o be made. The man who
asserts himself as free from race trammels is snuffed out as a
factor--a blighted blossom fallen to earth and trodden under foot. To
the student of biological evolution, the individual is as a mere pin
point on the chart of community advance, for surely society grows
according to evolutionary law. "As certainly as Nature gives the poor
child its chance of a good life, so certainly do the circumstances of
slum environment rob it forthwith of its birthright--it is not
uncommon to find more than half the children of three years of age
hanging on to life with marks of disease and undergrowth firmly
implanted on their tender frames. Yet, practically, none of this is
inherited in the true sense; it is the victory of evil human devices
in their endeavor to cheat Nature of her own. If ever there was a
mission in the world worthy of the most strenuous service, it is to
wrest back this victory, be it out of pity for suffering children or
for the very welfare and existence of the nation.

"The schools have made their beginning; the _homes_ have not yet
started; they wait the impulse from without. It is for voluntary,
intelligent opinion to get to work on the home, and never to relax
until a race of parents has arisen which knows no other duty to the
state than to rear with heart and brain the children which have been
given to them. Then we shall hear no more about physical
degeneracy."[13]

[13] Dr. H. M. Eichholz, Inspector of Schools. Paper before
Conference of Women Workers, London, 1904.

Hope for the future is to be found in the conclusions of the
immigration commission, that in one generation certain marked changes
in stature and in head measurements have taken place in the children
of immigrants of various nationalities, such changes as have hitherto
been considered as the result of centuries. The commissioners credit
the better environment and larger opportunities with these indications
of increasing intellectuality and mental force.

Most human efficiency is the result of habits rather than of innate
ability. These habits of mind, as well as of body, are developed by
the home life at an early age. The home is responsible for the
upbringing of healthy, intelligent children. Here is the place for
fostering the valuable and suppressing the harmful traits. The school
can never take the place of the home in this. With the large classes
of the public schools, the teacher should not be asked t