and waste of energy. Coöperation is necessary to facilitate well-directed work. New York City has an association of milk stations which in 1911 included the seven different organizations that were operating such stations. This coöperation enabled them to work more efficiently, to prevent duplication and overlapping, to handle details more adequately, and to provide greater publicity than would otherwise have been possible. In 1912 a Babies' Welfare Association was formed, and 27 agencies were represented. In Chicago close coöperation has existed among the principal agencies interested, such as the department of health, the United Charities, the Visiting Nurse Association, and the various settlements and sanatoria. In St. Louis the agencies interested in infant mortality are brought together in the Central Council of Social Agencies, where they perfect a plan of coöperation. In this city the duplication of nurse work because of overlapping has been one of the problems. If a proper coördination of the work of preventive agencies can be established, and if a maximum of efficiency can be secured so that all waste of effort will be avoided, then a rapid reduction in death rates should take place. CHAPTER I PHYSICAL CONDITIONS OF CHILDREN 1. Standards of Physique. Next to life comes health. Without this no man can be industrially, mentally, and morally as capable as the normal man should be. The development of physique and vigor is therefore one of the great essentials of wholesome life, and every man should have the opportunity to acquire his highest physical possibility. It is not mere height and weight that count, but a normal development, for the tall Patagonian is not necessarily superior to the short Italian, nor a heavy race superior to one of lighter weight, but a man of normal stature is superior to the dwarfed specimen of his own race. So with strength and other characteristics. It is probable that the different races of the world each possess certain inherent normal proportions of physique, such as height, weight, lung power, shape of head, etc. The normal tends always to persist, but environmental influences may carry a people far from the original standard. However, when favorable conditions return, the people will rebound and the normal type again appear. Heredity gives us a standard for each race, environment causes the principal deviations therefrom. The social phase of this problem consists in surrounding each person with the forces which will insure to him the physique to which he is entitled, while the eugenic side consists of the problem of improving the standard. Recent studies and observations of the physical conditions of children and of certain adult groups have indicated certain laws of development, as well as the causes of physical degeneration. The boy baby weighs about eight ounces more at birth than the girl baby, but the death rate of male children is uniformly |