izing of ways of living found to be conducive
to physical, mental, and moral well-being, and social aids
toward vocational training and guidance.

10. The union of Federal with State and Local efforts for the
general welfare.

=The Interest and Work of Women in This Process of Political
Change.=--In every one of these new forms of approach to individual
life by the general public through law, tax-supported opportunity, or
special grant of official aid, women have played a distinct and a
large part. When, therefore, women entered formally into the body
politic of these United States, they entered into a place of power
already familiar to them in many of its activities. Indeed, they had
helped to outline and to make effective many of those activities and
came into a new relation to them only by virtue of a recognized
access of control over their administration. When government was
merely a restraining or a military power over individual life, there
might be to many minds an incongruity in women assuming voter's
privileges and duties. When government became a means for conserving
and nurturing and developing individual life, mothers, at least, could
be easily seen to have proper part in its functions.

=Health a Social Enterprise.=--To briefly rehearse this list of
political activities is to show marked changes in social ideals. We
have entered upon a crusade against preventable disease and for the
better physical development of all citizens and potential citizens.
This crusade now makes the official Boards of Health, the hospital and
medical service, the nurse's vocation, and the lay volunteer support
of all these, the outstanding features of our community life.
Epidemics used to be considered visitations of an avenging Providence
for the people's sins. So they are in essence and in modern
translation of old ideas, a punishment by Nature for broken laws;
experiences to be ashamed of now that we know how to prevent them.
Deaths of babies, once mysterious dispensations of Infinite power,
have come to mean indictments of community and family for failure to
furnish right conditions for infant life. Deaths of mothers in
childbirth, leaving older children without suitable protection and
care, once thought events to which to be resigned, however sad and
pitiable, are now seen to be preventable calamities for which society
is to blame. Avoidable cripplement and invalidism of workmen, once
considered either th