and needs for children. This would be a follow-up of the comprehensive State survey on tax-supported services for children and general social and economic facts about children reported under the title of "What of Children in North Carolina?" A proposed program of legislation affecting children, to be presented to the 1949 State legislature, was also outlined to the conference. This conference was one of a series planned to insure State-wide discussion of the measures proposed. State and county action in Texas Texas has set in motion a county-bycounty program in preparation for the White House Conference. The Texas Committee for Children and Youth held its annual meeting November 16 in Houston. Howard Lackey, Executive Secretary of the Community Council of San Antonio, was elected chairman of the committee. Mrs. George H. Abbott, former chairman, will continue to be responsible for work with the county White House Conference chairmen. Kansas council meets The Kansas Council on Children met in Topeka, October 27. The council ist working with the Juvenile Code Commission to interpret the commission's legislative proposals to the public. Initial planning in lowa The Division of Public Health Education called a meeting October 6 to consider: "How Will Iowa Prepare for the 1950 White House Conference on Children and Youth?" Mr. King Palmer of the Iowa Mental Hygiene Society was selected as chairman of the preliminary planning committee and Miss Esther L. Immer of the State board of social welfare, secretary. Minnesota youth conference Minnesota's fine State-wide program for youth was reported on at the Governor's State Conference on Youth held in St. Paul, October 18-19. In calling the meeting, Gov. Luther W. Youngdahl said, "No more important meeting has been called since I became Governor." This is only a partial reporting of the action in behalf of children and youth which is going on in the Nation. Citizen groups are at work reviewing the needs of children and preparing measures to be presented to State legislatures meeting in 1949. Patterns of action begin to emerge throughout the country in preparation for the Midcentury White House Con ference on Children. The character of planning toward the conference is essentially democratic. Its main strength lies in local initiative and experience to be gained through diversity. While plans and procedures vary, one common purpose binds all who engage in this national enterprise-to strive to reach the maximum that every State and community, and the Nation, can achieve for the good of children. "There is a growing group of agricultural migrants in this country who are largely responsible for the high quality of fruits and vegetables that we find in our markets the year round. Many of these migrants move in family groups and their children often help on the crops. Our States and communities have not yet built up a system of assuring to these migrant families the protection and services that are available to the permanent residents of communities. Frequently, mothers have little. care at the time of childbirth, children have no health services, little schooling and no access to community recreation facilities; and their families. are housed in unsanitary shacks and camps, often without adequate protection from the weather. Progress has been made, but the problem of providing conditions and services for these families comparable to those we consider essential in a good American community has not yet been attacked with sufficient vigor by communities, States, or the Federal Government." Program for Children and Youth, adopted by the National Commission on Children and Youth, January 28-30, 1948. "America is faced with a solemn obligation. Long ago we promised to do our full part. Now we cannot ignore the cry of hungry children. Surely we will not turn our backs on the millions of human beings begging for just a crust of bread. The warm heart of America will respond to the greatest threat of mass starvation in the history of mankind." Julia C. Lathrop, 1919. Dec. 27-29-American Statistical Asso- Dec. 28-30-American Economic Asso- Area conferences, National Child Welfare Dec. 9-11, 1948. Area E-Alaska, Mar. 4-5, 1949. Area A-Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Boston, Mass. Mar. 11-12, 1949. Area C--Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Panama, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas. Jackson, Miss. THE ROAD AHEAD TO CHILD HEALTH Most of us are aware that we are living in a period of great change; in a new age growing out of man's skill in discovering facts about the physical and biological world and his ingenuity in applying them. We cannot escape from the fact that knowledge in this realm has surged far ahead of knowledge in the social sciences of the nature of man himself. Enormous benefits to our health, to our social and economic status, may accrue; but so too may our destruction come out of scientific advance. What we have failed to grasp is that the use to which these tools are put by man will be determined by his social philosophy, by his emotional reactions and behavior. Man has learned that he must nurture the land if it is to be productive, he must tend it carefully and wisely, he must fertilize it. So must our health programs develop from cultivation at the grass roots. The vigor of our State and national health services will depend upon the nurture we give to local health activities. What man will be like when he comes to maturity will depend to a great extent upon the nurture we give him in his infancy and early childhood, upon the opportunities and guidance we give him in his adolescence and youth, upon the strength we develop in the relationship of parent to infant, parent to child, child to child. In a very real sense the child is the touchstone. What we do for him we do for all mankind; what we do for adults, we also do for children. Children must become the focus of our everyday thought, of our economic and social planning, and of our domestic and foreign policy. Suppose we limit ourselves to child health. What does this mean in the field of health? There are some parts of the maternal and child health program we know how to do fairly well, but we are not doing them well enough nor extensively enough. I refer specifically to the basic preventive program in which the physician and the nurse advise the mother, either in the physician's office, or in the health center, or in the school or clinic, or at home, about the health and general care of herself, her baby, and her children. Hundreds of thousands of parents still do not have this help; few parents get the best help we know how to give, including pediatric, nursing, dental, nutrition, and social advice; very few receive the kind of mental advice that pediatric workers trained in child development are equipped to give. Basic maternal and child health services, however, are not enough. Many additional services are urgently needed Mothers must have complete and ade quate maternity care available to them everywhere. Infants, especially thos prematurely born, all preschool chil dren, and children of school age through adolescence must have freely available to them, wherever they live, not only preventive health services, mental as well as physical, but also all necessary care when they are sick, and child guid ance and psychiatric service when required. Unless we have these services, we cannot produce a generation of young people who are fully mature and healthy in body and mind, who are emotionally secure and able to give more than is asked for, to face success and frustration with equanimity, to be self-reliant. to cooperate with their fellows, to take their place in a democratic society as thoughtful, responsible citizens concerned with the common good, and to "live harmoniously in a total changing environment." This is the kind of harvest for which we must now cultivate our soil and hus band our resources. Maths M. Elean Associate Chief, Children's Bureau Publication of THE CHILD, monthly bulletin, was authorized by the Bureau of the Budget, May 12, 1936, to meet the needs of agencies working with or for children. The Children's Bureau does not necessarily assume responsibility for the statements or opinions of contributors not connected with the Bureau. THE CHILD is sent free, on request, to public officials and libraries. For others, the subscription price is $1 a year. Single copies. 