should not be a state in the union without compulsory-education laws, and those who have come into our midst from other countries should not only speak but read and write the English language. In states in which there is no compulsory-education law the club women have been actively interested in campaigns to effect such legislation. In Maryland, in particular, vigorous work has been carried on during the past year. The Federation contributed definitely to the success of the Compulsory Education Bill which became law in 1916.

In the southern states, notably in Kentucky, the women have been working in the campaign for the elimination of illiteracy among the Englishspeaking whites in the sparsely settled sections of the country. We have indorst the Smith-Bankhead Bill, and by resolutions at the biennial convention have committed ourselves to work for the elimination of illiteracy.

In the larger cities we have contributed to the work of Americanizing the foreign population. Massachusetts has had an active special Americanization Committee with much good work to its credit. In California the state chairman of education has been a member of the State Commission of Immigration and Housing, and some of the most stimulating and helpful Americanization material publisht is sent out by this Commission.

With the importance which the war has attacht to all agricultural pursuits has come a largely increast appreciation of the significance of the rural school, and it is a pleasure to report that apparently in no other single cause are so many clubs enlisted. This service covers a wide range of activities, and almost every state in the Union reports some type of work. The women are closely in touch with state departments of public instruction and with state university extension departments, so that what they do has local significance and is well directed. We regard it as of the utmost importance that our different federations and clubs ally themselves closely with the schools of the rural districts. The rural school stands in a very fundamental relation to our nation's welfare.

Closely allied with the foregoing activities has been the work undertaken with a view to meeting the health requirements for rural schools found in Dr. Wood's Report on Health Conditions. This has meant necessarily increast appropriations for school purposes, and in many cases the program. of the clubs has included a definite campaign for increast school revenues.

In spite of the pressure which the war has brought upon all sections of the country we are glad to report that scholarship funds have been maintained in almost every state in the country and in many cases have been increast. In addition to this, different clubs have distributed leaflets in the schools, giving reasons why it is a form of patriotic service to remain in school as long as possible, because the country is going to need trained and educated citizens more than ever after the war is won.

The new committee in the department has concerned itself with kindergarten extension and has been successful in forming special committees in

several of the states. In Texas and Maine the club women have contributed to the passage of more progressive kindergarten laws.

At the convention held at Hot Springs we were honored by the presence of the President of the National Education Association, who spoke to us upon Americanization. Mrs. Bradford also indicated to us briefly the purpose of the joint Commission which has been studying the national emergency in education, and we shall await with interest the findings of this Commission. The women of the General Federation may be depended upon to support those school authorities who attempt to modify their procedure in accordance with the recommendations made in the report.

Never before have we workt so well under the guidance of the educational leaders in our several states, and never have we joined forces with other organizations to such a degree as we have during the past year. In this time of national testing there are great pieces of work to be done for which no single organization is adequate, and the value of our service is often greatest when we combine forces with other organizations, accepting definite and detailed responsibilities and working always under the guidance of those who see educational problems with a broader and clearer vision than ours can possibly be.

GUARDING THE SCHOOLS IN WAR TIME

MRS. O. SHEPARD BARNUM, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON COORDINATION OF OUTSIDE ACTIVITIES

(Paper read by Mrs. Addison W. Moore)

The Committee on the Coordination of Outside Activities of the Department of School Patrons of the National Education Association was assigned the task of finding out what volunteer organizations-particularly organizations of women-were doing to aid the schools. Experience had shown that in some communities stimulation of outside activities on behalf of the schools was greatly needed, while in other communities there was waste and confusion due to overlapping.

With the first shock of war the assigned task obviously became superfluous, because all organizations, professional and volunteer, concentrated attention and activities on helping to get our national forces to the front, and helping to supply their every need. The schools, the teachers, the clubs, and other organizations with one accord have workt with all war organizations.

The second year of the war, however, has brought a keen realization of another most profound problem. The winning of the titanic worldstruggle for the safety of our nation and the safety of civilization in the future cannot be accomplisht in very truth unless we save all our children now-the children who are the nation of the future; unless furthermore

we secure for all the children of the nation the education by which alone the hard-won heritage of civilization can be transmitted.

The Children's Bureau of the United States Department of Labor has been keenly alive to this problem and has workt out masterly plans for its solution in cooperation with the Department of Child Welfare of the Woman's Committee, Council of National Defense. The second year of the war, April 6, 1918, to April 6, 1919, is to be known as "Children's Year," and the plan indicated has received the sanction of our President, who says:

Next to the duty of doing everything possible for the soldiers at the front, there could be, it seems to me, no more patriotic duty than that of protecting the children who constitute one-third of our population.

The success of the efforts made in England in behalf of the children is evidenst by the fact that the infant death-rate in England for the second year of the war was the lowest in her history. Attention is now being given to education and labor conditions for children by the legislatures of both France and England, showing that the conviction among the Allies is that the protection of childhood is essential to winning the war.

I am very glad tnat the same processes are being set afoot in this country, and I heartily approve the plan of the Children's Bureau and the Woman's Committee of the Council of National Defense for making the second year of the war one of united activity on behalf of children, and in that sense a children's year.

