t is made perfectly clear by even such
limited inquiry as I have been able to make, is that a birth certificate
should be substituted for the present sworn warrant, if it is intended to
make a serious business of the prohibition. In the piles upon piles of
these which I saw, I never came across one copy of the birth registry.
There are two obstacles to such a change. One is that our birth returns
are at present incomplete; the other, that most of the children are not
born here. Concerning the first, the Registrar of Vital Statistics
estimates that he is registering nearly or quite a thousand births a month
less than actually occur in New York; but even that is a great improvement
upon the record of a few years ago. The registered birthrate is increasing
year by year, and experience has shown that a determination on the part of
the Board of Health to prosecute doctors and midwives who neglect their
duty brings it up with a rush many hundreds in a few weeks. A wholesome
strictness at the Health Office on this point would in a short time make
it a reliable guide for the Factory Inspector in the enforcement of the
law. The other objection is less serious than it appears at first sight.
Immigrants might be required to provide birth certificates from their old
homes, where their children are sure to be registered under the stringent
laws of European governments. But as a matter of fact that would not often
be necessary. They all have passports in which the name and ages of their
children are set down. The claim that they had purposely registered them
as younger to cheapen transportation, which they would be sure to make,
need not be considered seriously. One lie is as good and as easy as
another.

Another lesson we may learn with advantage from some old-country
governments, which we are apt to look down upon as "slow," is to punish
the parents for the truancy of their children, whether they are found
running in the street or working in a shop when they should have been at
school. Greed, the natural child of poverty, often has as much to do with
it as real need. In the case of the Italians and the Jewish girls it is
the inevitable marriage-portion, without which they would stand little
chance of getting a husband, that dictates the sacrifice. One little one
of twelve in a class in the Leonard Street School, who had been working on
coats in a sweat-shop nine months, and had become expert enough to earn
three dollars a week, told