Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 77.djvu/489

Rh 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 possibility 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 contact 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, dissemination 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 beginning of time, but the serious, systematic study of their real characteristics 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.