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By L. E.

HE one crop in this country that cannot be valued in money, that never fails, yet receives comparatively little attention, is the crop of human beings-something like 2,500,000 babies a year. Unlike the wheat crop, our baby crop's quality is far below its quantity. One of every five fails to reach the age of one year; thirty per cent never see a second birthday, and sixty per cent are gone before the age of ten. Such conditions in the grain field would recieve the best of scientific attention in a hurry; and we can now say, of recent years, that much is being done for children.

It is a stupendous work; how great is suggested by present conditions even after a number of years' concerted endeavor of educators and physicians: sixty per cent are defective at birth-as compared to ten per cent among animals. Doctor Wood, in his report to the United States Bureau of Education, says that threefourths of the American school children are more or less defective. Of the twenty million, perhaps a million have flat-foot, spinal curvature or some other moderate deformity; about a million have or have had tuberculosis; four hundred thousand have organic heart trouble. Most of them have bad teeth, one out of every four has defective sight. Six million have adenoids, enlarged tonsils or enlarged cervical glands. One million have defective hearing.

Child betterment is with us to stay; the movement is an evolutionary step in world-progress. Every teacher should be proud of the work he or she is doing; it is doubtful whether it would be possible to array to the credit of any other profession so much that reflects honor upon its members. But all that public service, educational, medical and general, can do for our young is as nothing compared to the influence of parents and home. The parent who voluntarily leaves the child's education to the public is a criminal. Without reverence for and understanding of parenthood, no person has a right to assume the responsibility. It is the noblest function of

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humanity, a sacred trust, our nearest approach to Divinity.

"Father" and "feeder" are variable terms of the same word. There was a time when a father's duties were supposed to end with the provision of food, shelter and clothing for his offspring. The little mental and moral training customary then was supervised solely by the mother. Today the demands of child-training require intelligent co-operation of the parents; a dutiful father will find time for his children. It may be that girls can do without him; but his boys need his advice and guidance; they gain from association with him a certain robustness and stability not to be acquired otherwise. The mother's influence in developing the character of the boy gives him the gentle refinement without which as a man he would be destitute of charm and lacking in the finest qualities of personality. But underneath the maternally conferred graces of character, and sustaining them, there is required a foundation of sterner stuff, of masculine strength. The fact that girls are more intimate with their mother than boys are with their father, accounts in large measure for the seeming moral superiority of girls. They are not intrinsically better, but they grow up with their mother and learn at an early age to ask her counsel. The boys' father is away most of the time, and they are backward about taking some of their hardest problems to their mother. The very best mother cannot entirely take the place of a father.

Juvenile delinquency in many cases ought to be termed parental delinquency. One hundred thousand children are dealt with by the police courts annually. Three-fourths of these cases are the result of improper guardianship. Ignorance and poverty handicap many parents who would gladly do better by the children if they could.

The child is a bound volume of blank paper, and on these pages the parents may write the