American Agriculturist 
FARM—DAIRY—MARKET—GARDEN—HOME 
“Agriculture is the Most Heaithfui, Most Useful and Most Noble Employment of Man’’—Washington 
Reg. U. S. Pat. Off. Established 1842 
Volume 111 For th® Week Ending January 6, 1923 Number 1 
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Health Is Fundamental To Happiness 
A Strong Body—A Necessary Team-Mate of a Trained Mind 
E very woman has many reasons for 
loving and caring for her home. One 
I of the most important of these is 
I that the home is the nest where she 
cherishes her children until they finally 
tumble over the edge into the wide world. 
But little birds become fledglings before they 
leave the nest forever, and little children be¬ 
come school children before they grow up 
and found homes of their own. If the mother 
birds could shoo away every marauding dog 
and cat and boy while the fledglings were 
testing their wings, how happy they would 
be! And yet what small thought human 
fathers and mothers give to the schools 
where their children spend a large part of 
their time. 
Health and Happiness! They should be 
the natural right of every child. The school 
laws in this country guarantee to our children 
at least an elementary education, but as one 
great educator has said ‘‘What shall it profit 
a child if he gain the whole world of knowl¬ 
edge and lose his health?” What can you 
and you and you do to help your school give 
your children and your- neighbors’ children 
strong bodies as well as trained minds? 
Well, there are a great many ways, and the 
Child Health Organization of America has 
been helping both city and country mothers to 
apply them. This organization has ppved 
that children really can be as enthusiastic 
about health as about games, races, and dolls. 
The first step in introducing a health 
program into your school is to visit the 
school. It works on the same principle as 
Aunt Martha’s recipe for making squirrel 
pie:—“F i r s t you 
catch your squirrel!” 
Three thousand women throughout New 
York State have already done this initial 
thing. To give them an idea of the questions 
to ask and the conditions to notice, the 
League of Women Voters gave each visitor 
a set of questions made out from suggestions 
of Dr. S. Josephine Baker, the noted child 
health specialist. 
This army of mothers was eager to start 
out with the survey, because they felt that 
country children had as much right to good 
health conditions as those of congested New 
York City, which Dr. Baker has helped make 
a safer place for the health of children than 
many farming, communities. 
So three thousand women, armed^ with 
their list of questions, visited one-third of 
all the schoolhouses in the State. Some of 
the schools were in their own district and 
some in neighboring districts. One woman 
exclaimed when she inspected the building 
in her own community, “I taught in this 
school twenty-seven years ago; it is now, 
except for a few minor improvements, prac¬ 
tically unchanged.” 
Before the survey began, the school au¬ 
thorities were convinced that the women 
were really not out to find fault with the 
schoolroom, but to help make it the best place 
for their children. The teachers therefore, 
welcomed their visitors and w6re happy to 
answer the questions. For many years they 
had wanted the mothers and fathers to come 
to the schoolroom and assist them. Now 
they saw the beginning of interest on the 
part of the community. 
Checking Up on Health Conditions 
Direct questions were asked about all sorts 
of health precautions. Some examples were: 
“How often are physical examinations made, 
and are reports sent to the parents?” “Is 
there a school nurse and does she visit the 
children in their homes?” “Are there scales 
in the school and how often are the 
children weighed?” “Is the school¬ 
room clean and who cleans it?” 
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ELIZABETH INQtWBRArtDT 
The women were surprised to find that in 
a very large proportion of rural schools no 
physical examination was made. In others, 
only a very few minutes was given to each 
child. One teacher confessed that the doctor 
lifted her pupils and then guessed the weight. 
In another school the “examination” was 
made over the telephone. Even in cases of 
thorough examination, the investigators 
found, parents sometimes neglected to 
remedy defects which the doctor reported, 
and so the doctor naturally thought time had 
been wasted. 
These mothers soon realized that physical 
handicaps of adult life such as indigestion, 
deafness, poor eyesight and bad teeth could 
be overcome through a careful physical ex¬ 
amination in the schools and the right kind 
of follow-up to get rid of the defects that 
were discovered. 
Making Children Want Health 
The teaching of good health habits was 
found to be a new study in many of the 
schools. This was a problem which puzzled 
some teachers, who had been told to teach 
the pupils the names of the muscles and of 
the teeth, molar, pre-molar and so on, ad 
infinitum. They were now trying to interest 
children in health habits such as drinking 
plenty of milk, cleaning the teeth and going 
to bed early; but in some rural schools the 
teacher could not see the value of teaching 
the importance of washing the hands before 
eating, for instance, when the schools had 
no water supply, and during the winter, 
water could not even be carried from a neigh¬ 
bor’s well. On the other hand, in many cases, 
teadhers were making heroic progress 
against heavy odds in rousing the desire for 
health among their children. 
The answers to the questions obtained by 
these three thousand women have been 
published, and any mother or father may ob¬ 
tain a copy through the New York State 
League of Women Voters, Grand Central 
{Continued on page 13 ) 
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rOURTH YEAR "TKENTOn.N.J, 
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