It has been shown that 95 per cent. of "backward children" and of mentally deficient children have physical defects which can be remedied, thus improving their mentality as well as their physical health. According to the City Superintendent of Schools, 40 per cent. of the children of the schools of New York are below the grades in which they should be according to their ages. The Department of Health has found that 2 per cent. of all the children thus far examined were mentally deficient, and in nearly all these cases adenoid growths, defects of vision, or other remediable disabilities existed. In the special classes for defectives in Public School 110, 95 per cent. had adenoid growths in the throat.

When the backward child and the mentally deficient child shall receive the special attention which they require at the hands of physicians and teachers, especially when such children shall be taught in special classes or schools by specially trained educators, then only can we say that we have done all that is in our power for these unfortunates. The physical examination of

therefore, is but one step in the right direction.

Moral obliquity, of which truancy is the first manifestation in school life, goes hand in hand with physical defects. Thus, among eighty-three truants examined by the Department of Health in the special Truant School in this city, 87 per cent. were found to have physical defects, in most cases of a remediable character. Truancy, and its kindred, ills, the "street habit," and the "gang habit,"-lead to crime unless speedily checked. The records of the Children's Court in New York and of the similar court in Chicago showed that nearly all the youthful criminals that were brought to these courts were truants, and, what is more, that 85 per cent. of these children were found physically defective.

The source of truancy, therefore, lies chiefly in defects which prevent children. from pursuing their studies. Remove these defects, and the ability to go on with school work will be restored, while the tendency to truancy will be vastly diminished. It is as difficult for a healthy body to do and think wrong as it is for a diseased body to do and

It has been shown that 95 per cent. of "backward children" and of mentally deficient children have physical defects which can be remedied, thus improving their mentality as well as their physical health. According to the City Superintendent of Schools, 40 per cent. of the children of the schools of New York are below the grades in which they should be according to their ages. The Department of Health has found that 2 per cent. of all the children thus far examined were mentally deficient, and in nearly all these cases adenoid growths, defects of vision, or other remediable disabilities existed. In the special classes for defectives in Public School 110, 95 per cent. had adenoid growths in the throat.

When the backward child and the mentally deficient child shall receive the special attention which they require at the hands of physicians and teachers, especially when such children shall be taught in special classes or schools by specially trained educators, then only can we say that we have done all that is in our power for these unfortunates. The physical examination of

therefore, is but one step in the right direction.

Moral obliquity, of which truancy is the first manifestation in school life, goes hand in hand with physical defects. Thus, among eighty-three truants examined by the Department of Health in the special Truant School in this city, 87 per cent. were found to have physical defects, in most cases of a remediable character. Truancy, and its kindred ills, the "street habit," and the "gang habit,"-lead to crime unless speedily checked. The records of the Children's Court in New York and of the similar court in Chicago showed that nearly all the youthful criminals that were brought to these courts were truants, and, what is more, that 85 per cent. of these children were found physically defective.

The source of truancy, therefore, lies chiefly in defects which prevent children from pursuing their studies. Remove these defects, and the ability to go on with school work will be restored, while the tendency to truancy will be vastly diminished. It is as difficult for a healthy body to do and think wrong as it is for a diseased body to do and

expresses it, "Man is responsible for the good that he does,-for the evil, the disease that is in him."

DEFECTIVE CHILDREN AND CHILD LABOR.

Deficient physical conditions and consequent inability to cope with their studies are also responsible for the large number of children who leave school early to enter factories and to form a part of the brutal system of "child labor." The physical examination of a large number of children in the upper four grades of a school on the upper East Side of New York showed that the physical condition of these scholars was far more perfect than in the lower grades. The cream of the school rises to the top, while the worthless sediment falls to the bottom and is removed in the process of the survival of the fittest. The children less well endowed physically leave school early, in most cases three or more years before graduation. In nearly all instances these children are far below the grade in which they should be according to their ages, and throughout their school course they have been backward in their studies and troublesome to their teachers on account of their physical defects. Actual poverty is the cause of leaving school early in but a very small proportion of cases, as was found by a principal who has been following the careers of his scholars for twenty-five years.

A moment's reflection will show the great financial loss to the families of these children through the fact that, leaving school in a low grade, they command but a pittance of wages as unskilled laborers, while upon graduation they could enter far more profitable fields of employment, requiring a better education. The earning capacity of the child that leaves school early is actually diminished 50 per cent. as compared to that of the child physically and mentally perfect. Thus every effort should be made by the State to keep every child at school until his elementary education is completed and until he has acquired a good earning capacity.

