families and do not of
themselves presume as the cause insufficient income. Of 145
reported for malnutrition, 44 were from families having over $20
weekly.

2. Few of the defects can be corrected by nourishment alone;
plenty of fresh air, outside nourishment at school, or extra
nourishment at home will not entirely counteract the influences of
bad ventilation and bad light in school buildings. Country
children have adenoids, bad teeth, and malnutrition. Plenty of
food will not prevent bad teeth and bad ventilation from causing
adenoids, enlarged tonsils, and malnutrition.

3. Children whose parents have long lived in the United States
need attention quite as much as the recent immigrant.

4. A large part of the defects reported could be produced by
conditions due directly to neglect of teeth.

From twenty such statements of fact and from its experience in _getting
things done_ for one year, the committee drew fifteen practical
conclusions, among which the following deserve emphasis here:

1. The only new thing about the physical defects of school
children is not their existence, but our recent awakening to their
existence, their prevalence, their seriousness if neglected, and
their cost to individual children, to school progress, to
industry, and to social welfare.

2. _Physical deterioration_, applied to America's school children,
is a misnomer. No evidence whatever has been given that the
percentage of children suffering from physical defects in 1907 is
greater than the percentage of children suffering from such
defects in 1857. On the contrary, the small proportion of defects
that are not easily removable, as well as a vast amount of
evidence from medical experience and vital statistics, indicates
that, if a comparison were possible, the children of 1907 would be
found to have sounder bodies and fewer defects than their
predecessors of fifty years ago. If there is an exception to this
statement, it is probably defects of vision, with regard to which
school authorities and oculists seem to agree that confinement in
school for longer hours and more constant application under
unfavorable lighting conditions have caused a marked increase.
Positive evidence as to tendencies will be easily obtained after
thorough physical examination has been carried on for a
generation.

3. The effect of massing facts as to physical defects of school
ch