INDUSTRIAL AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS 45 



wilted and specked. No pen can do justice to this 

 land of abundance though half a score of hungry 

 children could. 



With such an abundant food supply and with so 

 rich a soil, every living creature, man included, 

 had a strong bony and muscular structure. So 

 among the many things for which I am thankful 

 is the circumstance that my boyhood was spent 

 in that land of well-balanced plenty before the 

 cream of the soil had been filched from it. Dr. 

 Thomas D. Wood, formerly the Professor of 

 Hygiene at Stanford University, now at Columbia 

 University, Teachers College, once informed me 

 that the students of Stanford University who were 

 born and reared in the State of California were 

 markedly taller and heavier on the average than 

 those from the East. What complexions, what 

 bloom on the cheeks, these western women have, 

 where hats are dispensed with most of the time 

 during the nine summer months ! What a firm, 

 elastic stride, that carries them over the foothills 

 and up the mountain side, through tangled glen 

 and stony canyon with the minimum of fatigue 

 and the maximum of joy that only comes from re- 

 serve physical power. Unquestionably the quality 

 of foods gives size and strength, health and vigor, 

 both to mankind and to domesticated animals. 



