We have got to find what this failure is.
Note.—The Annual Report for 1915 of the Chief Medical Officer of the Board of Education has been issued since this chapter was written. The conditions have not materially changed since the previous year. Ten per cent. of all the children attending the Elementary Schools suffer from malnutrition, due largely to unsuitable and insufficient food. There is still a large amount of uncleanliness—the returns show about 16 per cent. of the children have dirty heads, and 15 per cent. dirty bodies.
A further evil has arisen from the greatly increased employment of children of school age; during one year 45,000 children have left school before the usual age, and 15,000 are temporarily employed in agriculture. In addition, more children are working as “half-timers” and as workers out of school hours. This wasteful employment of the young life of the future must, as the Report states, lead to physical and mental deterioration.
PART II
THE MATERNAL INSTINCT IN THE MAKING
“But what is the use of this history, what is the use of all this minute research? I well know that it will not produce a fall in the price of paper, a rise in that of crates of rotten cabbages, or other serious events of that kind, which cause fleets to be manned and set people face to face intent on one another’s extermination. The insect does not aim at so much glory. It confines itself to showing us life in the inexhaustible variety of its manifestations; it helps us to decipher in some small measure the obscurest book of all—the book of ourselves.”—Henri Fabre.