s of dirty
teeth. They can make janitors believe that "dry sweeping" or "feather
dusting" may give them consumption, and leave most of the dirt in the
room to make work for the next day; that adjustable desks are made to
fit the child's legs and back, not the monkey wrench; that the
thermometer in the schoolroom is a safer guide to heat needed than a
boiler gauge in the basement; that fresh air heated by coal is cheaper
for the school fund than stale air heated by bodies and by bad breath.
Finally, they can make known to pupils, to parents, to principals and
superintendents, to health officials and to the public, the extent to
which school environment violates the precepts of school hygiene.

If the state requires the attendance of all children between the ages
of five and fourteen at school for five hours a day, for five days in
the week, for ten months in the year, then it should undertake to see
that the machinery it provides for the education of those children for
the greater part of the time for nine years of their lives--the
formative years of their lives--is neither injuring their health nor
retarding their full development.

If the amount of "close-range" work is rapidly manufacturing myopic
eyes; if bad ventilation, whether due to faulty construction or to
faulty management, is preparing soil for the tubercle bacillus; if
children with contagious diseases are not found and segregated; if
desks are so ill adapted to children's sizes and physical needs that
they are forming crooked spines; if too many children are crowded into
one room; if lack of air and light is producing strained eyes and
malnutrition; if neither open air, space, nor time is provided for
exercise, games, and physical training; if school discipline is adapted
neither to the psychology nor the physiology of child or teacher, then
the state is depriving the child of a greater right than the compulsory
education law forces it to endure. Not only is the right to health
sacrificed to the right to education, but education and health are both
sacrificed.

In undertaking to enforce the compulsory education law, to put all
truants and child laborers in school, the state should be very sure for
its own sake that it is not depriving the child of the health on which
depends his future usefulness to the state as well as to himself.

TABLE XI

EFFECTS OF A CHILD LABOR LAW

Increase in Chicago Attendance

Grades 4-9

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