension of zoning regulation in the United States. Begun just before the war, zoning gripped our imagination and as soon as peace returned American cities began to apply it. Today some sixty cities have or are drafting zoning regulations. Because of these zoning regulations they are keeping in their residence districts the open spaces which are the fundamental of good housing. Zoning is to housing an ally who has delivered a very effective flank attack at a time when frontal attacks were practically impossible. Now, however, conditions are changing and it is possible that frontal attacks will soon again become practicable. PROGRESS IN STANDARDS OF CHILD LABOR LEGISLATION Raymond G. Fuller, Director of Publicity, National Child The committee on Standards of Living and Labor of the National Conference of cial Work, in 1912 included in its report the following standards relating to child #or: first, prohibition of all wage earning occupations for children under sixteen years; ond, no minor under eighteen years to be employed in any dangerous occupations or in upations which involve danger through fellow-workmen, or require use of explosives, sonous gases, or other injurious ingredients; third, night work entirely prohibited for ors; fourth, an eight-hour day and six-day week for minors; fifth, factory production be carried on in factories, this, of course, meaning the elimination of tenement home-k, in which child labor plays so large a part. None of these standards, in so sweeping a form, has been reached in the statutes of state. They were, and still are, pretty high standards, measured from the standit of accomplishment. Nevertheless, in the last ten years, there have been great s in the direction in which they point. Moreover, though the Committee on dards of Living and Labor did not attempt a comprehensive statement of child r standards, it may still be appropriate to say that great progress has been made 1912 in the extension and improvement of child labor standards as standards. In year the Uniform Child Labor Law was presented to the public. The principle |