vances of medical science have been in this field, and the substantial reduction in the death rate of many communities is due to the saving of the lives of babies more than to reduction at any later age. It is the new view, the social view, that this process should be carried farther, and that those who are born shall be permitted not only to survive, but to become physically healthy and strong. The Children's Bureau, which is to be for investigation and publicity only, not for administration, will deal with that subject also. The Federal Government should study continuously the problems of illegitimacy, infant mortality, illiteracy, feeble-mindedness, orphanage, child dependence, and child labor-just as it studies, and properly studies, the soils, the forests, the fisheries, and the crops. Happiness The third element in the new view of the child is that he has a right to be happy, even in school. Pestalozzi and Froebel helped us to think that out. Jane Addams, at one of the earlier annual meetings of this Committee, gave expression to the idea that one day we shall be ashamed of our present arguments for the prohibition of child labor, that it is physically destructive and educationally disastrous-although these seem like reasonably adequate arguments to start with-and shall recognize that the joyousness of childhood, the glorious fullness of enjoyment for which children. are by nature adapted, and by their Creator intended, is in itself. a worthy end of legislation and social concern. Bronson Alcott, of whom it is said that his greatest contribution to American literature was his daughter, says that a happy childhood is the prelude to a ripe manhood. It is a far cry from a childhood in mine or factory to that happy childhood, and to put it down as an elementary right may seem sentimental. If so, I name instead a protected childhood as absolutely essential, and if you grant me at naturally protected, a sheltered childhood, I will take the risk of happiness. For it is no artificial, hothouse-forced development of something which you and I might call happiness that we seek, but the spontaneous activity and growth of a protected, unexploited childhood. If you ask me what is the period of such protection, I cannot tell. Certainly ten years is not the limit, nor twelve, nor fourteen. I once asked a very wise and sensible man who had been making some suggestions about my own boy's education, how long he expected me to support the boy. I had begun to be a little disturbed by the time it would take to carry out his program. "Well," he said, "if you can't provide for him until he is thirty-five, you are not fit to have a son." I am not in favor of raising the age limit to thirty-five, but neither do I favor leaving the years from ten to twelve, or to eighteen or to twenty entirely without protection. Useful Education It is a part of this new view, fourth, that the child has a right to become a useful member of society. This implies industrial-or stating it more broadly-vocational education. It supports the suggestion made by Mr. Noyes, in one of the publications of the National Child Labor Committee, that the school day might well be made longer, with greater variety in curriculum; and that the work which we deny, and rightly deny, in the factory for profit, may be demanded in the school for an hour or two or more daily for education and training. The disingenuous arguments as to the educational value of specialized long-continued factory labor may be tested by the willingness of those who make them to introduce genuinely educational employment with the element of profit eliminated, into the school curriculum, where alone it belongs. Industrial efficiency is diminished and destroyed and not increased by child labor. The Right to Progress There is one final element in the new view of the child, the right to inherit the past more and more fully, the right to begin farther and farther along, the right not only to begin where the parent began—even that is denied when through destroying the strength and retarding the education of children, race degeneracy sets in the right which we now assert is the right not only to be protected against degeneracy, but the right to progress. It is the new view of the child, the American view, that the child is worthy of the parent's sacrifice; that he must mount upon our shoulders and climb higher; that not only in accumulated possessions, but also in mastery over the physical universe, in spiritual attainment, in the power to serve his fellowmen and to glorify God, he shall rise above his father's level. It is not a new idea. Hector, on the plains of Troy, had a notion that men might say of Astyanax that he was a far better man than his father, and perhaps they did, or would have done so had Hector lived to protect and rear him. In a given instance the plan may fail, but the plan itself is significant for the father and for the child. The American. child is not unknown in text books and essays and fiction. He has been pictured as smart, precocious, disrespectful, and