urs at private school, is taxing you without your consent and
doing your child injury that may prove irreparable.

It costs $2.50 to furnish a child with eyeglasses. It costs $25 to $50
to give that child a year's schooling. If the child cannot see right
and fails in his studies, we have lost a good investment and, after one
year so lost, we are out $22.50. In two years we have lost $47.50. But,
what is more serious, we have discouraged that boy. Used to failure in
school, his mind turns to other things. He is made to think that it is
useless for him to try for first place. Perhaps he can play ball, and
excels. He chooses a career of ball playing. Valuable years are lost.

Initiative and competition are not interrupted any more by free
eyeglasses and free operation for adenoids than by free schooling.
There is only one place in the world where there is less competition or
less struggle than among the ignorant, and that is among the ignorant
and unwell. The boy who can't see the blackboard, who can't learn to
spell, who can't breathe through his nose, and can't be interested,
doesn't compete at all with the bright, healthy boy. Remove the
adenoids, give glasses, make interest possible, and fitness to survive
takes a higher level because larger numbers become fit to survive.

Professor Patten says that it is easier to support in the almshouse
than in competitive industry a man who cannot earn more than $1.50 a
day. The question, therefore, regarding European remedies is not, To
what general theory do they belong? but, What will they accomplish? How
do they compare with other remedies of which we know?

CHAPTER XVII

AMERICAN REMEDIES: GETTING THINGS DONE

In New York City there is a committee called the Committee on the
Physical Welfare of School Children. The word "welfare" was used rather
than "condition" because the committee proposed to use whatever facts
it could gather for the improvement of home and school conditions
prejudicial to child welfare. The following programme was adopted:

1. _Study of the physical welfare of school children._

a. Examination of board of health records of children needing
medical, dental, or ocular care, and better nourishment.

b. Home visitation of such children, in order to ascertain
whether their need arises from deficient income or from other
causes.

c. Effort to secure proper treatment, either from parents or
from free cl