HOME AND EDUCATION

...3. Children's conferences where well babies can be taken periodically to be weighed and examined, and clinics where sick children may 'do given medical advice...

...HOME AND EDUCATION Conducted By BELLE CASE LA FOLLETTE The Children's Year NO APPEAL which has been made in connection with the war is more fundamental to the present and future welfare of this country than the call issued by the Federal Children's Bureau and the Child Welfare Department of the Woman's Committee of the Council of National Defense to mark the second year of the war by a determined nationwide campaign for the saving of infant lives and the promotion of the health and vigor of the older children of the nation...

...There is no investment comparable to this, no national economy so fundamental...

...If arguments were needed for greater attention to.the physical care of children in the United States, the disclosures of the first selective draft with its rejection of one-third of the men as not physically sound have furnished them...

...6. An income making possible decent living standards...

...The methods to be followed wilf be those whose efficacy has been demonstrated in child welfare work in this and other countries...

...Yet the increase in its price is so startling that, as the reports the Bureau receives show, many mothers are economizing on milk...

...These record cards will be arranged in duplicate so that one-half may bo retained by the parent and the other half filed as a record from which statistics will be tabulated at the conclusion of the tests...

...You may be Christ or Shakespeare, little child, A savior or a sun to the lost world—• There is no babe born but may carry furled Strength to make bloom the world's disastrous wild...

...The first step in the campaign will be a nation-wide weighing and measuring of children of pre-school age, beginning April 6, designed to provide in a simple way data indicating the general physical condition of this group of children...

...Young children can not get the nourishment they require from the would-be milk substitutes given them...

...But it is not only little children which the Children's Year is designed to help...

...Toil lost...

...Were our toil trebled, nay You are a Soul, you are a human Soul, A greater than skies by star hosts trod Shakespeare no greater, O you slip of God...

...Then there are the children with special needs...

...Bills to provide fuller education, physical training, and occupational teaching are pending in the parliaments of England and France...

...Plainly very great harm is done young children by giving them tea and coffee to take the place of milk which is really a complete food...

...5. Guarding of the milk supply, that every child may have his quota of clean, pure milk...

...Tho record card will show physical standards for children of given ages and any marked divergence from this standard will serve as a warning to the parent that the child may need medical attention...

...England has for the last 12 months allowed government funds for the support of children's play .centers...

...In England local authorities have recently been given power to supply milk to mothers and babies at cost or free of charge in necessitous cases...

...In all the European countries it has been found necessary under the stress of war conditions not only to regulate the price of milk, but to provide for priority in distribution so that the needs of expectant and nursing mothers, young children and the sick may be taken care of...

...there is also no waste so irretrievable as that of a nation which is careless of its rising generation...

...There are, besides, the handicapped children who, by reason of physical or mental defects, can not respond to the training offered in the ordinary school, or whose infirmities require institutional care...

...Yet in a certain though narrow sense everything depends upon his physique...

...The future and strength of the nation unquestionably depend upon the vitality of the child, upon his health and development, and upon his education and equipment for citizenship...

...Visions far-dreamed...

...Many of the exemptions to child-labor laws permitted by England and France in the early months of the war have been abolished...

...With proper supervision and guidance they may frequently become good citizens...

...Wisconsin's quota has been set at 2,410...

...But soft, if your lost goal Be low, if you are only common clay— What then...

...Oh, what, then, most oar labors be $o mould you To open the heart, to build with dreams the brain, To strengthen the young soul in toil and pain, Till our age-aching hands no longer hold you...

...it is giving them mere stimulants to replace their best food...

...Wherever possible the record cards furnished by the Children's Bureau will be made out by trained physicians and nurses, but the tests to be made are very simple so that they may be applied by the parent if it is not practicable to take the child to an examining station...

...If that be sound, we have the rock upon which a nation and a race may be built...

...A large proportion of the rejections, we are told, were for causes dating back to infancy and early childhood which could have been removed had they been recognized and treated properly at the right time...

...The weighing and measuring test is intended to aid in forestalling like deficiencies in the young of today...

...Milk is the one food that all young children must have if they are to be strong and healthy...

...Whole milk is rich in the elements without which the child's growth ceases and his health is impaired...

...The delinquent children ara, again, not very different from other children...

...nursing and medical care may be provided wherever family jjneome does not permit its being obtained independently...

...The question of school attendance," says the French Minister of Public Instruction, "was never more pressing...

...indeed there is no food which can supply as well the needs of the growing child...

...The importance of community work for older children is also emphasized—popularization of the best modern standards of the home care of older children, provision for adequate recreation, the maintenance of child-labor and school attendance laws...

...James Oppenheim...

...twice is intense, therefore, should be their preparation for this task, and it is precisely at this hour that, in the absence of their mobilized fathers, they run the risk of escaping all educational influences, Therefore, more than in time of peace, we should fight now against the obstacles in the way of school attendance...

...Great and far-reaching issues have their origin and some of their inspiration in him...

...if that be impaired, we lack that foundation and build on the sand...

...Here we may learn from the sad experience of other countries which are now bending every effort to repair the wastage dus to the breaking down of standards...

...The European war," writes the chief medical officer of the British Board of Education in his last annual report, "has given new emphasis to the importance of the child as a primary national asset...

...Briefly stated these are as follows: 1. Registration of births, so that there may be an immediate record of every child bom...

...2. For every mother, prenatal care, necessary care of doctor and public nurse at confinement and after care...

...And the goal is not an industrial machine, a technical workman, a "hand," available merely for the increase of material output and the acquisition of a wage at the earliest moment, but a human personality, well grown and ready in body and mind, able to work, able to play, a good citizen, the healthy parent of a future generation...

...These defects not only disqualify a man for military service, but hamper him in civil life as well...

...It would be difficult to overestimate the volume of national inefficiency, unfitness and suffering, of unnecessary expenditure, and of industrial unrest and unemployability to which this country consents because of its relative failure to rear and to educate a healthy, virile, and well-equipped race of children and young people...

...There are many dependent children who are i no wise different from other children except that unfortunate circumstances have thrown them upon the community for support and nurture...

...Double will be tomorrow the task of the pupils of today...

...4. Organization of state and city bureaus .>r divisions of child hygiene...

...but never were there more obstacles in its way...

...Patent foods which do not themselves contain milk and are not intended to be mixed with milk are so lacking in the essentials of healthy development that we must expect children fed on them instead of on milk to be weakly and ailing...

...Grace L. Meigs, the Director of the Bureau's Child Hygiene Division, "no substitute for milk in tho diet of babies and young children...

...never was the diligence of our pupils more necessary...

...without wise action by the community they drift into a life of crime...

...No general test of children of pre-school age has ever been made, and the wide-spread test will furnish valuable data not now available...

...There is," says Dr...

...Milk for the Babies WHATEVER the economies which the increased cost of living may necessitate, don't economize on milk for the babies, is the warning being sent out to mothers by the Federal Children's Bureau which has issued a bulletin on "Milk, the Indispensable Food for Children...

...The call of the Children's Year is for the saving of 100,000 of these lives, with a definite quota, based upon population, assigned to each state...

...Public health authorities are agreed that one-half the annual total of 300,000 deaths of children under five years of age in the United States is preventable and that the larger proportion of the 15,000 mothers who died last year in bringing their children into the world also died needlessly...