The President has exprest the hope that the Children's Year "will not only see the goal reacht of saving 100,000 lives of infants and young children, but that the work may so successfully develop as to set up certain irreducible minimum standards for the health, education, and work of the American child."

In the Children's Year Leaflet, No. 3 (Bureau publication No. 40), will be found carefully workt-out plans, especially for young children under six. Much is indicated also for children from six to sixteen. Miss Lathrop stresses the enforcement of child labor laws, and attention to rural districts. She stresses also community recreation, particularly "patriotic recreation week" for the last week in August. Health is emphasized thruout, and proper provision for mothers and for home conditions. Compulsory school attendance thruout the legal age and vocational supervision thruout the critical period thereafter are urged.

Commissioner P. P. Claxton has pointed out a number of important ways in which schools and school children should be guarded during the war. The care of the health of children of school age and the "great need for an increase in school revenues" are most convincingly urged. He says in part:

It is now necessary to increase very largely the school revenues in order to keep the schools up to their former standards. It is a case of being necessary to run very fast in order to stand still.

The school revenues are not adequate for war times, and almost everywhere the better teachers are leaving for other occupations.

In some places appropriations and tax levies are being increast, but reports of smaller appropriations and the lowering of tax rates come from many places.

Workers for the schools and for child welfare during the past year report great difficulty in finding helpers; those usually able and willing are now engrost in doing everything possible for the soldiers at the front. Yet the other "patriotic duty" must be fulfilled for "protecting the children," for "united activity on behalf of children."

Clearly the Department of School Patrons must mobilize the two or three millions of members in its affiliated organizations and must enlist all other volunteer organizations to help guard the schools and protect the children, and to help fulfil all the expert plans of the Children's Year.

CONSERVING THE HEALTH OF SCHOOL CHILDREN

SARAH M. HOBSON, CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON SCHOOL HEALTH
(Paper read by Mrs. Grace P. Andress)

The child comes into the world not by his own will but by the will of others. He has a right to demand safety from gross physical and spiritual poison.

It is scarcely to our credit as a nation that we cannot be aroused to the necessity of conserving the health of children until child life becomes an economic problem.

This Association should go on record actively to support the Children's Year, and to follow up registration by stated conferences with mothers and children. These conferences will disclose bad living conditions-food and housing; the disproportion of wages to wholesome living; the factor of ignorance and vice in scholastic record. They will lay bare community shortcomings, the inaccessibility of skilled medical aid except thru the charity of a public dispensary, the practical impossibility at present of giving every child a generous daily portion of clean raw milk, the indifference of the municipality to unsanitary housing, the moral turpitude of social conditions in recreation.

Food not measured by calories alone should be provided-food for growth as well as for energy.

War-time housing means lodgers to eke out the family income. Lodgers mean limited air space and loss of individual privacy. Lodgers mean more intimate exposure to communicable diseases-overcrowding of the body.

Tuberculosis, that scourge of early maturity, frequently has its inception in early childhood. Examiners in this campaign for child welfare should be instructed to give particular attention to this opportunity for discovering such errors of life and environment as predispose to this disease.

Speeding up on war service is unnecessary. There has been in some schools a deplorable loss in intellectual training and mental poise from the speeding up in war-time school activities. This is overcrowding of the spirit.

A campaign for the health conservation of children is not particularly spectacular. Educational campaigns do not lend themselves to glitter and applause. There is, however, a wonderful possibility of improving the quality of our citizenship if we begin with the children.

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON VOCATIONAL

SUPERVISION

ELLA ADAMS MOORE, CHAIRMAN, CHICAGO, ILL.

In the city of New York about 50,000 children apply each year for permission to begin, at fourteen or fifteen, the long task of making a living; in Chicago there are about half as many, in Philadelphia a slightly smaller number, and so on in every city, town, and village in the United States these hosts of young workers are taking upon themselves the industrial burdens of the nation.

Where do these little "sons of Martha"-and daughters too-find their employment? What friendly hand is stretcht out to them as, timid and bewildered, they seek an open door in industry?

The Vocational Supervision Committee of the Department of School Patrons has had these questions in mind during the two years of its existence. In the autumn of 1916 it planned a nation-wide inquiry as to vocational guidance and employment supervision in the case of these untrained children, but after six months of effort it was found that such an investigation would be impossible for the committee, since time and money were limited, and authority to ask for statistics entirely wanting.

The committee therefore applied to Miss Lathrop, chief of the Children's Bureau in Washington, for help. Thru this bureau a questionnaire was sent, in the spring of 1917, to 424 towns and cities of 10,000 inhabitants or more in the United States. About 60 per cent of these cities replied, but because of the limited time given them for returning their answers and because of a lack of understanding on the part of some of those who received the questionnaire, the findings were very incomplete. The movement is new and in most cities still in an experimental stage. Hence the information was meager in the case of many cities which replied. Yet much more than is indicated by the figures came out of the inquiry. The questionnaire has been of distinct value for the following reasons:

1. It has given us some facts in the case of more than 60 per cent of the cities addrest.

2. It has shown that some form of vocational guidance exists in 25 per cent of the cities.

3. It has shown that extensive and systematic work is being carried on in about 5 per cent of the cities.

4. This has, of course, revealed the need of better methods or more extensive operation in nearly 95 per cent of the cities.