20 WORLD-POWER AND EVOLUTION 



business failures, the labor troubles, the bitter heart-burnings, 

 and the lapses into sin which occur because people's nerves are 

 unstrung. Surprising as it may seem, we shall find that financial 

 depression in the United States is apparently a regular conse- 

 quence of widespread ill health. The lamentable and most ominous 

 failure of the more competent parts of the community to repro- 

 duce themselves and maintain their proportion among the general 

 population is due in part at least to the weakened physique which 

 results from a life of ease and luxury, especially among women. 

 In a thousand other ways health is equally vital to the general 

 welfare. Watch the laborers loafing on their job in the street. 

 If those men had been born with the minds and bodies that they 

 ought to have, and if they were blessed with the perfect health that 

 they ought to enjoy, would they be content witK such dilatory 

 work even though they are employed by the city? Would you, 

 with your quick mind — if you were in perfect health — ^be willing 

 to work so slowly? 



Consider for a moment the actual figures as to health in the 

 United States. In his book on "The Hygiene of the School Child" 

 Terman says that of the 20,000,000 children enrolled in the 

 schools of the United States about 14,000,000 are handicapped 

 by some kind of physical defect. "Not far from 2,000,000 are 

 suffering from a grave form of malnutrition; 10,000,000 have 

 enough defective teeth to interfere seriously with health; at least 

 2,000,000 suffer from obstructed breathing due to adenoids or 

 enlarged tonsils; probably 2,000,000 have enlarged cervical 

 glands which need attention, many of these being tuberculous; 

 at least 10,000,000 are, or have been, infected with tuberculosis, 

 of whom about 2,000,000 will later succumb to the disease; 

 4,000,000 have defective vision; over 1,000,000 have defective 

 hearing; about 1,000,000 have spinal curvature or some other 

 deformity likely to interfere with health; not far from 500,000 

 have organic heart trouble; and at least 1,000,000 are predis- 

 posed to some form of serious nervous disorder." 



