and abuse, but a cruelty and abuse of adult ignorance and thoughtlessness and neglect. So many fathers and mothers know so little about children that one sometimes wonders whether they are entitled to be the fathers and mothers of children; and society, upon which also devolves the task of fostering and bringing up each succeeding generation, is not better informed or more intelligent, and a doubt similar to that concerning parents arises concerning society.

Two sources of encouragement may be noted: the first is the comparative recentness of real humanitarian regard for children, together with the results of this regard; and the second is the rapid spread of the facts discovered through scientific study of child nature in both its physical and its psychical aspects.

There are those who believe that child labor is solely an economic phenomenon and its solution therefore an economic solution; that is, if we could do away with economic greed and economic pressure, we should thereby do away with child labor. They are only partly right. I mean to say that child labor may flourish and indeed does flourish in the midst of plenty. It is not a matter alone of power to provide children with the things they need, but is also a matter of knowing what they need and of providing it at all costs. It is not so much a matter of economic income as it is of spiritual outgo.

We cannot measure children's needs in terms of their future adulthood. We often, in dealing with child labor, condemn conditions which we regard as injurious to the child's future efficiency when the real question should be, not what kind of adulthood he is being prepared for, but what kind of childhood is he having now. The principal new value in the field of child welfare is, in my opinion, the new value attaching to childhood as a good in itself.

Now though it is true undoubtedly that we need in child labor reform a social vision, a social conception of the child-labor evil and of the objective in child-labor reform-in a word, humanitarianism broader than the old humanitarianism of pity and tears for the individual exploited child-it is equally true that our central and dominant interest should be in the child, the child as child. He is our proper point of departure in child labor reform. The elder economists used to talk about the economic man, as if he were a separate and distinct being from other men, but that viewpoint has been discarded. There is no economic man merely as such. There is likewise no child laborer merely as such. There is, instead, a child. We may consider the child in connection with child labor; we may consider child labor in connection with the child; but in either case we need to know what the child is, by nature.

Modern child psychology has taught us that in neither body nor mind is the child a miniature adult; he is a child, not a little man or a little woman. Out of the nature of children arise their needs; and out of children's needs, children's rights. As the primary and principal right of children is the right to childhood, so it is also the right to a full childhood and a normal childhood, which really amount to the same thing. What constitutes a normal childhood, and what are the environmental conditions of a normal childhood? This is the most important question in the entire field of child welfare. The answer will not be attempted here, beyond the pointing out that a normal childhood is one of natural development in accordance with developmental needs, that development of body or of mind depends on previous development, and that between physical development there is close correlation and more or less interdependence. Any occupation that interferes with a full childhood, a childhood of

NEW VALUES IN PSYCHOLOGY OF CHILD LABOR—FULLER 87

normal and complete development, a characteristic childhood in each of its stages, is far from being a gainful occupation.

The general popular conception of child labor is one that is still limited very largely to the physical and physiological aspects of the evil. Not only does it fail to place due emphasis on the indirect effects of child labor-the deprivation of play and of schooling-but it fails, as regards direct effects, to emphasize sufficiently the psychical side of the child labor experience. The physical effects have been uppermost in the public mind, possibly because they are more obvious and more easily understandable; moreover, the physician and the physiologist have had more to say about child labor than the psychologist and the psychiatrist. Nevertheless, the psychical effects are quite as numerous, and quite as much a menace to future happiness and efficiency, as the physical. Deformation of the person is not more terrible than deformation of the personality, and health of body not more to be esteemed than health of mind. The child has a mind, a nervous system, as well as a body, and it has to be remembered too, that he is mentally as well as physically immature, and susceptible and plastic. The abolition of child labor and the establishment of its substitutes, particularly suitable schooling, suitable play, and suitable work, is a task of mental hygiene.

In true play no movement is made or action performed ahead of its natural and normal time; there is no unreadiness of body or of mind for that movement or that action. Thus it fosters no prematurities or precocities of physical, psychical, or psycho-physical development. Its activities, being timely not only, but interesting, since interest and play are one and inseparable as body and soul, are without that defective psychic motivation so common to child labor and so favorable to cumulative fatigue, which in turn is favorable to the inception of those dread diseases of personality the neuroses and psychoses.

The psychical side of the child-labor evil might be stated partly in terms of suggestibility. Children are more suggestible than adults. Fatigue enhances suggestibility. In child labor we have a combination of the two factors. Suggestibility and fatigue may become psychopathic, with consequences many and serious. Conditions which involve fatigue and particularly the cumulation of fatigue, which lower the general physical tone, which separate the child from his own natural society, which destroy self-confidence and initiative, which starve the instinct of workmanship instead of feeding it, which present an experience of repeated failure, which are marked by such concomitants as worry and fear, which fail to develop a rich fund of wholesome, objective interests, are conditions found in child labor and in the etiology of nervous diseases and personality disturbances of various sorts.

