ommerce and Labor "to investigate and report on the
industrial, social, moral, educational, and physical conditions of woman
and child workers of the United States, wherever employed, with special
reference to their age, hours of labor, term of employment, health,
illiteracy, sanitary and other conditions surrounding their occupation,
and the means employed for the protection of their health, persons, and
morals." An appropriation of $150,000 was made with which to carry on
this investigation. Among the demands of the National Child Labor
Committee have been a shorter day's work for children between the ages
of fourteen and sixteen, health certificates for factory employment in
dangerous trades, and the regulation of children in street trades.

[Illustration]
Electric train, Long Island R. R.

The period of Mr. Roosevelt's administrations was notable on account of
advances made in various other directions. Electricity was applied to
new and larger uses. Power was transmitted to greater distances. Niagara
Falls was made to produce an electric current employed leagues away.
Electric railways, radiating from cities, converted farms and sand-lots
into suburban real estate quickly and easily accessible from the great
centres. Telephone service was extended far into country parts, and,
with the rural free delivery of mail, brought farmers into quick and
inexpensive communication with the outside world, robbing the farm of
what was once both its chief attraction and its greatest
inconvenience--isolation.

[Illustration]
Guglielmo Marconi and his wireless telegraph.

German experiments developed an electric surface car with a speed of two
miles a minute. Wireless telegraphy came into use. By means of high
masts rigged, with wires diverging to the earth somewhat like the frame
of a partly opened umbrella, it was found possible under favorable
atmospheric conditions to telegraph hundreds of miles through the air.
The most notable use of this invention was to communicate between ships
and the shore or between ships at sea, a particularly desirable facility
in fog, storm, or darkness, when other signals were useless.

[Illustration: Four steel towers and some small buildings.]
Marconi Transatlantic Station at South Wellfleet, Cape Cod, Mass.

Electricity and the gasolene engine were applied to bicycles, vehicles,
and boats, often generating sufficient power to run a small factory.
Bicycles somewhat passed from vo