by the police on city
regulations as to alleys and garbage educates the family as to the
general attention to be paid to such things.

The city authorities, on the other hand, are prodded to their work by
well-informed individuals who see the great gain to the community from
certain measures.

The centers of movement, civic and quasi-religious or philanthropic,
are usually the outgrowth of individual effort. The great movements
for betterment--water supply, street cleaning, tenement laws,
etc.--are carried out by community agreement with a common tax outlay.

The clean city means streets of clean houses. The clean house in the
midst of a dirty city may be the match to start a fire of cleansing.

Probably medical inspection in the public school is as good an example
as may be given of helpfulness to the community. No quicker means of
influencing both home and community life may be found, for in five
years it might revolutionize the whole.

School buildings should be so constructed and so managed that they
cannot themselves either produce or aggravate physical defects.
Departments of school hygiene should be organized, not only in every
city, but for every rural school under county and state
superintendents of instruction. The general question of physical
welfare of children involves too many considerations to be
satisfactorily treated by school physician and school nurse alone, or
by busy teachers and principals.

"New York City will spend in 1910 $6,500 for making over twenty rooms
in regular buildings, a first step in an entirely new plan of
ventilation, which will eventually give outdoor air to all children,
sick or well."[8]

[8] Bureau of Municipal Research.

Speaking generally, America is one of the last of the civilized
nations to deal with the subject of the medical inspection of school
children upon a comprehensive and national scheme. But once aroused to
the needs, it is safe to say that the nation will speedily educate
parents to correct such home conditions as reduce the child's ability
to profit from schooling, and to persuade governments to see that safe
homes are provided. It will be easy to convince the taxpayer that it
is cheaper to provide such care than to neglect the future parent and
citizen, for it is easy to prove that medical inspection in our
schools returns large dividends on small investments. Dr. Luther
Gulick says that it seems probable, though only a guess, that the
total ann