Imperial Valley press., 1912-11-02

speaker on these same topics. He is a
fellow of the American Academy of
Medicine and a member of the Asso
citation of American Naturalists.l
First, because it embodies exactly
what we have been hoping and dream
ing and praying for for years. Sec
ond, because it brings into practica.
politics a class of questions and issues
which for the first time the man in
the street and the woman in the homo
are really interested in and can un
derstand and which may even come
within the intelligence of politicians
1t is a great relief after this per-
petual chatter backward and forward
and milling round and round on ques
tions upon which no one ever could be
proved wrong, like the currency and
the tariff and the rights of the states.
The next reason is that the platform,
really gets right down to the rights
and health and happiness of men, wo
men and children. That is what gov
ernments are really for, but no ON
would guess it by the way that they
have been administered the last halt
century.
We have discovered that health is
only just another name for efficiency
in a nation as in a man, and that by
properly feeding and playing and rest
ing the human machine, we can in
crease our working capacity as a ma
tion at least 35 per cent The whole
burden of the great world congress of
hygiene, which lately met at Wash
ington, was good, progressive doctrine.
1t was made up of not merely health
officers and professional sanitarians,
but the greatest scientists of the world,
lab ratory workers in biology and bac
teriology and chemistry, and the mes
sage of them all in their addresses
was, What is the use of our having
discovered all these things about pro-
tecting human health and increasing
human efficiency and happiness unless
we are allowed to put them into prac-
tice upon the whole people? Until we
can make our discoveries useful to the
mass of our fellows we shall feel that
we have failed"
1T is a pitiful thing to have to say
in such a wonderfully rich and pros
porous country, but it is well with
in the truth that from 25 to 40 per
cent of all of our children do not
really get enough to eat in the sense
of a rich, adequate ration to grow up
on" They get enough food, but they
do not get the right kind of food
meat and butter and milk and sugar
and eggs and cream. Part of this il
due to ignorance or misunderstanding
of what is needed in children's diets,
the accursed worship of starch and ce-
reals which has slain more innocents
than a thousand molochs, but good
deal is due to the plain and disagree
able fact that 40 per cent of the child
rem of this country have to be brought
UP on an income of less than $500
q year for the whole family and 60
per cent on less than $3.50. What that
spells in this era of high cost of liv-
ing needs no soothsayer to interpret
35 per cent of the wealth of the coun-
try in the idle hands of per cent OF
our people, and IS per cent of the work
ers with less than 80 per cent of the
wealth to go round among them-it
looks to plain, impractical doctors and
scientists as if a board of equaliza-
ton was called for. This is not social
sense.
The protection of child labor, the es-
tablishing of minimum wage for wo-
men, so that they shall be able to live
wholesomely and happily without be-
ing tempted in a way that no woman
in a community calling itself civilized
ought to be tempted, are all part of
the same great program. The eight
hour day is now demanded on physio-
logical and biological grounds by ply
sicians and sanitarians everywhere just
as emphatically as it has been by the
labor unions. Any man or woman who
works more than that number Of hours
out of the "a is steadily piling up in
his system deadly fatigue poisons, the
accumulation of which slowly but in
cvitably bring him to the scrap heap
before As years of age. Child and wo-
man labor and long hours are real race
suicide.
For he lnferiOr