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FOREWORD

The laws of the State of Minnesota relating to children have not been of singular fault or merit. The history of legislation on that subject here as elsewhere discloses that measures have been passed periodically but without uniformity of purpose or consciousness of standard and with no effort to treat the whole subject comprehensively.

In the summer of 1916, Governor Burnquist appointed a commission to study the need for revising the existing laws which concerned children and to formulate such new proposals as should be found necessary. The commission, under the leadership of Judge E. F. Waite of Minneapolis, embodied the results of its deliberations in forty-one bills which it submitted to the legislature at the session of 1917. The legislature enacted thirty-five of the proposed measures into law-a sound and liberal body of legislation and one which marks a point of departure from the old method of haphazard, unrelated legislative action.

The new laws place many additional duties upon the Board of Control; for that reason and in response to the numerous requests for copies of the enactments, the Board deemed it wise and necessary to gather all the laws of the state which concern children into a single volume for the use of workers in the field and all who may be interested. Hence this compilation which is simply a collection of Minnesota laws touching the lives and the welfare of children from the social point of view rather than in purely legal or business ways. Little will be found herein on the estates of children, their contract or property rights. The inheritance rights of illegitimate minors constitute an exception. The provisions of the compensation act, the general laws on education, both of a specialized character, are not included.

Those who are interested in the legislation of 1917 will find that the laws passed in 1915 and 1917 are so designated in the margin. The titles of those laws have been retained because they give a brief and accurate summary. The italicized type in the body of the paragraph indicates new matter added to old legislation which has been amended. When the amendment merely omits a portion of a former law the part omitted does not appear. The remainder of the compilation is taken from the General Statutes of 1913 and sections from that revision are indicated in black type at the beginning of the paragraph. The numbers used are those found in the General Statutes. If the date of the passage of a law is of interest it may be ascertained by the numbers or

figures at the end of the paragraph:-"'07, C282" means, of course, that the measure is Chapter 282 of the laws of 1907; "R. L. 1908" refers to section 1908, Revised Laws of 1905 by referring to which the date of passage may be learned. A single number, as "1910," means that the same law is section 1910 of the Revised Laws of 1905.

The arrangement of material follows a logical sequence up through Chapter II but after that the grouping is according to the natural divisions in which the legislation falls and reference to it can best be made by using the index.

I take this occasion to express my appreciation of the advice and counsel given me by Judge E. F. Waite, Mr. C. E. Vasaly of the Board of Control, as well as Mr. C. J. Swendsen and Mr. R. W. Wheelock of that Board.

St. Paul, September 12, 1917.

WILLIAM HODSON.

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