Those who have been watching the problem of child labour in Shanghai will hear with interest that Messrs. Jardine, Matheson Ca. have decided to- prohibit the employment of boys under 10 and girls under 12 years of age after September 1. The matter is one which has received much attention during recent years, as much from the mill owners themselves as from people outside who are interested in social improvement, and it is "one which involves very practical difficulties. In the first place, there is every probability that the parents will oppose the reform, as they have done in the past, considerations urged by welfare workers being of stall importance in comparison with the gain in family income afforded by the earnings of the children and it has more than once been observed that the children are at least as well off in the mills as they would be if left to thems-ive while their parents are at work. In several mills attempts have been made to employ only youngsters of 14 or 15 years of age, but these have all failed owing to the impossibility of correctly ascertaining ages, various subterfuges and simple prevarication being employed by parents and their industrious offspring in order to defeat the good intentions of mill-managers. Faced with this difficulty, the management of one mill resorted to the expedient of passing young employees under a measuring rod, but this rough and ready plan was no guarantee that age would be consistent with height.
The subject is full of difficulties inherent in the economic and educational status of the Chinese, and Messrs. Jardine's experiment will therefore be followed with special interest. We understand that the number of young workers "who will be subject to the new rule will be comparatively small, efforts having already been made to weed out the very young, but a sufficient number will be affected to make the experiment of value as a trial.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.