EXAMINATIONS VITALLY IMPORTANT.

To sum up, we may say that we have snown beyond peradventure that physical defects exist in about 60 per cent. of all school children in New York; that in most cases these defects are remediable by proper treatment, and that the early discovery of these

defects is the prime factor in the maintenance. of the health of the school children and in enabling them to pursue their studies.

We have shown, furthermore, that backward, mentally deficient, and truant children can be vastly improved by the early recognition of physical infirmities which underlie their mental or moral defects, and that by appropriate treatment, if applied early enough, we can save these children from illiteracy, from drudgery in factories at small wages, or from an almost inevitable criminal career.

In view of these facts what can be more important than a systematic individual physical examination of every school child at stated periods, and what can be of more lasting benefit than the early application of the proper treatment in all cases in which physicai defects are found?

The question as to the maintenance of the school child in perfect health is of such overweening importance that the problem of

race suicide," over which so many wellwishers of the race have grown hysterically enthusiastic, is of little consequence in comparison. The "race suicide idea is based upon the assumption that the average American family should have a larger number of healthy children than the present birthrate shows, an assumption clearly erroneous. As a matter of fact, physical defects go hand in hand with a large number of children, both in the rich and in the poor. The poor are more prolific than the rich, and the number of children in a family by actual count increases as the poverty of the family becomes more poignant.* A very little study of sociology will convince the advocates of the "race suicide" idea that a few perfect children are far better for the nation and the family than a dozen unkempt degenerates, who add pathos to the struggle for existence, and who sink under the inflexible law of the survival of the fittest.

The health of the school child will determine the very warp and woof of the nation's future, and the lessons taught us by the physically defective child should be heeded by every man and woman who has the future of our Republic at heart.

*This is shown, for instance. by the statistics of Bertillon, who found that in Berlin, with an aver age birthrate of 103 children per 1,000 women, the very poor showed a birthrate of 157 children, the comfortable classes showed 96 children, and the very rich only 47 children per 1,000 women in each class.

ON April 11, 1907, there is to be a gath

ering in Pittsburg, that center of material industry, at once remarkable in personnel and in the object which brings this aggregation of notabilities together.

The occasion is not to celebrate the triumphs of iron and steel, the factors that have contributed to the greatness of the city; it is to memorize the conquests of the intellect, things of the mind and spirit. It has been said of the Carnegie Museum: "It aims to make this city a center of scholarship, as it has been of manufactures, and to spread its name as far as science is known and honored." And further: "The Carnegie Museum is already a strong force in Pittsburg, but it aims to be more. It aims to be an educational power equal to the library and second only to the public schools."

The museum proper, under the direction of W. J. Holland, LL.D., is splendidly equipped along the lines of the natural sciences, and its activities touch such fields of museum work as ethnology, archæology, and the useful arts, under which head it is accumulating collections of the textile and fictile arts, wood carving, etc.

It will thus be seen that with its usual enterprise Pittsburg is providing, alongside its wonderful material successes, a means of keeping pace spiritually and mentally with those demands of the human mind that are sure to make themselves felt in any community where wealth exists, and the consequent

Possibly in a city whose mass of toilers are so largely engaged in a round of "special" employments exacted by the manipulation of the particular product it supplies to the world, no mental diversion, as a means of recreation, could be more wholesome or more welcome than that provided by a wellequipped museum.

As a matter of foresight alone, then, this splendid plant is an additional testimony to the wisdom of its founder; for we have seen above what it will aim to do, and it promises to do it with the same thoroughness that has resulted in its material primacy.

We have glanced at the intellectual aims and activities of this so recently established conservatory of science, and we will now speak particularly of some of the art treasures presented under the same auspices.

It is indeed of the art side of the Institute we would somewhat fully speak, for there is a spirit in its administration that seems much alive to the progressive tendencies of the art effort of to-day.

Whatever we may say, further on, in critical comment on the pictures in this collection will be in explanation of the qualities they possess that are in harmony with the best practices of modern painting, thus showing what Pittsburg is doing for the art of the country by inaugurating and pursuing a policy in art so broad and up to date. And it is owing to this fact that we will mention a number of individual works, as exponents