h, she learns what she never learned at school, that sound teeth
help pay the rent. If a girl applicant for working papers has adenoids,
she is asked to look in the mirror and to notice how her lips fail to
meet, how the lower jaw drops, how much better she looks with her jaws
and lips together. She is told that other people breathe through the
nose, and that perhaps the reason she dislikes school and does not feel
as she used to about play is that she cannot breathe through her nose
as she used to. She is shown that her nose is stopped up by a spongy
substance, as big as the end of her little finger, which obstruction
can be easily removed. She is shown adenoids and enlarged tonsils that
have been removed from some other girl, and is so impressed with the
before-operation and after-operation contrast and by the story of the
other girl's rapid increase in wages, that she and her mother both
decide not to wait for the adenoids to disappear by absorption. After
the operation they come back with proof that the trouble is gone, and
get the "papers." Similar instruction is given when defects of vision
seriously interfere with a child's prospects of getting ahead in his
work, or when evidence of incipient tuberculosis makes it criminal to
put a child in a store or factory.

[Illustration: THE GRENFELL ASSOCIATION FINDS MOUTH BREATHERS AT
WORK IN LABRADOR]

No law as yet authorizes the health officer of Rochester to refuse work
certificates to children physically unfit to become wage earners. A
higher law than that which any legislature can pass or revoke, has
given Dr. Goler power over children and parents, namely, interest in
children and knowledge of the industrial handicap that results from
physical defects. This higher law authorizes every health officer in
the United States to examine the school child before issuing a work
certificate, to tell the child and his parents what defects need to be
removed, for what trades he is physically unfitted, what trades will
not increase his physical weakness, and to what trade he is physically
adapted.

We should not forget that a large proportion of our children never
apply for work certificates; some because they never intend to work;
some because they expect to remain in school until sixteen or later;
some because they live on farms, in small towns, or in cities and
states where prohibition of child labor is not enforced. Because there
is no reason for this large proport