A SOCIAL POLICY TOWARD DEPENDENTS 831 



All children must complete the first eight years of the common 

 school curriculum and attain a certain standard of education before 

 they are permitted to engage in bread-winning occupations, and 

 none under sixteen years should be wage-workers unless this standard 

 has been reached. 



All children, when they begin work, should be examined by a 

 public physician, and held back from intense labor if in weight, 

 stature, and development of muscles and nerves they are dwarfed. 

 Physicians and nurses should be charged with the duty of seeing that 

 school-children are kept in good health. 



All defective, deaf, and subnormal children, as well as the crippled, 

 should have proper separate and special instruction. 



Boards of education should provide playgrounds and vacation 

 schools, under careful supervision, in order, to prevent the evils of 

 idleness, misdirected energy, and vicious associations. 



Public libraries should extend their branch work, not only to 

 different districts of the city, but, by means of home library agencies, 

 into the very homes of the poor; and the easy and pleasant use of 

 the English language should thus be promoted. 



The street occupations of boys should be carefully regulated 

 and supervised, and the employment of girls in public ways should 

 be prohibited. 



Boys under the age of sixteen years should not be permitted to 

 labor in mines or with dangerous machinery. 



If parents and other adults are in any way responsible for the 

 delinquency of children, they should be held penally responsible. 



At the same time, the curriculum of the schools should be so 

 planned as to lead by a natural transition from the play and study 

 of childhood to the specialized industries of maturity, by means of 

 evening schools, technical instruction for apprentices, regulation 

 of hours and shifts, so that youth may lay a broad foundation for the 

 specialization of the factory and mill. 



Among the methods of preventive philanthropy is that of new 

 applications of the principle of averaging risks or " insurance." 

 The only nation which has thus far developed a system as com- 

 prehensive as social need and as our present social science justify 

 is Germany, and any discussion which ignores that splendid system 

 must be regarded as tardy and provincial. No doubt each country 

 must construct its own system, but any legislature which 

 neglects German experience and success falls short of the best 

 wisdom. 



Sickness being one of the chief causes of dependence, all recent 

 improvements in hygiene and sanitary science, with their practical 

 applications in municipalities, must be counted among the direct 



