cture the bricks and construct the great Chinese Wall in
five days. If each one were to build himself a house twenty-five feet
wide, these houses would line both sides of eight streets reaching
across the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific. For each one to
be sick one day is equal to thirty thousand being sick an entire year.

Now, if there are twelve million young men in the United States, we
may estimate that there are an equal number of young women. Although
we cannot calculate accurately the amount of physical force
represented by these young women, there are some things we can tell.
We know that for each one of these young women to be sick one day
means thirty thousand sick one year. Just imagine the loss to the
country, and the gain to posterity if it can be prevented!

Rome endeavored to create good soldiery, but was not able to produce
strength and courage through physical culture of the men alone. Not
until she began the physical education of the women, the young women,
was she able to insure to the nation a race of strong, hardy, vigorous
soldiery. So the health of the young women of to-day is of great
importance to the nation, for upon their vigor and soundness of body
depend to a very great extent the health and capacity of future
generations. We are told that in the State of Massachusetts, in one
year, there were lost twenty-eight thousand five hundred (28,500)
years of time through the illness of working-people by preventable
diseases. Dr. Buck, in his "Hygiene," tells us that one hundred
thousand persons die every year through preventable diseases, that one
hundred and fifty thousand are constantly sick through preventable
diseases, and that the loss to the nation, through the illness of
working-people by diseases that might have been prevented, is more
than a hundred million dollars a year. So we can see that each
individual has a pecuniary value to the nation. You are worth just as
much to the nation as you can earn. If you earn a dollar a day, you
are not only worth a dollar a day to yourself and to your personal
employer, but you are worth a dollar a day to the nation; and if,
through illness, you are laid aside for one day, the nation, as well
as yourself, is pecuniarily the loser.

Young women could not build the houses that would line eight streets
from New York to San Francisco, but, rightly educated, they could
convert each one of these houses into a home, and to found a home and
condu