FORTY-FIFTH ANNUAL REPORT. 161 



provemeut. Meu and women are being educated to be leaders in guid- 

 ing and directing the unskilled mind and band of our home-makers. 

 Clubs are being formed for the express purpose of learning better 

 methods in the home. Mother's clubs, parents and teachers clubs are 

 formed to study the problem of the child. Community centers are 

 evervAvhere being fostered to bring co-operation between the home, 

 school and church. Out of all this agitation and etTort much good must 

 result. 



None too soon have all these forms of education and thought develop- 

 ment entered into the life of the American home, for present-day con- 

 ditions are far from ideal. We can only correct that which is evil in 

 our mode of thought and action b}^ substituting that which is good. 

 So to grow along any line of effort we must sometimes drag out our 

 faults and short comings, and face them squarely and conscientiously 

 and cultivate a desire for their uprooting and elimination from our 

 lives and our homes. 



Serious charges can be preferred against our homes when divorce is 

 so prevalent and rapidly on the increase. Certainly there is a cause 

 back of every divorce and must not these causes be made known if our 

 homes of the future are to guard against it. 



Something is radically wrong in regard to the knowledge possessed 

 by our home-makers when ill health is more common among our people 

 than good health. Dietetical knowledge together with good cooking 

 is the crying need of the day. No greater need have we as a nation 

 than to have that knowledge possessed by our home-makers. 



Let me quote from one of our best health journals: 



"Race degeneracy is rampant in the world." 



''The care of the insane, criminals and defectives costs the State 

 more than the education of the sane," 



"A third of a million of babies die annually — one-fourth of all babies 

 born die before a year old." 



''The death rate from heart disease and kidney trouble has more than 

 doubled in thirty years." 



"Centenarians are becoming rarer every year." 



''The birth rate is fast falling off and at the present rate of decline 

 will be zero at the end of a century." 



Then again let me quote from a bulletin issued by the Equitable 

 Life Insurance Company under the heading: "Another Kind of Race 

 Suicide." 



There are in this country 20,000,000 school children or twenty per- 

 cent of tlie whole population. Seventy-five per cent of these children 

 are suffering from some partial or completely remediable defects, which 

 are more or less interfering with their physical, mental and moral ad- 

 vancement. 



500,000 have organic heart disease. 



1,000,000 have spinal curvature, etc. 



1,000,000 have tuberculosis. 



1,000,000 have defective hearing. 



5,000,000 have defective vision. 



5.1)00,000 have malnutrition. | 



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