OVERWORK FOR CHILDREN 195 



Miss Goldmark quotes from the report of a military ex- 

 amining physician in Germany on a certain factory district in 

 1891. "In the factory villages, where every one works from 

 youth up in the factories, almost all recruits were unfit for 

 service, and I believe that, if this goes on, it will be useless to 

 send recruiting commissions to these communities." 



In the United States evil conditions have not existed long 

 enough in any one place to prove much. In all lands, how- 

 ever, nations are beginning to act on the general belief that 

 overworked and underfed children grow up to be inferior 

 men and women, and that inferior men and women make 

 inferior ancestors. The next chapter will show that steps 

 toward race improvement began to be taken over a hundred 

 years ago. 



