t of the year.
The purpose of having these families represented in school is not only
to give the children themselves the education which is regarded as a
fundamental right of the American child, but to protect the community
against the social and industrial evils and the dangers that result
from ignorance. Great sacrifices are made by state, individual
taxpayer, and individual parent in order that children and state may be
benefited by education. Almost no resistance is found to any demand
made upon parent or taxpayer, if it can be shown that compliance will
remove obstructions to school progress. If, therefore, by any chance,
we can find at school a test of home conditions affecting both the
child's health and his progress at school, it will be easy, in the name
of the school, to correct those conditions, just as it will be easy to
read the index, because the child is under state control for six hours
a day for the greater part of the years from six to fourteen.[4]

[Illustration: (Facsimile) PHYSICAL RECORD.]

What, then, is this test of home conditions prejudicial to health that
will register the fact as a thermometer tells us the temperature, or as
a barometer shows moisture and air pressure? The house address alone is
not enough, for many children surrounded by wealth are denied health
rights, such as the right to play, to breathe pure air, to eat
wholesome food, to live sanely. Scholarship will not help, because the
frailest child is often the most proficient. Manners mislead, for, like
dress, they are but externals, the product of emulation, of other
people's influence upon us rather than of our living conditions.
Nationality is an index to nothing significant in America, where all
race and nationality differences melt into Americanisms, all responding
in about the same way to American opportunity. No, our test must be
something that cannot be put on and off, cannot be left at home, cannot
be concealed or pretended, something inseparable from the child and
beyond his control. This test it has been conclusively proved in
Chicago, Boston, Brookline, Philadelphia, and particularly in New York
City, is the physical condition of the school child. To learn this
condition the child must be examined and reexamined for the physical
signs called for by the card on page 34. Weight, height, and
measurements are needed to tell the whole story.

When this card is filled out for every child in a class or school or
city,