The Bismarck tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, N.D.) 1916-current, 1925-04-29
FUTURE OF NATION DEPENDS
UPON CONSERVATION OF CHILD.
DR.. HEDCER SAYS IN ADDRESS
Community Must Organize to
Care Properly For Future
Generation to Make Sound
and Sane Democracy, Fam
Gus Woman Physician De-
clares in Speech Here

"The community must organize for
the conservation of the child SO
that he nay be properly prepared
for participating citizenship in our
demCcracy,> declared DR.. Caroline
\ Hedger of Chicago last night before
Il JOINT public meeting at the Munich
pal Auditorium of the State Nurses
Association and the State Council
of Health. Her address on what
the Community Owes the Child" fol-
lowed Il brief welcome by Governor
A. G. Sorlie to the nurses of the
state, meeting here in annual con-
vention, and health playlet and
musical program.
The community owes to the child
its future;" the speaker said. "You
can go into your schools today and
idea Of the kind Of United States
less we take up the burden of child
health and go at it sanely and
thoroughly.
If you 90 into your schools you
will see certain proportion Of very
skinny children, of rickets. of bow
legs, of crooked backs, quite lot
of rotten teeth and other defects.
You will see a number of over-stimu-
lated, high geared, restless, unGuiet
children. That is not the kind we
want in the United States tomorrow.
We do not want to build any more
insane asylums than we have got.
How can we get this thing we
want-a sound, sane United States ?
What has the community got to do
to the child? The first thing which
the community owes to the child is
the right to be well born, so that he
may be a part of the democracy.
We pay very little attention to
the birth of the feeble-minded here
in the United States and few have a
lot OF them. In my own state. for
instance, few years ago l tried to
get child into the one institution
for the feeble-minded that the state
had. I found there was waiting
list of 1900, and that was by no
means the whole feeble-minded popu-
lation of the state. We cannot carry
burden like that.
LET US imagine. that this child
has been we'll born. What does the
community owe that we'll born child ?
1t owes the child such program that
1T can 60 through into participating
citizenship, which includes earning
ones living, taking ones part in the
community, not being a burden, but
sharing in the drudgerv of demo-
cracy, which we have none of US
learned. Besides that, the person to
take part in real democracy, has to
replace himself in the state, which
means parenthood as part of citi-
zenship. That demands certain STAN
dards.
''There is one other thing in pre-
pairing the child to take part in the
democracy and that is to give that
child such level of vitality and
health that after these essentials are
done, he may grow soul. The mo-
dern psychologist won't admit we
have soul. He hates even to admit
we have mind. But belong to the
older generation; l believe in that
obsolete thing called soul; and by
growing = soul in the child l mean
developing that part of his person
ality that is fed by beauty and that
can take stored wisdom and use it.
"As soon as we think of the COM
munity in relation to the child we
Immediately begin to see the child
in the light of the long haul of par
tieipating citizenship. How can we
make that child run efficiently fifty
wears from n0w? Immediately we
become aware that no one person
can do this alone; it is partnership
arrangement with three partners in
yolved: the family, the school, and
the whole community.
eve expect the family to produce
the child and bring it to school. We
shuttle children in, unsorted, un-
graded, not much done for them,
some Of them pretty skinny, and
CONTINUED on page three)