heir age. It was not
always possible to make this test, for the children seemed to see
something funny in it, and laughed and giggled so, especially the girls,
as to make it difficult to get a good look. Some of the girls, generally
those with decayed teeth,[9] would pout and refuse to show them. These
were usually American girls, that is to say, they were born here. The
greater number of the child-workers I questioned were foreigners, and our
birth returns could have given no clue to them. The few natives were alert
and on the defensive from the moment they divined my purpose. They easily
defeated it by giving a false address.

I finally picked out a factory close to my office where Italian girls were
employed in large numbers, and made it my business to ascertain the real
ages of the children. They seemed to me, going and coming, to average
twelve or thirteen years. The year before the factory inspector had
reported that nearly a hundred girls "under sixteen" were employed there.
She had discharged sixty of them as unable to read or write English. I
went to see the manufacturers. They were not disposed to help me and fell
back on their certificates--no child was employed by them without
one--until I told them that my purpose was not to interfere with their
business but to prove that a birth-certificate was the only proper warrant
for employment of child-labor.

"Why," said the manufacturer, in his astonishment forgetting that he had
just told me his children were all of age, "my dear sir! would you throw
them all out of work?"

It was what I expected. I found out eventually that a number of the
children attended the evening classes in the Leonard Street Italian
School, and there one rainy night I corralled twenty-three of them, all
but one officially certified under oath to be fourteen or sixteen. But for
the rain I might have found twice the number. The twenty-three I polled,
comparing their sworn age with the entry in the school register, which the
teachers knew to be correct. This was the result: one was eleven years old
and had worked in the factory a year; one, also eleven, had just been
engaged and was going for her certificate that night; three were twelve
years old, and had worked in the factory from one month to a year; seven
were thirteen, and of them three had worked in the shop two years, the
others one; nine were fourteen; one of them had been there three years,
four others two years, the rest shorter t