10 cents. Send remittance to the Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, Washington 25, D. C. U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: :948 ORGANIZED SPEAKS IN BEHALF OF CHILDREN quirements of an adequate maternal and child-welfare program." Resolved, That the AFL... hereby condemns the continuance of child labor, demands the restoration by Congress of the cuts in the appropriation for the Federal child-labor programs, urges the improvement of State child-labor laws and school-attendance laws, and commends the work of the National Child Labor Committee in its efforts to abolish child labor in America and promote the opportunities of all children for healthy and normal development. Resolved, That the 67th convention of the AFL, in behalf of suffering humanity, go on record as supporting the Crusade for Children. The convention upheld the recommendation of the committee on resolutions, which stated: "We . . . must await the outcome of the United Nations deliberations as to whether this campaign will be continued or not. In the event there is an affirmative decision in the matter by the United Nations we will, of course, give our wholehearted support toward a campaign to aid the world's needy children." Resolved, That the AFL... reiter ate its previous stand in favor of Federal aid to education and urge all affiliated bodies actively to support legisla tion to make Federal assistance to the 'schools a reality, and be it further Resolved, That the AFL... sup port the recommendation of the AFL Permanent Committee on Education that Federal aid to the schools should not be less than one billion dollars an nually, to be distributed to the States on a basis of need. CONGRESS OF INDUSTRIAL We believe that the first right of cit izenship in a democracy is to grow throughout childhood in good physical, emotional, and social health and security. A major objective of the CIO is to Homes that are well-designed and built, with adequate space for esome, happy family life; Physical and emotional health: mothers during pregnancy and birth; for children from birth ugh adolescence, including protecagainst avoidable illness and commedical and hospital care when r crippled; Good schools, with teachers welland not overworked, to provide ation that is suited to the capaciand interests of every child, that ects and develops each child's perlity, that keeps him free of taboos superstitions, and that helps to prehim to take his place in a demoic society as an informed, respone citizen; Recreation and opportunity for asation through youth organizations help in building children physiy and increase their understanding nd tolerance for others; Protection against too early and uitable employment of children that nts their physical, emotional, and al growth, and deprives them of r right to develop through play and ly; - Child-welfare services that supment the care and encouragement t parents give their children, ough providing such services as day e for children of working mothers, that bring skill and understanding children who are neglected or delinnt, or who have lost their parents; . Communities so designed and orized that children are protected m hazards and are given every posle encouragement to develop as lthy, happy human beings. Great numbers of our children today forced to grow up in families and munities that are unable to provide se opportunities. A weekly income of $50 today buys y a meager living for a father, ther, and two children. And yet 60 rcent of all our children are in fam UARY 1949 ilies that have even less than $50 a week. Slum areas in every city and shanties along country roads are testimony to the wretched and unwholesome housing in which we force millions of children to live and grow. Nine million dwelling units today lack even running water. The Federal Security Agency's Children's Bureau tells us that nearly 200,000 babies are born each year without any medical care, and many more are born to mothers who have had little or no medical supervision during pregnancy. On the sickness-prevention front we pretend we are providing public-health services for children, but in half our counties there is not a single public school where a doctor gives the children a health examination. In a great many other counties the school health examination is a sham. Hundreds of thousands of children are found to have poor hearing, poor eyes, poor teeth, but little or nothing is done to make sure that their ears and eyes and teeth are put in good condition. Child-labor problem is serious Against the exploitation of children by employers we have enacted State and Federal child-labor laws and have devoted many years of high-minded preachment and propaganda. But today the fact remains that thousands of children are forced by economic conditions to seek paid employment in the years when they should be at school and at play. And we permit employers to profit from the low-paid labor of these children because the laws we have en acted are patently weak and the moneys appropriated by our lawmakers are shamefully inadequate. America has slipped backward in the fight against child labor; in 1948, three times as many 14- and 15-year-old children were employed as were employed in 1940. Establishment of the principle of free public education in the early years of our Republic is one of the achievements of organized labor of which we are proud. But after more than a hundred years of public education we must recognize that our children go to school, if at all, in overcrowded schoolrooms where they are taught by disgracefully overworked, underpaid, and for the most part unorganized teachers. The grudging tax-supported expenditures which we make for the education of our children provide a sorry commentary on our professed faith in the value of an enlightened democracy when stacked up against the vast sums which, without protest, are poured into soft drinks, horse races, moving pictures, slot machines, and other forms of commercial ized recreation. Although for many years we have known that the wealth of a few States and communities is derived from the poorly paid labor and products of other parts of our country, we have not yet made the decision that by Federal aid to education the United States shall give a guarantee to all our children that the cost of their public education shall be borne by the wealth of the Nation as a whole, and that those born in lowincome communities or to parents of restricted means shall enjoy an equal chance at the educational opportunities which the richest Nation in the world is well able, but has not yet seen fit, to provide for all of them. We have not devoted enough attention to the election of boards of education in cities, counties, and States. The character and quality of courses and teaching have suffered. In too many instances children of union members have been given antilabor and antiunion propaganda in public schools. In recent years, labor generally, and CIO unions particularly, have taken an active part in such elections and have aided in the election of boards that more accurately represent the interests of the entire community. But more must be done. 99 |