Report of Missouri Farmers' Week. 185 



multitudes that thronged through the place what St. Louis chari- 

 table institutions and societies, and St. Louis homes, and St. Louis 

 industrial establishments, and St, Louis schools were doing to 

 promote the welfare of children. But the story did not stop there, 

 for the exhibit showed also in shameful pictures and drastic lan- 

 guage what St. Louis as a community and the entire Commonwealth 

 of Missouri were failing to do for the children. Six months before 

 that another equally large child welfare exhibit was conducted in 

 convention hall at Kansas City, and in one day thirteen thousand 

 parents and children crowded in to view the exhibit and to partici- 

 pate in the exercises. There are evidences at other points in the 

 State that public interest in the children's welfare is growing, and 

 many of us believe that it is going to culminate shortly in the en- 

 actment of new laws and the establishment of better institutions 

 for the care of the children. 



Any of you who may have seen the child welfare exhibit, either 

 in St. Louis or Kansas City, I am sure were surprised by the great 

 number of agencies and activities concerned in the proper bringing 

 up of children. Every well-raised boy or girl stands for a good 

 home ; a mother who is free from excessive labor ; a father who has 

 a steady, paying job; city streets that are cleared of temptations 

 and city life without immoral amusements; good libraries and 

 school-teachers of strong character, and a score of other factors 

 equally important. Every child has a right to good health, to 

 sufficient play and freedom from heavy work, and a right to a 

 sound and complete education. Children are naturally dependent, 

 and it is our fault, not theirs, if these rights are taken from them. 

 Nor does the story end there. Society suffers the consequences 

 when the children are denied these natural rights. But what is 

 the best guarantee we can give that children will have these rights 

 secured to them? You all know — a good home. So every law we 

 pass to improve and protect the home is in effect a children's law. 

 The child is the expression of the home. Without children we 

 would have no homes. 



But it is well known to you that we cannot depend upon all 

 homes being normal. The rack of industrial life, of crime and 

 intemperance, of poverty and degeneracy, play havoc with our 

 homes, until it is commonly observed that a large percentage of 

 them are not ideal places in which to raise children. For this rea- 

 son we have passed laws to restrain the passions and evil tenden- 

 cies of men and women, and we have even had to establish immense 

 institutions to care for the dependent, neglected and delinquent 