offensive. The child of the rich and preoccupied American, and of the vain and indulgent American, has sharpened the pencil of the caricaturist of every land. Kipling, in "Captains Courageous," plucked such a child from the ocean and put him at the work on a fishing dory on the banks of Newfoundland, which his regeneration required. The neglected and spoiled child of foolish indulgence, and the neglected and spoiled child of avaricious poverty, tend to develop similar or equally lamentable traits. In neither case is there recognition of these fundamental elements in what we have called the new view of the child-normal birth, physical protection, joyous infancy, useful education and an ever fuller inheritance of the accumulated riches of civilization. SOCIAL COST OF ACCIDENT, IGNORANCE AND EXHAUSTION BY PROF. CHARLES R. HENDERSON, Very properly the National Child Labor Committee is compelling the public to fix attention on the child laborer, especially the little wage-earner in the mine, mill and factory. In doing this we are led to consider all the factors which affect the child for weal or woe, not only in the work-place but elsewhere. You have asked me to discuss the "Social Cost of Accident, Ignorance and Exhaustion," no doubt with reference to causes and also with a view to prevention, protection, insurance and instruction. A representative of the new Southwest urges upon the people of Texas the establishment of "a cotton mill in the cotton field." A vigorous, far-seeing, progressive community will not be content to ship cheap raw material to older countries and bring it back as finished goods at high prices for transportation, labor and profits. But cotton mills in the cotton fields mean an industrial revolution in the South similar in all essential respects to that through which England, Germany and some of our own older states have passed on their way from rural to urban industries. In this revolution the child will suffer unless protected by law. Antecedents of the Exploited Child The studies of Niceforo, Warner, Oppenheim, and by boards of education in Switzerland, England, America and elsewhere, have made one point clear-the delinquent, dependent, neglected child is physically and intellectually inferior, on the average, to the normal school child. This established fact compels us to go back to influences which affect the development of the very poor child before birth and in the years of infancy. In great measure we are dealing with the results of generations of social neglect. Our ancestors have permitted multitudes of human beings to grow up under the blinding and perverting influence of a laissez faire philosophy, a theory made to excuse, justify and glorify neglect. The more conscientious and logical they were who held this theory the worse the results. Consequently we are called upon to deal with the offspring of the ignorant, underpaid, neglected, often vicious and depraved, alcoholic, narcotized, neurotic ancestors. The conditions of motherhood and infancy affect the child's chances in life. Whether born crippled or normal, the children of the poor, ignorant and neglected, begin again a round of deficient nutrition and care. The factory girl, without instruction and training, becomes a mother under serious difficulties, and if her infants survive, they enter the struggle for existence too early and with a heavy handicap. The mother's history is written in deeper, darker lines in the baby. During her childhood, deprived of play and school, she failed to accumulate physiological reserves; during her early adolescence she was ill-fed, poorly nourished, ill-taught, overworked. Before the birth of her infant, while it was directly and completely dependent on her for life and growth, she had not good food, and her energies were depleted by toil. During the months before weaning time she was unfit for her function as nurse. These conditions explain the frightful rate of infant mortality among the very poor and ignorant, and the prevalence of disease and death in later years, with the diminished industrial efficiency of adult wage earners. The fated circle begins again with each new generation of weaklings. You will not find all this in the statistics of "factory labor," but must seek the information elsewhere. The condition of the mother enceinte affects her offspring. Insufficient nutrition and excessive toil have for their results either the death of the embryo, or premature birth, and in any case constitutional feebleness of the child results, later showing itself in diminished resistance to disease or in defect in some organ. In Belgium, in the period 1890-1900, 44.9 in 1,000 births were dead born. Among working people, in industrial centers, the ratio is high. In 1900 in Prussia, out of 1,275,712 births, 39,993 were dead born; in Switzerland in a total of 97,695 births, 3.379 were dead born; in France, of 827,297 births, 39,246 were dead born. Unless sickness insurance is organized to provide support during the latter part of pregnancy and after confinement of the mother, it |