ses or not; free dental care; free
surgical treatment; free rides and outings during summer and winter;
country children to visit the metropolis, city children to visit
country and village; free treatment in the country of all children
whose parents are consumptives; free rides on street cars to and from
school; city-owned street railways that will prevent congestion by
making the country accessible; city-built tenements to prevent
overcrowding, dark rooms, insufficient air and light; free coal, free
clothes, free rent for those whose parents are unable to protect them
properly against hunger and cold. Every one of these remedies is
attractive. Every one is being tried somewhere, and can be justified on
emotional, economic, and educational grounds, if we think only of its
purpose. Let us view them with the eyes of their advocates.

Would it not be nice for country children to know that toward the end
of the school year they would be given an excursion to the largest city
of their state, to its slums, its factories, parks, and art galleries?
They would grow up more intelligent about geography. They would read
history, politics, sociology, and civil government with greater
interest. They would have less contracted sympathies. They might even
decide that they would rather live their life in the spacious country
than in the crowded, rushing city.

City children, on the other hand, would reap worlds of physical benefit
and untold inspiration from periods of recreation and study in the
country, with its quiet, its greens and bronzes and yellows, its birds
and animals, its sky that sits like a dome on the earth, its
hopefulness. Winter sleigh rides and coasting would give new vigor and
ambition. Why spend so much on teaching physiology, geography, and
nature study, if in the end we fail to send the child where alone
nature and hygiene tell their story? Why tax ourselves to teach history
and sociology and commercial geography out of books when excursions to
the city and country will paint pictures on the mind that can never be
erased? What more attractive or more reasonable than appetizing, warm
meals, or cool salads and drinks for the boys and girls who carry
their little dinner pails and baskets down the long road where
everything runs together in summer and everything freezes in winter?
One needs little imagination to see the "smile that won't come off,"
health, punctuality, and school interest resulting from the school
me