their co-citizens. Free meals, free books, free rides, free eyeglasses, are cheaper than free instruction for the second, third, and sixth terms in studies not passed because of physical defects, infinitely cheaper than jails and almshouses, truant officers and courthouses.

The demoralizing results of giving "something for nothing" did not follow free schooling or free text-books. Perhaps they would not follow the free remedies that we are asked to copy from Europe. In fact, the word "free" is the wrong word. These remedies rather require coöperation of parent with parent. It has demoralized nobody because the streets are cleaned by all of us, country roads made by the township, police paid for by taxes and not by volunteer subscription.

The man whose children do not need glasses or nourishment or operation for adenoids would find it cheaper to pay for European remedies than for the useless schooling of boys unable to get along in school because of removable defects. An unruly, uninterested boy sitting beside your boy in public school, a pampered, overfed, undisciplined child sitting beside yours at private school, is taxing you without your consent and doing your child injury that may prove irreparable.

It costs $2.50 to furnish a child with eyeglasses. It costs $25 to $50 to give that child a year's schooling. If the child cannot see right and fails in his studies, we have lost a good investment and, after one year so lost, we are out $22.50. In two years we have lost $47.50. But, what is more serious, we have discouraged that boy. Used to failure in school, his mind turns to other things. He is made to think that it is useless for him to try for first place. Perhaps he can play ball, and excels. He chooses a career of ball playing. Valuable years are lost.

Initiative and competition are not interrupted any more by free eyeglasses and free operation for adenoids than by

free schooling. There is only one place in the world where there is less competition or less struggle than among the ignorant, and that is among the ignorant and unwell. The boy who can't see the blackboard, who can't learn to spell, who can't breathe through his nose, and can't be interested, doesn't compete at all with the bright, healthy boy. Remove the adenoids, give glasses, make interest possible, and fitness to survive takes a higher level because larger numbers become fit to survive.

Professor Patten says that it is easier to support in the almshouse than in competitive industry a man who cannot earn more than $1.50 a day. The question, therefore, regarding European remedies is not, To what general theory do they belong? but, What will they accomplish? How do they compare with other remedies of which we know?

CHAPTER XVII

AMERICAN REMEDIES: GETTING THINGS DONE

In New York City there is a committee called the Committee on the Physical Welfare of School Children. The word "welfare" was used rather than "condition" because the committee proposed to use whatever facts it could gather for the improvement of home and school conditions prejudicial to child welfare. The following programme was adopted: 1. Study of the physical welfare of school children.

a. Examination of board of health records of children needing medical, dental, or ocular care, and better nourishment. b. Home visitation of such children, in order to ascertain whether their need arises from deficient income or from other causes.

c. Effort to secure proper treatment, either from parents or from free clinics or other established agencies.

d. Effort to secure proper physical surroundings of children while at schoolplaygrounds, baths, etc.

2. Effort to secure establishment of such a system of school records and reports as will disclose automatically significant school facts, e.g. regarding backward pupils, truancy, regularity of attendance, registered children not attending, sickness, physical defects, etc.

3. Effort to utilize available information regarding school needs so as to stimulate public interest and thus aid in securing adequate appropriations to meet school needs.

The committee grew out of the discussion, in the year 1905, of the following proposition: To insure a race physically able to receive our vaunted free education, we must provide at school free meals, free eyeglasses, free medical

and dental care. Thanks to the superintendent of schools of New York City, to Robert Hunter's Poverty, to John Spargo's Bitter Cry of the Children, hundreds of thousands of American citizens were made to realize for the first time that a large proportion of our school children are in serious need of medical, dental, or ocular attention, or of better nourishment.

Because physicians, dentists, oculists, hospitals, dispensaries, relief agencies, had seemingly been unconscious of this serious state of affairs, they had no definite, constructive remedy to propose. Their unpreparedness served to strengthen the arguments for the European method of doing things. France, Germany, Italy, England, had found it necessary to do things at school. Arguing from their experience, it was only a matter of time when American cities must follow their example. Why not, therefore, begin at once to deal radically with the situation and give school meals, school eyeglasses, etc.? Those who organized the Committee on the Physical Welfare of School Children realized the danger of trying to settle so great a question with the little definite information then available. If doing things at school were to be adopted as a principle and logically carried out, vast sums must be added to the present cost of the public school system. Complications would arise with private and parochial schools, whose children might have quite as serious physical defects, even though not educated by public funds. It would be difficult to obtain proper rooms for medical and dental treatment and meals, and perhaps still more difficult. to insure proper food, skilled oculists, dentists, surgeons, and physicians. No one was clear as to how the problem was to be solved by small cities and rural districts, whose needy children are no less entitled to public aid simply because their numbers are smaller. Great as were the difficulties, however, the committee saw that difficulties are in themselves no reason for not doing the right thing. On the

other hand, if doing things at school is wrong, if school meals fail to correct and remove physical defects, great social and educational wrong would result from New York's setting an example that would not only misdirect funds and attention in that city, but would undoubtedly lead other cities to move in the wrong direction. Right could be hastened, wrong could be prevented more effectually by facts than by any amount of theory. School meals had been made a political issue in England. The arguments supporting them were stronger than any possible arguments against them, except proof that they would be less effective in helping children than other means that might be proposed. If the American people must choose between sickly, unteachable, dull children without school meals, on the one hand, and bright, teachable, healthy children plus school meals, on the other hand, they will not hesitate because of expense or eighteenth-century objections to 'socialism."

During one year of investigation and of getting things done the committee has prepared three studies for publication: (1) a report on the home conditions of fourteen hundred school children of different nationalities, found by school physicians to have defects of vision, breathing, hearing, teeth, and nourishment; (2) an examination of fifty schools curriculum, buildings, home-study requirements, play space and playtime, physical culture — in an attempt to answer the question, How far does school environment directly cause or aggravate physical defects of school children; (3) a comparative study of methods now employed in a hundred cities to record, classify, and make public significant school facts.

The results of the first year's work prove conclusively that physical defects are not caused solely by the inability of parents to pay for proper food. Among the twenty significant facts reported by the committee are the following: