es only forty-five or thirty per cent for other things, and
the pennies must be carefully counted to cover fuel, light,
amusements, education, books, insurance, or investments. Something
that the family would like must be left out--no matter what, providing
only it does not injure their efficiency as wage-earners, as
comfortable human beings.

The sensation of comfort or satisfaction is so completely a psychic
factor that the school training has a great chance to affect after
life. The child can acquire the habit of being more comfortable in
plain, washable, clean clothes, with clean hands, than in dirty,
ragged furbelows. This habit once thoroughly acquired is not likely to
be quickly lost. Provision for clean hands is a necessity in school,
and ways of making a small amount of soap and water serve may also be
taught. All the while, care is to be taken not to introduce
unnecessarily expensive materials or to inculcate over-refined
notions.

Sound instruction as to dangers of transference of saliva, of nose
discharge, etc., can be given without also giving the despair of
impossible achievement.

The teaching in the classes must have this practical bearing on daily
life. It is insisted on here because unclean hands are the chief
source of infectious disease.

Instead of blaming water supplies, dusty streets, or even contagion by
the breath, sanitarians are everywhere putting emphasis upon the
actual contact of moist mucus with milk and other food, in preparation
or in serving. It is not a supercilious notion to examine tumblers
for finger marks, or to object to the habit of wetting the finger with
saliva in turning leaves of books. These little unclean acts are the
unconscious habits that cling to a person in spite of education from
reading. The greatest service to be done today in improving the health
of the community is in the application of the principles which may be
summed up in the phrases--fresh air all the twenty-four hours, clean
hands the livelong day, the free use of the handkerchief to protect
from contamination of mouth and nose.

All these small personal habits should be taught in the earliest
months of life, _i. e._, in the home; but if the child reaches school
untaught, then in defense of the whole community the school must
insist upon teaching them.

CHAPTER VII

_Stimulative education for adults. Books, newspapers,
lectures, working models, museums, exhibits, moving
pictu