Still another is the Rivington Street Lodging-House, No. 327 Rivington Street, which has attached to it a beautiful greenhouse of flowers; a third is at No. 709 East Eleventh Street, and a fourth at No. 211 West Eighteenth Street. All these lodging-houses together shelter during the year some 12,000 homeless children.

Another ingenious effort for the benefit of the destitute children of the city is the "placing-out system," which has been carried out by the Children's Aid Society during the last twenty years with such remarkable success. The society early saw the immense benefit in taking advantage of the peculiar economical condition of this country in treating questions of pauperism. They at once recognized the fact, and resolved to make use in their plans, of the endless demand for children's labor in the Western country. The housekeeping life of a Western farmer is somewhat peculiar. The servants of the household must be members of the family, and be treated more or less as equals. It is not convenient nor agreeable for a Western matron to have a rude European peasant at the same table and in the same room with the family. She prefers a child whom she can train up in her own way. A child's labor is needed for a thousand things on a Western farm. Children, too, are valued und thought much of. The same opportunity is given to working children as to all other children. They share fully in the active and inspiring Western life. They are moulded by the social tone around them, and they grow up under the very best circumstances which can surround a poor boy or girl. No treatment which man could devise could possibly be so beneficial to the laboring children of this city as that offered by Western farms. Moreover, a child's place at the table in our rural households is of small account. Of food there is enough and an abundance. Generosity, and especially toward children, is the rule in our Western districts. This benevolent association, taking advantage of these great facts, early made arrangements for scattering such little workers of the city as were friendless and homeless all through the Western country. Western agents are employed who travel through remote farming districts, and discover where there is an especial call for children's labor. An arrangement is then made with the leading citizens of the village to receive a little detachment of these homeless children of the great city.

On a given day in New York the ragged and dirty little ones are gathered to a central office from the streets and lanes, from the industrial schools and lodging-houses of the society, are cleaned and dressed, and sent away, under charge of an experienced agent, to seek "a new home in the West." When they arrive in the village a great public meeting is held, and a committee of citizens formed to decide on the applications. Farmers come in from twenty to twenty-five miles round, looking for the "model boy" who shall do the light work of the farm and aid the wife in her endless household labor; childless mothers seek for children that shall replace those that are lost; housekeepers look for girls to train up; mechanics seek for boys for their trades; and kind-hearted men, with comfortable homes and plenty of children, think it is their duty to do something for the orphans who have no fair chance in the great city. Thus in a few hours the little colony is placed in comfortable homes. Subsequently, if changes should be necessary, the committee replace the children, or the agent revisits the village, while a steady correspondence is kept up by the central office with the employers. In this way something like 25,000 boys and girls have been placed in country homes during the past twenty years. Nearly 3000 a year are now sent forth by the society. Great numbers of these children have acquired property, or have grown up to positions of influence and respectability.

This association, not content with all these ingenious devices for the benefit of the working children, are now especially la- boring to prevent the evil of overwork in factories. An act has been drawn up by their counsel, Charles E. Whitehead, Esq., and is now before the Legislature, designed for the protection of factory children. By this law no child under the age of ten years is allowed to be employed at all in a manufactory, and no child under the age of twelve, unless he can intelligibly read.

No child under the age of sixteen years is allowed to be employed more than sixty hours in one week, while four public holidays are secured to him. We think a humane amendment to this provision would have been the limiting of the day's work of children to eight hours. Other sections of a very stringent character secure to every fac- tory child between the ages of ten and sixteen a certain proportion of education, either in night schools, half-time day schools, or by three months' annual schooling. Judicious exceptions are made in cases where a poor family is dependent on the labor of its children, in permitting such children to attend the night school instead of the usual day school.

Careful registers are required to be kept by the manufacturers or employers, showing the amount of schooling enjoyed by each child, the time of his labor in the factory, and other facts important for the execution of the law.

Humane provisions are also included in the act for the promotion of the good sanitary condition of the factories, and to protect the children from dangerous machinery.