a matter of course, even though he
believed with me that the children lied. On the other hand, in seven
back-yard factories we found a total of 63 children, of whom 5 admitted
being under age, while of the rest 45 seemed surely so. To the other 13 we
gave the benefit of the doubt, but I do not think they deserved it. All
the 63 were to my mind certainly under fourteen, judging not only from
their size, but from the whole appearance of the children. My subsequent
experience confirmed me fully in this belief. Most of them were able to
write their names after a fashion. Few spoke English, but that might have
been a subterfuge. One of the home-workers, a marvellously small lad whose
arms were black to the shoulder from the dye in the cloth he was sewing,
and who said in his broken German, without evincing special interest in
the matter, that he had gone to school "e' bische'," referred us to his
"mother" for a statement as to his age. The "mother," who proved to be the
boss's wife, held a brief consultation with her husband and then came
forward with a verdict of sixteen. When we laughed rather incredulously
the man offered to prove by his marriage certificate that the boy must be
sixteen. The effect of this demonstration was rather marred, however, by
the inopportune appearance of another tailor, who, ignorant of the crisis,
claimed the boy as his. The situation was dramatic. The tailor with the
certificate simply shrugged his shoulders and returned to his work,
leaving the boy to his fate.

One girl, who could not have been twelve years old, was hard at work at a
sewing-machine in a Division Street shirt factory when we came in. She got
up and ran the moment she saw us, but we caught her in the next room
hiding behind a pile of shirts. She said at once that she was fourteen
years old but didn't work there. She "just came in." The boss of the shop
was lost in astonishment at seeing her when we brought her back. He could
not account at all for her presence. There were three boys at work in the
room who said "sixteen" without waiting to be asked. Not one of them was
fourteen. The habit of saying fourteen or sixteen--the fashion varies with
the shops and with the degree of the child's educational
acquirements--soon becomes an unconscious one with the boy. He plumps it
out without knowing it. While occupied with these investigations I once
had my boots blacked by a little shaver, hardly knee-high, on a North
River ferry-boat. W