olds that these
evils are not by a decree of fate, but are the result of positive
wrong, and he dedicates his "Ten Years' War" as follows--"to the
faint-hearted and those of little faith."

In like manner we call today for more faith in a way out of the slough
of despond, more resolute endeavor to improve social and economic
conditions. We beg the leaders of public opinion to pause before they
condemn the efforts making to teach those means of social control
which may build yet again a home life that will prove the nursery of
good citizens and of efficient men and women with a sense of
responsibility to God and man for the use they make of their lives.

INSTRUCTIVE INSPECTION

Mrs. Richards intended to embody the following material in
Chapter VIII of the second edition. Because of her death it
has seemed best to add it as an appendix.

WHITCOMB AND BARROWS.

CHAPTER X

INSTRUCTIVE INSPECTION[19]

[19] Read before the American Public Health Association at
Richmond, Va., October, 1909.

The checking of wastes of all description is much in the air, but
there is less discussion about WASTE OF EFFORT than might be expected.
Yet effort means time, and saving of time saves lives as well as
money.

Nearly every investigation of sanitary evils leads back to the family
home (or the lack of one), and a great deal of the health authorities'
work is saving at the spigot while there is a hundred times the waste
at the bunghole. The medical inspection of the schools was found to
have little effect without the visiting school nurse, for the parents
did not know how to better conditions and in the majority of cases did
not believe in the need.

Such experience should give the health authorities a cue. Rules and
Regulations should be enforced, but enforced with instruction as to
the means of doing. The WHY is not so easily understood as the student
of sanitary science seems to think. Germs and microbes are empty air
to the street urchins until they have been shown on a screen in a
lecture hall or until cultures have been made in the sight of the
children in a schoolroom. One whole school district of intelligent
parents was converted, many years ago, by giving the children in one
class two Petri dishes each with sterile prepared gelatine, with
directions to open one in the sitting room while it was being swept,
and two hours after the room had been thoroughly dusted to open the
othe