status. Combined with medical inspection and sanitary
construction of schoolhouses, this would raise the general health of
the community thirty or forty per cent in five years and fifty to
seventy per cent in ten years.

There has been in some quarters much objection to public effort
towards remedying evils which would not have existed if each family
had lived up to its duties. The community is a larger family, with
greater resources, and can employ investigators to find the means for
greater security. That individual is very foolish who does not
recognize this interaction between community and individual, and who
objects to taking the benefits of the larger knowledge.

To take one of the latest examples of social problems: In every
thousand children in the public schools of any city, probably of the
town also, there are perhaps fifty who are ill-nourished (not
necessarily underfed), ill-clothed, unwashed, and deprived of good air
for sleeping. What is the duty of the public? This is one of the
burning questions of the moment. Send missionary teachers to the
homes, some say, but that is costly; the selection of the suitable
missionary is difficult, and the result may be slight. Others say,
give one good luncheon at the school, for which the children pay in
part or in whole, and make that an education which, by the aid of the
school nurse, will in time affect a change in habit. In short, the
problem is this: Shall the children suffer in childhood and become a
burden on society in adult years, or shall society protect itself from
future expense by community care now? "Because _finding_ diseases and
defects does not protect children unless discovery is followed by
_treatment_, fifty-eight cities take children to dispensaries or
instruct at schoolhouses; fifty-eight send nurses from house to house
to instruct parents and to persuade them to have their families cared
for; 101 send out cards of instruction to parents either by mail or
the children; while 157 cities have arranged special cooperation with
dispensaries, hospitals, and relief societies for giving the children
the shoes or clothing or medical and dental care which is found
necessary."[10]

[10] Bulletin, Bureau of Municipal Research.

Nearly all preventive measures adopted by society and ranked as
paternalism by timid philanthropists are or may be educative and
temporary at the same time. They may be dropped as soon as the end is
gained. The attention of