more
outdoor exercise" means that there was no open-air playground for her
school, that "setting up" exercises were forgotten, that recess was
taken up in rushing home, eating lunch, and rushing back again, and
that "after school" was filled up with "helping mother with the
housework." "The office is so much sunnier and I get more air" accounts
for the increase in vitality; and "the people are all so nice," for the
happy expression and initiative which the undiscriminating discipline
at school had crushed out.

[Illustration: BONE TUBERCULOSIS IS ONE OF THE PENALTIES FOR DRY
SWEEPING AND FEATHER DUSTERS]

For such unsanitary conditions crowded sections of great cities have no
apologies to make to rural districts. A wealthy suburb recently learned
that there was overcrowding in every class room, and that one school
building was so unsanitary as to be a menace to the community.
Unadjustable desks, dry sweeping, feather dusters, shiny blackboards,
harassing discipline that wrecks nerves, excessive home study and
subjects that bore, are not peculiar to great cities. In a little
western town a competition between two self-governing brigades for
merit points was determined by the amount of home study; looking back
fifteen years, I can see that I was encouraging anaemic and
overambitious children to rob themselves of play, sleep, and vitality.
Many a rural school violates with impunity more laws of health than
city factories are now permitted to transgress.

After child labor is stopped, national and state child labor committees
will learn that their real interest all the time has been child
welfare, not child age, and will be able to use much of the old
literature, simply substituting for "factory" the word "school" when
condemning "hazardous occupations likely to sap [children's] nervous
energy, stunt their physical growth, blight their minds, destroy their
moral fiber, and fit them for the moral scrap heap."

Many of the evils of school environment the teacher can avert, others
the school trustee should be expected to correct. So far as unsanitary
conditions are permitted, the school accentuates home evils, whereas it
should counteract them by instilling proper health habits that will be
taken home and practiced. Questions such as were asked in Miss North's
study will prove serviceable to any one desiring to know the probable
effect of a particular school environment upon children subject to it.
Especially sho