Reformatory in New York State show that 60 per cent. of the inmates were brought up in institutions. Of four young men hanged in Cook County, Illinois, early in 1912, all had been raised in charitable or reformatory institutions. The motherhood pension way is to form children by home raising so that they will not have to be reformed."

Colorado's Mothers' Compensation Law, which was put on the statute book at the recent election by a referendum vote of the people, does not differ materially from the Illinois law. It provides, writes George Creel in the Denver Rocky Mountain News, that "the State may award money to widowed and indigent mothers for the support of children in the home." Mr. Creel, who, with Judge Ben B. Lindsey, was one of the chief sponsors of the bill, points out that “it is not only good Christianity, but good business." He

says:

"For one-third of the money that it takes to keep a child in an institution, that child can be kept at home. And who will say that a 'home' child is not better off than an institution' child?"

The last clause of the Colorado law provides that it "shall be liberally construed for the protection of the child, the home, and the State, and the interests of public morals, and for the prevention of poverty and crime."

The Newark Monitor is inclined to think that the idea of State pensions for mothers "rests on sound social and business principles." A measure sanctioned by both sentiment and economy, it says, is at

least worthy of careful study. The movement, remarks the Spokane Spokesman Review, is "an expression of the new social consciousness," and "has taken firm hold on popular sympathy." Under the present system in Ohio, remarks the Columbus Citizen, the indigent mother whose husband has died or deserted her has choice of three things

"1. She may give her children up, place them in an orphan's home, and go in the bleak desolation of bereaved motherhood about her dreary task of keeping body and soul together.

2. She may strive to keep the children at home, and leave their lives to chance while she labors, away from them, 10, 12, 14 hours a day, returning only in time to place them in their beds.

"3. She may STAY AT HOME WITH THEM AND STARVE."

"We have waited long enough," exclaims the Citizen, "for legislation to remedy these conditions."

The Ohio law, we are informed by the press, provides for pensions of $15 a month to dependent widows with one child under fourteen, and to mothers. with one child under fourteen whose husbands are helpless or in prison, or who have abandoned their families. There is an extra pension of $7 a month for each additional child under fourteen years. The court, we read further, "must satisfy itself that the child is living with its mother, that without the pension the home would be broken up, that it is beneficial to the child to stay with its mother and, after investigation, that the home is a proper one." This

mothers' aid measure, the Cincinnati Enquirer notes, "is really an extensive codification of the juvenile delinquency laws and a revision of acts relating to children's homes, occupations of youths, and the management and direction of private and public orphan asylums and refuges. Its ramifications are extensive and will affect many industries employing females under twenty-one years of age and males under eighteen."

Such aid to mothers, explains the New York World in its news columns, "is a tax payers' money saver, while increasing the self-respect of both mothers and children." The expensive supervision in State institutions is replaced by the home supervision of the mothers.

Yet the New York Times points to the allegations of weaknesses in the workings of the motherhood pension law in Illinois, the pioneer State in this movement. And the Brooklyn Eagle, discussing the proposals for similar legislation in New York, believes that though "the pension system, according to the theorists, is better than any other plan of relief," it probably "never could be carefully administered and the opportunity for extravagance developed from sentimentalism is gravely apparent." Objection to the description of this reform as "mothers' or widows' pensions" is made by the New York Evening Post.

"Motherhood has not been endowed," it carefully explains: "The State is merely giving assistance to needy children and older persons while allowing them to remain at home, instead of following the more usual procedure of putting them into an insti

tution. The 'pensions' are not to be spent at the free will of those who receive them, as an old soldier may spend his, but under strict regulation by the courts. They are payments for certain purposes rather than pensions. For such an arrangement there is much to be said. Where a mother has the strength and the capacity to take care of her children, but cannot do so if she must employ her time away from home in earning their bread, it is surely wiser to give her the money that will enable her to make useful citizens out of her children, than to turn them over to professional caretakers, however worthy the latter may be. Nor will there be any objection to such payments to indigent widows without children as will keep soul and body together, if the whole matter is carefully supervised. Preservation of the home is worth all it may cost in this way. But let us not carelessly talk as if a new and large section of society were about to be pensioned for life."

The following States have adopted the pensioning of mothers, 1915: