316 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
When dealing with these neglected children there are two distinet 
classes to be considered ; namely, those of the very poor but honest, and 
hose of the careless, dissolute, and criminal. With respect to the former, 
many young children, instead of attending school, are employed at various 
recupations wherein the school hours are taken up. 
Few will not admit that these young ones are entitled to the advantages 
of such education as is provided from the national funds for all. 
But humanity steps in and says: ‘These children are helps to their 
parents, who depend on them to work for bread for the support of the 
family, and if they are deprived of the aid of these child-workers, how is 
the necessary subsistence to be procured ?”’ 
To say that it is right that parents should, under any circumstances, be 
dependent on their young and tender offspring for food amounts to advo- 
cating a reversal of natural laws, which throughout the animal kingdom 
demand that the old must provide for its young ; and even in the lower 
orders of life, where the young are so constituted to look after them- 
selves, in no case do the old rely upon their own immature progeny as 
food procurers. 
When law-makers thoroughly grasp this position, and without exception 
apply it, then the unnatural claim of parents to ruin their children for- 
ever, to minister to present personal needs, will become a thing of the past. 
When it has been ascertained beyond doubt that parents cannot feed 
and clothe the children whom the law compels them to send to school, 
chen both of these necessaries should be provided by the state ; for little 
education can be imparted to small, shivering bodies with hungry stomachs. 
But to ask that national funds for educational purposes should be used 
fo subsidize parents for being deprived of services to which they have no 
right—to grant such a request would tend to increase paupers and turn 
educational departments into charitable aid boards. 
Surely deserving cases could be left to the benevolently disposed, and 
societies of that kind. 
For several years the writer has studied from exceptional vantage ground 
the application of compulsory educational laws, and after much experience 
and careful consideration has come to the conclusion that a large number 
of the parents appreciate education too highly to be a source of trouble in 
procuring regular attendance of their children at schools, so that stringent 
attendance measures, although applicable to all, do not affect these, as 
they already do what is required, without coercion ; but with respect to 
others, they more or less require constant watching. Every sort of pre- 
text is used to detain children from school, yet nearly all express the opin- 
lon that great stringency should be used in compelling their neighbors’ 
children to be sent more regularly. This sort of thing varies in degree 
antil the lower stratum is reached, when nothing short of fines and im- 
prisonment of parents will obtain any attendance whatever.