s still more difficult to
insure proper food, skilled oculists, dentists, surgeons, and
physicians. No one was clear as to how the problem was to be solved by
small cities and rural districts, whose needy children are no less
entitled to public aid simply because their numbers are smaller. Great
as were the difficulties, however, the committee saw that difficulties
are in themselves no reason for not doing the right thing. On the
other hand, if doing things at school is wrong, if school meals fail to
correct and remove physical defects, great social and educational wrong
would result from New York's setting an example that would not only
misdirect funds and attention in that city, but would undoubtedly lead
other cities to move in the wrong direction. Right could be hastened,
wrong could be prevented more effectually by facts than by any amount
of theory. School meals had been made a political issue in England. The
arguments supporting them were stronger than any possible arguments
against them, except proof that they would be less effective in helping
children than other means that might be proposed. If the American
people must choose between sickly, unteachable, dull children without
school meals, on the one hand, and bright, teachable, healthy children
plus school meals, on the other hand, they will not hesitate because of
expense or eighteenth-century objections to "socialism."

During one year of investigation and of _getting things done_ the
committee has prepared three studies for publication: (1) a report on
the home conditions of fourteen hundred school children of different
nationalities, found by school physicians to have defects of vision,
breathing, hearing, teeth, and nourishment; (2) an examination of fifty
schools--curriculum, buildings, home-study requirements, play space and
playtime, physical culture--in an attempt to answer the question, How
far does school environment directly cause or aggravate physical
defects of school children; (3) a comparative study of methods now
employed in a hundred cities to record, classify, and make public
significant school facts.

The results of the first year's work prove conclusively that physical
defects are not caused solely by the inability of parents to pay for
proper food. Among the twenty significant facts reported by the
committee are the following:

1. Physical defects found in public schools are, for the most
part, such as frequently occur in wealthy