It does not seem to me that we are taking a utilitarian view of play when we recognize the service which it renders to the individual and to society. In preaching the gospel of play we must not forget, while enumerating the values of play, that play is a right by virtue of inheritance—a right written in biological laws that none can repeal.

We have mentioned the prophylactic and therapeutic value of play in mental hygiene. Next come in for consideration such psychological processes as catharsis sublimation, and socialization, which are of great significance in connection, for instance, with the instinct of pugnacity and the impulses of the psycho-sexual life. We may speak also of the fact that through play the play habit is formed. This means a great deal to the adult in keeping physically and mentally fit. It

CHILDREN

is valuable as a prophylactic against mobmindedness. But over and above the play habit is the play spirit which is developed through children's play. Henry S. Curtis has said, "Perhaps the greatest service that play has to render life is to give it the play spirit in which to do its work. The tragedy of child labor is that too often it kills the spirit of play itself."

Nothing could be further from the truth than the rather widespread notion that child labor reform is predicated on the assumption that children should have no work whatever to do. As part of the solution of the child labor problem, as a means to the abolition of child labor and the breaking down of opposition to reform, we must give attention to the work that children should have and see that they have it. To establish children's work is quite as important as to establish children's play or to abolish child labor. These are all aspects of a single problem.

Psychologically, the fundamental characteristic of child labor is unmotivated activity—or activity motivated from without rather than from within. Some forms of activity involved even in school work may be described as child labor. They are beyond the child's needs, that is to say, beyond his powers, except as they are externally motivated or artificially forced. They may run directly counter to his needs. For instance, his need of free bodily movement or his need of interesting occupation.

In distinguishing between child labor and children's work, very definite psychological facts and principles are available for guidance and aid. This from John Dewey is suggestive: "To confine the growing child to the same kind of muscular activity is harmful both physically and mentally; to keep on growing he must have work that exercises his whole body, which presents new problems, which teaches him new things, and thus develops his powers of reasoning and judgment. Any manual labor ceases to be educative the moment it becomes thoroughly familiar and automatic." Child labor is child labor partly because it is not educative in this psychological sense. It does not give the child experience in solving problems and coming off well from situations; it does not, in other words, develop intelligence.

The distribution of degrees of intelligence among the general population, as indicated by the army tests, has been the subject of considerable discussion. It appears that 10 per cent of the population is of "very inferior" intelligence; 15 per cent of "inferior" intelligence; 20 per cent "low average"; 25 per cent "average"; 16 per cent "high average"; 9 per cent "superior"; and 4 per cent "very superior. otherwise stated, 10 per cent is limited to a mental age of not over ten; 25 per cent of not over eleven; 45 per cent of not over twelve; and 70 per cent of not over thirteen or fourteen. On the assumption that the age-grade progress of school children correOr, sponds with their intelligence, it has been concluded that 70 per cent of our boys and girls are incapable of acquiring a high-school education; 25 per cent of going beyond the fifth grade, and 10 per cent of finishing the fourth. It has been pointed out that, according to the figures of the federal Bureau of Education, 13 per cent of our school children actually do drop out in the fourth grade or earlier and that 69 per cent do not complete the eighth grade.

Taking the conclusions drawn from the army mental tests at anywhere near their face value, surely we must regard them as having a very direct bearing on the question of a sixteen-year age standard for leaving school and going to work. It is a psychological question as well as a physiological one. Why keep children in school if they are incapable of profiting by staying there? But maybe they could profit if we had

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schools from those we have today. It has been suggested that the data on nce levels point to the necessity of picking out the children of the higher grades igence and seeing that they are enabled to go on. The idea is that social and

1 ends depend on a trained aristocracy of intelligence and that the schools primarily to that aristocracy. The incapables may be charitably taken care ugh special classes or may be allowed to depart at an early age. But, after all, : schools belong to this aristocracy-to the few who are favored mentally, any than to the few whose parents are favored with money? Do the high schools g to the small minority who are able to complete the course? Would it not be as wise to adapt the school system primarily to the needs of the 85 per cent who upposedly incapable of profiting by staying in the present schools until they are en, and provide special classes for the highly intelligent? Would it not be just rise to emphasize the educational needs of the group of "high average," "average,” "low average" intelligence (60 per cent of the population) as the needs of the uperior" and "very superior" group (13 per cent)? And keep the sixteen-year e standard for school attendance and going to work?

