CHILD STUDY 483 
studying clams! Evidently, the public and congress need to be better 
informed regarding the science of human welfare, and the possibilities 
of its extension and of the practical applications that may be made of it. 
It is certain that researches concerned with children must be of 
much greater importance for the future welfare of the nation, than 
those concerned with adults, because the children have a longer pos- 
sibility of usefulness before them and they are, also, to be the parents 
and trainers of the next generation, while saving and lengthening the 
life of adults and enhancing their industrial, intellectual and moral 
efficiency, can continue for only a comparatively short time. Besides 
this the same amount of effort produces much greater results in plastic 
childhood. ; 
At Clark University in Worcester, which, under the leadership of 
Dr. Hall has been the great center of child study in America, there was 
recently held a conference on child welfare, attended by representatives 
of no less than twenty-seven societies, whose work brought them in con- 
tact with child life. It was the consensus of opinion that there is great 
need for scientific knowledge of children and for the diffusion and 
popularization of what has already been discovered by scientific research 
and found useful in the practical efforts of child welfare societies of all 
kinds. A national society for furthering scientific research, dissemi- 
nation of results and cooperation of all agencies concerned with child 
welfare was, therefore, formed, with Dr. Hall as president. 
The departments of agriculture and the bureau of education are 
ready to do more than they have done along this line, but attempts are 
being made to have a special bureau formed. It is also thought that 
bureaus may be formed in the states and in the larger cities, which shall 
investigate local conditions affecting the welfare of children and the 
best means of helping them. 
Children have been objects of interest and effort since the begin- 
ning of time, but the serious, systematic study of their real character- 
istics has been of very recent origin. They have been regarded as 
small, weak adults, who are to be brought to adult size and strength 
as quickly as possible. It is now proved, however, that a child is no 
more a small adult, than a stalk of corn just out of the ground is like 
the mature stalk with tassel and ear. If all parts of an infant should 
grow in the same proportion he would be a monstrosity, instead of a 
well-developed adult. As a matter of fact, while the body increases 
in height three times, the legs increase five times and the head only 
twice. Every organ and part of the body changes its size in proportion 
to the other parts in developing from infancy to manhood, while the 
rate of such physiological processes as respiration and circulation, 
changes to such an extent that diagnoses of health conditions are made 
on an entirely different basis for infants from that used with adults. 