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▲ REDEFINING OF THE SCOPE AND FUNCTIONS OF THE JUVENILE COURT, IN TERMS OF THE RURAL COMMUNITY

Wiley H. Swift, Special Agent, National Child Labor Committee, Greensboro, N.C.

It is only a few years ago that the people of a mountain community gathered on a Sunday morning around a woman of about forty-six or seven years as she lay pale and almost speechless on bed on a little front porch of a tiny home. They had gathered by request.

The preacher was there in their midst and made a little talk to the effect that the sister who lay upon the little bed before them had, up to about a year before, lived a strong life and hadn't had scarcely a pain or an ache; but that here of late she'd been a-havin' her troubles, that she had drunk all sorts of teas, taken all kinds of medicine sold at the store, and had had two doctors a-tendin' on her regular without gettin' any better whatsomever. He said that the doctors had done the best they could, but had finally give it up, that they didn't know what wa a-aildin' of her unless there was something the matter with her innards, and that they had decided to take her to the hospital and have her cut open to see what was the matter and if anything could be done. The preacher, continuing, said that the sister, realizing the uncertainty of life, especially when one goes to the hospital to be cut open, desired that all the people gather about her bedside and sing, "God, Be With You Till We Meet Again." They gathered and sang as requested, and then they lifted the sister on her little bed into the hack to be jolted down the rocky road ten miles to the train to be carried on it thirty miles to the nearest hospital. They brought the sister back, not on the little bed, but, utterly speechless, in a coffin. The jolt of the hack, the ride on the train, and the operation had been too much for her.

A gruesome tale, and told simply to say that the sister was quite as near to a good hospital as the child of much of the rural country with which I am familiar is to a well-organized and efficient juvenile court, or any other organized social agency public or private.

There are children in these rural counties, thousands of them. Some are abused some are neglected, some are dependent, some are just poor, and some are going wild. Unfortunately, there are no private agencies, such as you have in the city, to cover the field. The church does a little, oh, so little, but about all that is done. The Red Cross, hard as it may be trying, is touching only the high places. I see no prospect of any very great improvement in this respect, and therefore, feel not only free but forced by observation to say that whatever is to be done in strictly rural communities for the care of children, unfortunate for any reason, will have to be done by someone employed to do it and paid for his work out of public funds. Rural social work will have to be paid for just as school teaching is paid for a thing well recognized in wellorganized cities, a thing that must come to be recognized everywhere.

Every child should be under the geographical jurisdiction of an efficient juvenile court. The rural child is entitled to have his interests cared for and promoted by the best juvenile law that can be evolved for the care of urban children, but you cannot expect the same type of full-time juvenile judge as in large cities. There cannot be a full-time juvenile judge for every county. The expense would be burdensome, and besides there would not be enough work to keep him content. Some other plan must be thought out.

The best we can do, perhaps, is to make some already established court of record a juvenile court. Where by reason of rotation the judge is absent from the county much of the time, someone must be provided to sit in his place. If nothing better can be had, a referee under an already established court of record would serve, but I think that not much difficulty will be met in finding an officer for the place. In North Carolina we took the clerk of the Superior Court. In Tennessee the clerk and master in chancery seemed to be the proper officers. After all, almost any honest person of good common sense and with good probation service would make a fair juvenile judge. The rules of practice are simple, and the probation officers are, or should be, there to tell the judge what to do. It would be a great mistake to undertake to press full-time juvenile judges upon rural communities. Any attempt to compel small rural counties to support a special full-time juvenile judge will fail, as it ought to fail, being altogether impractical.

The rural juvenile court, just as the city juvenile court, should be a court of record and on a level with circuit, district, superior, or criminal courts and should have exclusive original jurisdiction of all children under eighteen years of age. It may be necessary to give the juvenile judge the right, in his discretion, to remand children over fourteen years of age to criminal courts for trial in certain extreme cases. I am not at all sure that any child under eighteen years of age should ever be tried in a criminal court; but if he is to be tried there it should be always by the permission of the juvenile judge. The juvenile and not the criminal court should be named as the court of hearing in the first instance; first, because if this right is not distinctly placed in the juvenile court it will be exercised by the criminal court; and second, because I am seeking to avoid any excuse for trial by jury in juvenile courts.

It is now admitted by all that a juvenile court should be a chancery court. I am thoroughly convinced that no rural juvenile court should ever proceed by jury trial. Jury trials mean delay and a lack of well-considered treatment of the case. On the other hand, no person should ever be convicted of any crime without the right of trial by jury. In fact, he cannot be legally convicted of a crime without this right.